Pall

Pall

Mark Coleman

  I sat there nodding agreement to I know not what in my drunkenness. My chin would drop to my chest then the whole works would shoot upright again. Like a marionette controlled by a palsied hand, I struggled to retain consciousness. The banter that flowed from one end of the barroom to the other staggered me in its wake. My slanted eyes would struggle to make out an accusation or invitation before the lids would again descend to pall a troubled dream.

  A nameless old-timer approached the perch on which I contemplated the endless night within. I jostled up and out at him. A moment of lucidity that nevertheless barred words. How could one explain the starless void in which I swam, however intermittently?  His gray eyes communicated something vaguely akin to concern. They sent a few tracers down my spine, and I strove fruitlessly to readjust my frameless glasses somewhat further up my nose. My index finger slid up and down it as though rubbing away an itch, unable to find and hook its target.

  I’m sure all this would seem rather comical in one of those blasé dives where youths rendezvous out of boredom rather than desperation. Here there was finality to even the most platitudinous of the regulars’ movements and occasional bits of broken speech. This was an end-of-the-road sort of establishment. A place in which to drink until you keeled over, and the Devil came with his ice wagon and an order for collection rather than delivery.

  The wizened barfly stood in front of me with his mottled flesh losing its fight with gravity. He stooped so far into his glass of ale that you thought he’d drop in like a quarter, and never surface. His lips drew back from his rotted teeth in some simian attempt at humanity. “Shot,” he barked out as much to me as the bartender. It was not a question, but an unquestionable demand. The man thus addressed finished a few drinks as spiked as iron maidens for patrons at the bar proper before retrieving the spigot-less well. The nonchalance with which I threw back my shot convinced the man of some sort of mettle and right, and he moved on. His eyes trailing behind him like smoke.

  The nod resumed in earnest. Disappearing at every sign of the glimmering of a fish’s scales. Back up, each time, with nothing but a lingering aftertaste in the beak. French-inhales and German billows dividing the room in two. A warring of nationality and ideas. Here where the bucolic meets the bacchant in lackadaisical droop. The bleating and the whines everywhere at once.  A massive evisceration. The insides spread out like a lifetime of passed-down china, polished and prepared for entertainment purposes. The guests with their breath fogging over glasses of mirthful self-destruction. Eyes lowered to the head that sits in eager anticipation, clouding the gold beneath. Duckweed floating over everything, webbing vision and dragging mind.

  A cackle from the adjacent table. A middle aged cad pondering the gem his hands had fallen upon. Up the skirt where they found no resistance. The moan in mid-sentence from a pair of dreary, painted lips that part with the creak of those floorboards in haunted mansions and their suburban models. Hangings and stabbings and shootings and screaming cancers that eat away facial features and youthful beauty. Bed ridden patients with portacaths and photo albums that seem better than mirrors given the circumstances. Patched over bullet holes in bathroom ceilings and plastic pints in water tanks.

  Meandering staircases often mistaken for Jacob’s Ladders in the anxiousness to reconnect. Dreams not just un-realized but wholly forgotten beneath the weight of sorrow and the never ending funeral preparations, some of which are for those still technically alive. Bar stools with casters for the valetudinary tipplers and dipsos. Cherubs strangulated with their own haloes, asphyxiated by their twice-earned wreaths of laurel. There are tears of blood on the cheeks of the statue of the Mother Mary.

  Leaning on the oak and looking for reflections where there are only deflections. Barkeeps with one good eye out of two to take in your sulking, pathetic form as you draw the bones out for the bottle. Genies on hiatus and sprites weeping over each other’s bodies in the thickset brush of forest and restive, tender rugs of sward. Black processions that suck the color from the already fair complexions within them. Skullcaps solemnly worn and night caps hastily taken.

