My City

 

My City
Mark Coleman
 

  Liquor bloat takes you over. Some toothpick of a space boffin comes and steals all your women. Throws them out the bedroom window to the curb where the getaway car sits idling. You watch as they go down. They're swallowed as they once swallowed you. The seats and steering wheel are surely ripped. Tire marks on the grass.
  You'll miss them, sure, but a part of you is glad to see them gone. They all brought trouble. They never stick around when it starts to get tough or you start to need them as much as they need you on some level. Whether they'd ever admit it or not. The Gutenberg Bible bleats and bleeds in an anorak whose pockets are full of fieldstones. The best thing about the book of poetry in your lap is the typeface. The author is a hack of the highest order.
  Hard eyes birth a mercurial smile as he retreats to the stall with a paper towel fifi. The drawn out hand washing to ascertain exactly what this strange dark-colored creature is up to. After he tears six pieces from the dispenser, moistens them under the sink, and adds a few squirts of soap, you're pretty sure you know.
  There's no suggestion of guilt. It's not entirely natural to come into something so rough. You think, "Hell, it's only a matter of weeks before he goes Vaseline and Brilo pad." You search your memory for your own strange masturbational aids and come up short. All you can recall is rubber molds of porn stars' pussies and lips connected to tubular sperm receptacles that the packages claim are dishwasher safe.
  You go back to the bathroom and blow your nose into a paper towel. Someone's shitting next to the  Indian now. He's sitting in the wheelchair bound, crutch hobbling cubicle. It is indeed rough. You can't imagine pounding your cock into something like this, no matter how well lubricated. It feels like your cheeks and chin when you haven't shaved in a few days. It's the sort of improvisation that ends up bloodied. I know. I've used cheap motel wash clothes. The small scabs tend linger under the glans.
  As usual, you forget to zip your fly between the urinal and the door. Today, you're going bare back, and almost wish the cougar sharing the space with you would have looked up before you noticed your faux pas. She's a bit weathered with liver spots, sure, but she's also that elusive breed: The Redhead. I saw five of them on the way here today. One had the added benefit of being some sort of Cuban-heeled Asian. Hair down to the middle of their backs. Gorgeous.
  You've wanted to bed one down since middle school when you used to stare at the fiery ponytail of the girl in the desk in front of you. Outside, you turn the post to find the key-shaped hole you're supposed to deposit your cigarette in. Wishing that it resembled that floraled pout that greets you when you nudge aside a pair of lace panties. The derriere lifted from the cold kitchen floor. The back arched. The desire for the spelunking tongue to explore that burning bush.
  Sitting at the bus stop, you watch the cars run over the wreckage in the street. The sparkplug is directly in front of you. They keep hitting the right headlight. It splitters over and over. You wonder if a shard will come your way. You stare at the revolting sculptures in your city that some fucking idiot should loose his job for okaying. Created no doubt by men with large, unwieldy hands.
  You imagine that they have small heads with multi-colored butterflies fluttering in them. They must write platitudes on their dollar bills and stick them in vending machines hoping that something magical will come out. The public is outraged when their art is vandalized. They say it's part of the city. It's nothing but shit made by shit for shit.
  Here are some tips for the aspiring artist: work in black and white, if you must work in color use yellow sparingly, avoid clichéd images, the same with text, if the images don't speak for themselves they may not be images at all, if you imitate your professors or peers or take their criticism seriously you will never amount to anything. If you have to go to art school to do anything but use the toilet and kill time, you are done. If you like Ansel Adams, you are done. If you approach art with the heart and eyes of a dilettante, you are done.
  Never go to a  PTA meeting unless moms are your thing, and then you're better off meeting them elsewhere. On the bus, they sometimes dress like their daughters. Or they have muffin tops offset by wide-brimmed straw hats. The thin ones in tight fitting jeans, white shirts with thick blue stripes, and librarian glasses are the most beautiful. They have slightly shriveled necks, and hands with large veins. They speak in complete sentences and read mystery novels.
  Learn to love cute girls in wheelchairs. The one I always see coming down the ramp has a piercing and hazel eyes. I think she's keen on a bearded, beanied boy who can spend half an hour rat
gnawing on an apple core then another half an hour working on a granola bar. He carries a slim volume called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff in his backpack. The lid on his water bottle snaps loudly back into place.
  The blonde next to you has buck teeth, and holds her bag closely to her chest. She is plagued by self-loathing by way of comparison. At the end of the light rail is a brunette with her hair tied up. She has pre-ripped holes running down her pre-faded jeans, and is clutching a scarf. She stands askance with her hand on the rail. When she finally sits down, three stops along, she reveals her ass crack to you.
  Deep in thought staring at a Mexican girl's hair in front of you. You can almost smell it. You're tempted to reach out, and run your fingers through it. A few strands stand loose from the otherwise immaculate flow. When they get on it's their tasseled boots and legs. Some have cherubic faces. You know they're too young for you but you'd still cover those faces in kisses.
  You hear someone in the food bank line talking about a whore, and how he's going to gag her and brick down her throat. You think of the tears that will run down her face as he does so. Her swallowing all those angry, blue ball ejaculations. Perhaps, accompanied by the nickel taste of blood. Bubbles at the bottom of her nostrils.
  You wonder if anyone's ever held an umbrella over her head when it was raining. Or held a door open for her. How long has she sold herself? The joiners don't join the union but they do join the circus. John Barleycorn runs around doling out pittances of relief. Old men with crackly, pitted faces sigh as this Saint Nick warms them with his embrace.
  Kasperl (not the Hohnsteiner variety) and his old buddy Punch hold blackjacks to beat down the dreams of the poor and the downtrodden. They round up the street sleepers on Christmas day, and depending on their state of mind and/or level of intoxication throw them in the drunk tank, general population, or a holding cell. Sometimes, they just see how far they can throw themselves. It's usually into a lake that's not too deep. Occasionally, it's just in front of a bus, they may or may not have taken before.
  I chug a bottle of Nyquil to kill the inspiration because all I want to do is read a book. My vision will start to blur and I'll end up spending the night watching wretched television shows instead. I'll think about what I've read recently on the way to an interview. I have no idea where the office building is. But I'd like to sleep in a room, eat, drink, smoke. It's simple for some. Hard for others. For you and me the jukebox is never playing.

