Literary Whore

Literary Whore

Mark Coleman

  There’s nothing but full stops in the book you’re reading. Blackout, coke-fueled stop, stop, stops. Alcoholic MVP brain dead from lack of intellectual stimulation. You’re having some sort of panic attack. Spasms wrack your body. Can’t open the bathroom door. Can’t get off your boots. You know you need to relax. Sitting there flinching. Disappointment and tortured thinking. Overly masochistic self-depreciation.

   You need a drink, and some form of companionship. Wishing that you had gone to school for journalism. Sickened by your observational death. A girl in the lobby cowered by a suitcase. Ask if she needs help then immediately regret it. There is a great sadness in her eyes. A sadness that seems tired of itself.

  Meet a few stragglers from a wedding after party. A couple pour out a little less than half a can of beer from their two combined tipples for you. Smoke six cigarettes and some of their pot. They take a picture with you. A shit bored disposable camera. Meet the girls. The wedding crasher is sleeping in their bed. Straight from prison.

  Picking up road kill missed by a chain gang. The wind kicks up, and the lighter refuses its light. If it was a Pez dispenser, how much easier it would be to get what you need. Rub blow residue from a pocket mirror on your gums.

   The back of it shuns its Chinese character. The original owner was a sweetheart. You were on the verge of proposal when the romantic fissure took place. She’s gone now, and it’s all she left. Excepting a hole in your chest, and the tingle of a year and a half long embrace. The ghost of her body’s warmth haunts you.

  Madras eyes underlined by the violet half moons of sleeplessness. The full moon in the sky has its own hand in their creation. The week is dissolving in the rhinestone of remembrance. The ice keeps melting, and so you keep beast of burdening it to the ice machine down the hall. The room’s nice but no one visits you. Strangers treat you both as an old friend and a pariah.

  You lust after girls a decade younger than you. You continually sleep alone. If only a Salinger elevator operator would lend his hand. A steady intake of booze to keep the fire inside of you. Your fate is chilled. Depression eats away the segments of your spine. Loneliness refuses to be ignored. It wants your life. You contemplate handing it over.

  It’s always been rough going. You’ve been holed up in your room. A one nightstand might keep your heart from falling apart. You desire something less alienating but this absence of any form of tenderness is going to land you in the madhouse.

  Your entire shocked being needs a boost. The bump rushes up the quarter of straw. It helps. You take out your soul and look at it. It’s been making love to your misery. They make a cute couple but you wish they’d break up.

  The whore with the missing sock who will blow you but not kiss you. Saying that you don’t know where her mouth has been. Your longing doesn’t care but she turns her head away. Fell for you, and looked for you in the bars. The bartenders would inform you of her constant presence. Just narrowly missed her again.
  Maybe she just wanted to keep the promise of a birthday present in line with her trade. There doesn’t seem to be much help for people like you and her. Even in one another’s arms there would still be that unrelenting gulf. All the lights in the picture house have gone out. You didn’t like what they were showing anyway.