  Anxiously surveying the dwindling alcohol supply. The wrenching pains beginning in the stomach, throwing their contortions to the face. Not enough for the night. Not enough for the morning. And then there are the days beyond. They stand with their impish grins and sharpened pitchforks. Their tails laid out at your feet like red carpets to Hell.

Somnambulant

Somnambulant

Mark Coleman

 

  The storm can seem so far away, when you’ve got other things on your mind. The clouds can gather and gather but they cannot negate their nonexistence. The lightning and thunder is less than nil. But thoughts are like jackhammers behind your eyes. The stark ones bending introspection back into limbo. Wandering through the vaulted pasts with a hand firm on the taxi’s back. Totaling up the fare as you skirt around actualization. Deceiving yourself as you twiddle drunk in the backseat. The stop blurring off into the distance with a woman out, pursing her lips and clutching her handbag as tight as she can.

  Making eyes at the back of your toddling head as you take the corner. The wheels like stones skipped across a lake. Always trying for the opposite shore. Where they all throw their shoulders back and stand up straight in their youth. The band taking itself out and the night with it. Downtown where they blink their way home. Thumbs hooked over pockets and mascara smearing perfection. Legs heavy with drink and smoke. Through marshes that send up their vegetation to make the wayfarers stagger and trip.

  Up with the cigarette pasted in a collaged face. Making rings that have no place in proposals but kind of seem like haloes in the right light. Laurelling the muse. Hand in hers, belting out lyrics and sonnets. Pouring the bottle into the tub, and diving in with one eye leveled at the skirt that clothes inspiration. Fireflies taking the first step into the gloaming. Wings caught up in mason jars with the light dimming. Running back through the arcade with pinball machines on every corner. Silver balls bouncing like bells down a jester.

  Swaying through the motions. Martini olives surveying the room. Stuck and bleeding to the bottom of the glass. The crock of an arm processing signals. Hooked and taken through the swinging doors. Carried over the threshold and into conjugation. Sleep disturbed by solemn memories, and frosty old inns where the hearth fights every advance. Flinging back the scarf, and heading out to pursue sheep. Gigot of mutton hanging over barstools in country taverns. Sheparding drowsiness, but stepping over the inert forms of closure.

  Hair a whiskey brown. Eyes an absinthe green. Sitting there in a frame, caught for one eternity: still and peaceful. Sending off jingles and small flashes that make the blanket freeze. Trying to mold the pillow into enough of a shape that it can be slept with. Arms aching with the years left back there across the ocean. An unborn child creating the divide. Eventually, it will find its way without the assistance of you.   

  The ships in port and the sailor’s musculature. Matrimonial beds defiled by procreation. Tattoos running off into the belly to start a commissioned piece. Death knells for the un-tampered skin. Flowers on graves that just look like dirt no matter how long you stare at them. Restful on one side. Tiresome on the other.

  The serenades falling into their plots with crumpled letters and broken mementos. Day trippers with bouquets to shame your own. Making a show about their placement. Leaning over, spreading the flowers a little wider. Apologetic towards you, but unaffected by grief. The reek of duty and obligation.

  Smiling out the month with tender caresses running across the brow. Her lips candied with your taste. Bringing you closer to her heartbeat, and making you understand where it comes from. Lashes still long and coquettish. Lids going up and down like uncertain shutters. Counting the losses like holes in the ceiling. Sitting up in bed with a mouth burnt by ashes and happy hour shots. Finding a crack in the wall and following it to the mirror. Spend the night wondering at the aged reflection.

Give and Take

Give and Take

Mark Coleman

  It’s the first rain of June, and I feel like I’m running away. The train behind the elms, the most desirable and inviting means of conveyance and escape. Slouching there, down the rungs from a suite whose extravagance is toasted with gilded glass. Chewing the remaining flesh from a cool cherry pit. Hair dipping down to touch my brow. You can cross your eyes up at it all you like, but all you’ll see is rustling leaves working up the courage to make the leap.