 

Curlicues

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Rumblings

 Rumblings

Mark Coleman

 

  Find a lipstick smeared refry in a parking lot, and imagine that you're kissing the woman who discarded it. Lonely without a red cent in your filth caked pocket. Staring at the asses of the girls who pass, regardless of whether or not they're with their man. Sleeping in the rain. A torrential slumber. On church doorsteps, corrugated coffee shop chairs, and cement inclines covered in fast food paper cups and wrappers.

  Waking up with bus bench, trash can moire prints woven into your aching back. Everyone is talking too loud, especially the niggers, who all think they're pimps and thugs. They slurp the soup with  unidentifiable chunks of carrion in it. Eat their feed as though it was served in troughs. Everything falls apart or drowns in the drool of an angry male nurse.
  It's more unnerving than the incessant, parable singing during a Catholic communion. Standing with one minute breaks to sit in the hard pews with people better dressed than you after walking day in and day out. Consecrating faith after the priest gives the okay with gilded bibles and solid gold crosses. Peeping a married woman through a bloodshot squint. She's been throwing glancing at you. You wouldn't mind at all.

  An Ethiopian in a skull cap crumples up grocery bags with a few bloodied belongings in them. Pants with the knees ripped out. Shirt unbuttoned to show the too white curls tufted on the starless night that is his skin. Hair bedraggled, umbrella folded, eyes jaundice yellow, nose strangely aquiline.

  The noise of the human race makes you want to put a gun in your mouth. You have no plugs so you stuff dampened wads of shit paper in your ears. You still can't block out the mad, living cacophony. You think about throwing yourself in front of a bus. Nothing comes of anything. Your half baked plans to do yourself in are absorbed into that noise.

  Spent so much time in the pursuit of knowledge just to have it wiped out by television in the sober house. Hocking yourself to the bone. The little clicks on the man's typewriter start to drive you insane. You can count on one every two seconds. People won't stay in their fucking rooms. Don't know how to not slam their doors.

  She laughs too loud as she checks in the guests. The cackle makes gooseflesh. The maids push their little carts back and forth over the marble floor. The phone keeps ringing. No one thinks to answer it. You feel like some legless creeper just crawled over your grave.

  Picnicing in the cemetery with the only woman you ever loved in the ground beneath you. Drinking Peppermint Schnapps with an MIT graduate going streetwise. Make out with a whore who's missing her son.
   Full of rum and snipe smoke. Warm and cold at the same time. The wind goes through you. You try to get to the park early enough to reserve a leeward space. You have neither coat nor blanket. Just a short sleeve shirt you try to take refuge in. 

  Sit and watch the fountain that spits as much as the tubercular Mexican hobos. You don't have a TB card. You don't win the lottery. The clothes room isn't open yet. A spade coughs in your face and your coffee. An old racist cracker does the same thing as you turn the corner.

