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.