  Loose matches in my pocket ruminating flame. Trouts coming up to watch my crossing. The flashing of fins and eyes in a confused mass of knowing. A pencil stub behind my ear. Picking a few winning lotto numbers. Losing the rest to anniversaries. That magic drizzle that children dream about when no one’s looking. The sky dazzled and dazzling. A sniffle, then a long weep into the dirt and mud. Catching twigs, and sailing them halfway across their world. Bobbing along to the strain of the melodious calliope. The accordion ancient in its squint. The estrogen pumped violin awaiting the wisdom drop.

  Rainbows started then aborted. Left unfinished after just a few strokes on an ultra-azure canvas. Prepped with the proper amount of precipitation. Greased up with a broken fuel line. Hatched with imposing lampposts straight up, driven like stakes into the clouds. Stippled with harbinger crows out the sides. Gone off on the rails to start again somewhere with a beach, and a dress code so lax that you could wear your birthday suit to a wedding reception. Frizzy, platinum blonde hair worn au naturel to the altar. Carnations thrown into the hotel pool, and left to bleed out in streams. The moon making floating on a ripple look so easy and effortless.

  Paddling out to the middle of the lake, and launching bottle rockets astern. Setting fire to the reflections of you and me. Years turning ember, and gliding away. Softly trailing over to the misty horizon where they kaleidoscopically merge with the colors of the setting sun. Ashes puddling and powdering your gaiters. Belief thrown out with your dirty socks and knotted fishing lines.

  Up the mountain, through the gullies, and into the too perfect shade. Picnics romantic and innocent when the honeymoon still had a heartbeat. Taking you beneath the willow as gently as a man like I can. My arms enlaced alternately behind your neck and back. Trying to make you as comfortable as possible.
   Adverse to the slightest sign of pain on your face. Fingers in your golden tresses or brushing a spot of earth from your cheek. Deflowered on a bed of pine needles that find their way into the cups of your bra and strings of your hair. Working the more difficult ones out with friction and persistence.

  The tinny sounds of crickets playing to the crescent swimming up there with half his foot gone beneath a deep purple cover. Swatting mosquitos from your bare legs. The taste of which all of nature seems to appreciate and revel in. Your eyes capturing the stars and robbing them of their light years. It’s a measurement of distance, not time. Once, you were so near that I didn’t have to search for you in every movement that failed to compliment my own.

The Search for Perfection

The Search for Perfection

Mark Coleman 

  As I grew older, my appreciation for a nice pair of legs nearly destroyed me. They were the pillows that I dusted with my dreams. The hat racks that I hung all my spindly thoughts from. I crumpled in on myself to see them better. Huddled down in salutation and prayer. The dimpled ones, the freckled ones, the bruised ones. All long and magnificent. All leading up to that wondrous intersection at the greatest chalice that a man can pour himself into.

  A plump set of cushions to lean into. Perfumed and gripping. Snaked around the hips. Heels resting on the buttocks. Subtle movements to help in insertion and penetration. The rhythm transferred back and forth. A little bluesy when the time for ejaculation comes. Toes dug into the tender rump flesh. A begging there as well as in the eyes, and on the saliva-wet lips. Gorges discovered and conquered. Left, still barren, awaiting the next rainy season. The soothing torrents that will again be shot into that gorgeous body.

  Rounding off with a few finishing thrusts. Lubricated and hot as a Slip ‘N’ Slide to Hell. Working the whiskey out of the pores. Pre-aged and premium. Cask worthy. Hanging, precipitously, on the brim of the nose. Pattering against her drum-taut stomach. Admitted then accidentally repulsed then admitted again. Belly to belly, when a letter of the alphabet can be formed that way. Sleaze and sperm on spring-sharp mattresses. Sometimes a bit of blood mixed in there.

  Burned through by the mere thought of the solace that awaits up there between the thighs. The gaze caressing all that tenderness before your own hands move into your line of vision. Carefully following the voluptuous contours towards the incomparable mound and temple. The worship place for every size of flock. Fleece pushed back from the not-so-hoary head as it takes its cue, and works its muzzle with a smattering of slobber first.