  You've only changed your clothes once in a week. The ball of manager rolls from office to counter and back again. Rattles dimes and nickels. Counts bills. You sign up for day labor then go outside and pass out on the sidewalk with the lightning splitting the sky in half. Further off towards the disgusting skyscrapers it quarters.
  Call an ambulance on yourself in detox. They won't do anything until you're blowing zeros. They throw you in a jail cell to scream it out. Eat the pharmaceutical diamonds they give you in Dixie cups dancing with flowers. You'd never cheek something so important to your well being. Not like when you were on a hold in the mental hospital. Try to get sleeping pills with whiskey stealing the course from your blood.
  Kid won't stop jacking barbeque covers in lieu of the real thing. Gets hit with brass knuckles in the back of the head. Takes off his hat and starts gushing. Tries to make a bandanna out of a pair of faded jeans. Cracks a few jokes then goes and lies on the heat grate with a stolen bottle.
  Your backpack goes missing when you're out. Sleeping in pot plumes and vodka fog. Drinking Skoal when you're released and sharing cigs with a 23 year old boy and a 51 year old woman at a bus stop. Both of whom lost their children because a circle jerk judge decided they were unfit parents. A lady gets set on fire by the river. You can't find a burned patch of grass down there.
  Hole up for a few hours until you're 86'ed. Everyone is out of cigarettes. Everyone has cigarettes except for you. You panhandle twenty one cents and buy a tootsie roll. The clerk gives you a slice of pepperoni pizza on the house. You grease up the application you're filling out. The pen keeps sliding out of your slippery mitt. You keep missing the homeless lunch truck at the capitol. You walk fast but things keep passing you by. You puke up a shelter meal in the bushes. The cactus grows crooked. Its spikes branch into your brain.
  The doorman demands a dollar for a smoke. You go around the corner where they won't even accept your poor, proffered payment. Starvation is in the near future for everyone without a picture I.D. Hunger is a thing only the truly privileged know. The pangs make fools out of anyone who lets them in. Your writing distends.
 The weeping willow refuses to weep for you. You are rewarded for your self medicated depression with month long trips to rehab. You eat a meal under Christ's sagging body. You turn more into a nihilist. A toothless vet with Nam tours spinning sidewise in his mind is convinced the city is going to break out in war between the haves and the have-nots. A hooker blows you in a Porta Potty with the steam still rising from the shit in its bowels.
  The stripper thinks you're a gentleman during a touch, all nude lap dance. She has you massage her breasts, twist her nipples, grab her ass. Her auburn hair tickles your neck. Your paunch of stomach growls. Your dick hardly hardens. Human forms float out of the mist. Fat men in wheelchairs sneer at you with all their corpulence.
  The clouds overrun the heavens like the black cockroaches that you heard someone refer to as poor man's bubble wrap. They blot out every star in the sky. They hate their shine. Most people that know you know that you hate most people. The bars are the only time that you can stand them.
  Termites eat away the sun. The exterminator never comes. The piranhas go crazy. You wait all day for the cable guy, watching the snow on the set as the snow outside takes the lives of young bums. They were already dying. You're dying. Inside of you there are earthquakes along unsightly fault lines. You take yourself into the world and try not to look the part. You put on your best clothes and shop around for part-time work.
  You spend whole nights looking at the menus in restaurant windows. A mob catches up with you and holds you to the ground. Their heels grind into your skull. Your arms and legs are pinned down. No one answers the telephone. It just rings and rings. Even the voicemail shuns you.
  You crouch on your heels with it held between your head and shoulder. Lie in bed with it and stare at the ceiling. The cradle is too far to reach. There is never anybody there. There is no one outside. No one in here with you as much as you wish and pray for it.
  There's not a single neon orange crumb in the chip bag. The slice of hamburger is mildewing. The mustard on the hot dog is turning pus. Still no one answers the phone. You just want to hear her voice. Hear an utterance of some form of reassurance. Be told that all is not in vain. That you still have it. Whatever "it" might be.
  You're afraid you've gone Hemingway, and lost your raison d'etre. That it's all disappearing far too quickly like hair from a prematurely balding teenager's head. The girls already shun him. He can't even pick up his friends' scraps. He wanders the streets, digging through trashcans, hoping to find a doggy bag.
  They walk by him as though they've been raised on platforms with their high heels echoing along the street and down the alleys. Heads held high. Eyes somewhere/anywhere other than on his face. A whole day's shopping in crook of arm and hand. Find half of a shooter. Down it and feel absolutely nothing. The gulf inside of you just yawns that much wider. There are worse things than going hungry.