  Arms locked about the knees, smothering them in kiss after kiss. A bit of tongue slipped there then between the nether lips. The side then the tip. Running up and down like a child raised on Fruity Pebbles and crack. An opium lull in the clutch of the womb. Down there where your licks and sucks eased the entry. The clitoris prominent and hard between your thumb and forefinger. Teasing it with carefully timed flicks of the nail. You could set a fob watch or an old grandfather clock by it. Slowly twisting the dial.

  Playing with a crushed wine gnat like it’s a pulled eyelash. Semi-coarse, Dago Red pubic hair beneath a cusped palm. The sun through the blinds unveiling, in its rectangular manner, her glorious feminity. Every goddamn inch of it catching fire and dancing pink. The goose pimples inviting a probe and nip. Roses opening up in the cheeks and sending their color down. The blush ending at the crimson washed big toe. Sitting there, lost in contemplation.

  The sounds in the alley beyond the fogged over, millimeter cracked window. Ghosts playing phantom games of hopscotch or hide the knife in your cousin. Throats drawn open like vulvas. Jugulars spraying out over the brick. Cascading down and rushing towards the ocean. Where the rivers meet their end in the liquid land that is their understanding of eternity and infinity. God in domination and awareness over two-thirds of the planet’s surface.

  Waves tatted down like beams of light to the ankles that massage themselves in clockwise and counter-clockwise motions. The crashing tide deep within the seashell’s memory and heart. Unaware itself whether its knowledge is innate or learned. This constant mimicry that only hammers and door handles can shatter and eliminate. Leaving nothing but a once conjugal bedroom to weather and catch cold.

Crisis of Faith

Crisis of Faith

Mark Coleman

  The moon fell out of the sky, so I broke it up, and divided it amongst my friends. Each of whom looked bitterly upon his childhood. Hiding in closets and staring at walls. Every imperfection realized early on. Claustrophobia before puberty and love. Struggling against undertows and red flags. Stooped by unwanted years and suicidal thoughts. Spending half of our lives in the ICU. The other half in the drunk tank. Alone behind bars with your phone calls going to voicemail. Panic attacks shoving you to the concrete floor. Sweaty fingerprints filed away.
  Too drunk to draw the blinds. Coming down off of coke and acid with work in a few hours. Playing with the idea of shooting something up for my nerves. Body, a deranged pharmacy. Eyes unable to focus. Hands unable to hold. Huffing and hyperventilating. Wishing that I had some white crosses. Afraid of what the day might bring.
  Trying to find normalcy in the apothecary. Eyes squinty and bloodshot. Starved from days of detox. Unable to keep down even water. In bed, with the hallucinations coming on. Sleeping thirty six hours in the hospital after a three month long meth binge. Passing the crack pipe with a thirteen year old whore, and the emaciated Vietnam vet who acts as her manager. Red beer in the strip club. A make-out session with an ex-girlfriend’s daughter in the champagne room.
  Cold water extraction. Gulping galloons of hydrocodone. In the McDonalds’ bathroom, tying off. Belt between the teeth. Tapping the vein. Needle in. Thoughts out. Popping Ritalin and grinning behind the steering wheel. Buying bath salts with exotic names from the head shop. Stealing hand sanitizer for a quick pick-me-up. Fucking tongue-pierced ravers on X. Trying to crawl out of K holes. Catatonic on bathroom floors. Porn store poppers done insolently in the parking lot. Psychotic nights of Nyquil and Triple C overindulgence.
  Asking the bartender out, over and over again, until she buckles. Blotto without a rain check in county. Pepper balled and fettered. Choking on a gag. Assholes parading out their GED aspirations. Pouring over Bible verses, and simple math equations. Coming out of a coma with a few visitors with tears in their eyes. Coffee table gash in my forehead and the beginning of a nic-fit. Flu symptoms in the absence of a virus. Alternating between The Big Book and The Bartender’s Guide.
  Taking a handful of shots and smoking a joint, so I can stay intent and alert during the A.A. and N.A. meetings. Leaving out-patient and heading to the bar. Sneaking vodka and Mad Dog in the sober house. Experiencing a crisis of faith that doesn’t end. Sitting in pews equating my own suffering to that of Jesus on the cross. St. Francis when the animals refused to talk to him because Kenneth Grahame’s son stepped out in front of a train.

Mortality

Mortality

Mark Coleman

   You can’t escape your own corpse. It will pursue you to the end. Begging alms and love with eyes running over with self-pitying tears. Opened up with every vital down the drain. Skinless but taut. Bones hollow but infused with spirit and want. The world beyond the two of you might as well not exist. Like lying down with a woman whose eyes act as mirrors. A moment that gives you back to yourself. No matter how much you might not want to spend time with that particular person. Stroking your cheek, and beseeching you not to leave too soon. Offering herself up as a security against your mortality. Hand on her breast. Eyes on her lips.
   The heartbeat that might as well be your own. The taste that is so distinctly of another. The days and nights wiled insatiate between the sheets. A busload of kids with cheeks hollowed by inexperienced kisses. Sack lunches full of bland sustenance. Field trips to hotels. Hours stolen away from chaperone eyes. Wounded by the remembrance of the days before her. Standing in the lobby, looking out across the street at a second run theater’s marquee. Its façade seems the most tender in the world.
   The promenades up and over the shopping districts. Filled with intricacy and meaning. The half full glasses in every pub and pig ‘n’ whistle. Sweating over the drinkers’ palms. The grave salutations to Venus. The slow dance of Salome. Out on the floor with a near death experience grinning from the bar. Coke through a straw cut with an old man’s pair of scissors. Mindless chatter with strangers with dime bags sewn into their suits.
   A revolving door cross at over-traffic reluctantly admitting a few more. Graceful as a cockroach in a broken elevator. Waterheaded with moist thoughts. Carnivals every which way you turn. Freak shows with people performing as well as in attendance. The big top and the topcoat striking up a friendship. Out of quarters, standing in front of a jukebox out of songs. Cigarettes furiously stubbed out. The butts frowned over and forgotten.
   The greatest man who ever lived waiting for someone to drop a dime in his Styrofoam cup. Fingers frozen stiff. Beard mottled with frost and age. A film over his eyes, and a dead tooth in his head. Bacon and eggs hastily eaten in a diner before an A.M. tryst with a sex kitten short on furs. Out with the drunks who navigate with all the ease of stilt walkers. Making their way in and out of city-buried bordellos. Cold and sick in bed with DT night terrors for nurses, and their bloat for sanctuary. Full of holes parked in gutters with one in ten tumors, and families that hate them.
   Her thighs sliding up your flanks. Her smile tearing you to pieces. Riding out of the casino with chips galore and escorts incognito. Winning Keno tickets stuffed into called corner pockets. Fangs in every mouth. Puncture marks on every neck. A slot handle fucked until the machine can’t come anymore. The seizure conquers. The dark overtakes. The plug is pulled.
   The croupier, with an apologetic smile, draws back the winnings. She closes her thighs, and hands you back your bottle which you proceed to empty. Falling on your face, breaking your nose and bleeding over a fresh pressed white shirt, you stumble back to old habits. Barfly with society’s unwanted. Your true and only friends.
   Mock-ups of human beings making cardboard signs outside of closed abortion clinics. Pinball logic beneath ash smeared foreheads. Sandwiches eaten in solitude on park benches that are barely within the park’s boundaries. Offices within offices within alcohol soaked back alleys. Pigeons pecking at bread crumbs that were tossed as an invitation to friendship by a fat lady with a shopping cart and a brimless hat. Newspaper cover bedding, and dumpster-diving. No matter how far down you go, it all seems to be garbage. A few chicken bones and a rubber bat from Halloween. Drunk and incoherent. Trying to explain what empathy is to a stoned fascist.

Cracking Up

Cracking Up

Mark Coleman

   I wake up, and see that my fingernails drew blood from having clenched my fists so tight in my sleep. I was swinging on phantoms again. Those who left me to lay here with no one to embrace. I get up and shake my way to the bottle. Take a few swigs, then go down to put on a pot of coffee. Go out back and smoke a few cigarettes. Sit there, in a chaise, staring at my bruised palms. Think of the bars out there. Bite the filter out of my third smoke. Toss it in a mug with a smattering of coffee. Then it’s back upstairs, and whiskey to top it all off. Wipe the sweat out of my eyes, and turn on the TV. Rapidly flip through the channels, some of which are still barking infomercial nonsense. Anticipating the twisting shiver that runs down my neck and back.   

  Equipped with booze and loneliness, I dash the remote against the wall, and bury my head in my hands. Try to stand and fall back in bed. Last night, smashing things and screaming. Broken glass covers the floor, making it hard to crawl. Letters from a friend in State wadded and bunched in a corner, sticky with spilt drink. Yarns of yard shankings. Barely a kid, half his face gone beneath the blade. A stoolie in an unmarked grave somewhere nearby with a family rotting halfway across town. The uneducated handwriting childish and simple. Peppered with words that take quite an effort to spell wrong.

  Word of an ex on the grape. Gone touring the south with a broke fence that chews toothpicks and carries a comb in his back pocket. Hear that she never looked so good in white. Way the books are running may end up wearing black, and chasing bulls instead of horses. Settle back with her family and watch a picador brother from the stands. With child. Still wearing too much mascara. Still likes her nails red, and her men green and growing. Lipstick in the cabinet by a lifeless cundrum. Her kiss behind my ear where she left it. Posing in a gown with the dust gathering.

  Penknife sitting open on the hotel dresser. A deck of marked cards in my pocket. A few bills in my wallet.  A beat-up old fedora and a flowered pillbox on the bedpost. Old lushes sharking the pool tables in a hall full of rich punks. Downtown alleys overflowing with teen tarts on the make. Left their youth with their ID’s in a nigger pimp’s hand. Felt the city in their veins, and surrendered their loins. Past the laundry fronts and church stoops spread-eagled with fuck on one pair of lips, the other pair drier than sandpaper. A father meeting his daughter and dropping a deuce for a night of curtained courtship.   

  Haggling over a cunt hair and a wrinkle. Breath hot. Words spit and slurred. Blood shot eyes. Yellow skin. A quiniela box and a racing forum. All laid in front of an HD at the bar. Smartly dressed with heart attack on the face. Gin and tonics slurped through bent swizzles. Big band on the juke. Ten galloon at a booth staring down a belle piece with atomized pussy. Batting her eyelashes and smiling with just the corners of her mouth. Already window shopping with her night’s winnings. One of the newer ones to the beat who hasn’t encountered a sadist’s punch or a ten man tag team.

  Lashed to unconsciousness and decapitated. Head gaping in shock from the dumpster out back. Teeth pulled and frozen in an industrial. Blowjobs from blitzed two-timers with shiny wedding rings. Husbands ducking in trenches surrounded by limbs and bloody mud. Forgetting their country when an arm lands in their lap. The stench of the vomit rising in the back of their throats making them choke on their own tongues. Handies doled out like losing lotto tickets in the bathroom. Soap for lubricant in the jerking fists. A senator reaming a five year old boy in one of the stalls. Can he count on your vote?

  The message puked out of the machine as you try to calm your unruly children. Pulling each other’s hair, and tattling on one another.  Bus leaves in fifteen minutes, and you’ve got a wine jug migraine. All you can do is shout, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” You can feel the hangover tingling in your toes and rattling your teeth. Father off banging his secretary in an office catty corner to the local bar where the winos seep into the cracked walls and disappear.

Soft Jazz

Soft Jazz

Mark Coleman
 

   That feeling of boundlessness that portends love. It comes unprovoked and undeserved. A firing of cylinders set off by a night breeze or a limo service advert. A culmination of small, seemingly meaningless things that somehow merge together endlessly. Sprinklers desiring play. A dress wet and clinging. The breast bared and heaving. Broken bits of vision.

   Cocktail of dusk and dust. Incantation segmented and speared. Vocation motes spiraling. The gait takes on a new dimension. Light year stepping through monstrance gateways. A host, straight from the Rider deck, positioning for comfort and ease. Eiderdown, wadded for cushioning, accepting the divested buttocks. Vacillating fleece coiffed by unsteady hands, which at invitation, become fleshy picks. The breathless gasp at penetration and the momentary cessation that follows. A repose in the auburn hair.

   The eyes jolt, the lips part and pucker towards the taste of another. The saliva clinging at the juncture like infants to maternal bosoms. Diamonds gently pulled in strands. The cavalcade of springs awakening from disuse. Supporting the weight of rapacious unity. An evening reborn in creaks and groans. Crashing back and forth like lunar china. The foreshadowed timing of climax read in the pupils, shining like votive candles at a midnight mass. Burgundy sipped through the grilles and chasms.

   Tatted up in doll admiration and strutting the town beneath like so much dross. Beached throughout. Wrack bulb popping. Children dragging it behind them as they rush towards the ebbing tide. Cave exploration beneath the promontories. Stealing a kiss or copping a feel. Held in captivation by the gems that eagerly spur Chauvet inspiration. The easel held like one tiny, crooked elbow in another. The first corsage and the first buttonhole. Picnicking long distance in a hotel room with the phone cradle and the Gideon Bible for companionship. And a T.V. set that’s more of a blister than the moon.

   The cold outside dehumanizing the leaves of curiously bent trees. Leaving nothing but stiff, arthritic fingers gnawed to the bone from want and the once reality of the past. Sitting on the edge of the bed with a handful of fingers following the creases of a pillowcase stale from over-washing. Taking the fat out of the fire, and using it to cook nutrition-less food eaten in solitude.

   An old radio, quite aware of its disrepair and loss, trying in vain to pipe something vaguely resembling music. Sheet music strewn over the floor with the bones of Father Time for company. All of yesteryear glimpsed through chiffon curtains and lost wisps of smoke. Forever seeking solace and consolation in the half-actualized gloom of memory. Patterned silk remembered in terms of the contours that it captured and held with such melancholy and brilliance. Faded smiles beckoning regret and loneliness. Something resembling soft jazz falling over the hush. Slowly rhythmic, it edges into the cracks of broken hearts where it forgets to flower. Mists on a horizon out of reach. Punished with Prometheus and Sisyphus. And the Son of the Morning.

Geeked Out

Geeked Out

Mark Coleman

Her gaze is so blank. She might as well be staring out of empty sockets. Socked her in the jaw, then tried to make up for it in the sack, but I’d been hitting the bottle too hard. Soft and as worthless as an imprint of a grenade in silly putty with the pin missing. Trying to contort her body into a position suitable for at least an IV drip. Went Kowalski on the dump. Threw a highball into the wall, kicked over the fucking table, tore apart her negligee with my rotten teeth, and stepped out half dressed in a pair of Hell battered slippers.

The queen at the corner liquor looked me over as though he were a parole board, before sighing and bagging my handle. Stepped out and squared up with a square and a long, dirty hit of rotgut. Come back with apology glued lips, and haggard eyes brimming with drink and guilt. Expire with the spent sigh that usually proceeds a dozen bus transfers from the tenement euthanized side of an otherwise familiar city.

Feeling worse than a geek shamed with a chicken blood bellyache. Self-hatred in the marrow and suicide on the brain. Hundreds of unflinching eyes priding themselves on their obvious superiority. It’s always down from the bleachers. You find yourself in the shock envied position of the spectator, and before you know it you’re crawling like the lice on your body to bite the head off of a shit filthy fowl.

Night after night follows. The slow creeping up Jacob’s Ladder. The pinnacle of which is the nose dive from the very top. The descent and the ascent are simultaneous and harmonious. Seldom do they break the code and quarrel. Even more remote is the possibility that they’ll cut all ties. They just keep weaving more and more intricate webs. You end up like so many junkyard windshields. The pleading turns cold and you end up hanging from someone’s gable.

You don’t swing you just freeze. Out shopping for dimes and nickels with cons worked too death by so many others before you even fell out the pages of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez story. Using a placebo as a pillow with the umbilical cord cut and dismantled. Cold as a dead coal pit with the mists slow waltzing their ways over sewer grating and trash can handle. A few rays of sunlight caressing the stiff joints of the pawnshop uprights. The cues standing guard over the billiard hall liquor bottles. (Stern as a stepfather with a razor strop and coke in his nose hairs. The serpent learning where and when to strike in his tenderly abusive hand.)

In and out of alleys that don’t end but just stop and start in three card monte confusion. Disease putrid syringes and broken pipes on The Yellow Brick Road. Just like they fell off a garrote conveyer belt on its way to Sodom. Opium dens with their backs turned towards you, and their eyes caught dazedly following the enchanting wisps of smoke. Soothing the confusion that reigns supreme in a world that is no more than a shoddily assembled bomb shelter.

Everyone squirming to find sanctuary beneath a school desk as the preacher screams down his helium inflated nostrils. Pupils capturing the flames in the kike crematorium. Whole generations funneling from plant chimneys. The screeches on the landing ever increasing in volume and speed. Dynamite secreted into every fissure of the human body. Bombshells in the already wobbly kneecaps of tamale hawkers that the spicks devour without bothering with the tricky removal of the husks.

The whole rape population comes out of every goddamn crack and cockroach up under age petticoats. The shrill, wild eyed bumpkin bitches are bear hugged from behind by no less than five brutes, and face fucked until they drown their own vomit and fifty ball sacks worth of semen. Sisters of Ragged Dick disemboweled with jagged hunting knifes by inbred, cousin fucking rednecks who finally realize their full potential. The whole world transforms in a matter of seconds into a giant crater ridden piss-hole of sick junkies’ pores. The sun goes out, and the moon with it. The streetlamps flicker and strobe under shades of far too human red.

Niggers thrown into high current rivers of bile as though they were Popeye buckets, and ride like Tom Sawyer on their brothers’ carcasses straight to the ocean, where they end up thrown from waterspouts, and impaled on towering baleen tridents that blot out any sign of the horizon.

Rickshaws full throttling beneath sickle black jacks. Their cargos’ skulls thudding and rolling along the pavement where they’re force trepanned by derrick sized power drills. Shredding the skin of syphilitic spade cocks. Poor excuse for a well-slicked cunt. The remainder of which are re-serviced as spittoons for escaped TB patients. Spilling over with lung puke. The assholes stretched in Grand Canyon competition. Fisted mercilessly to gigantism. Lunatics crouching at every corner devouring ruffian hearts and livers. All matter of viscera cascading from mouths reminding one of feeding time at the nursery home.

Finally, the lights go out. I swig. Swagger turns to stagger. I catch a belly shot from some manner of furniture, and double over gasping momentarily. As soon as I recover from the unexpected sucker, I deluge myself with what must be one of the longest whiskey chugs in human history. I stand at the bedroom door trying to make out the frame in the dark. Slowly, I make my way beneath the covers. I sleep alone for the first time in years.