Tension and Resistance

Tension and Resistance
Mark Coleman

I can’t jump, cause I’m gyved. Tied down. Pilloried. Overwhelmed by directionless grief. Laid bare with skin taut, and eyes sunk from half a year of insect sleep. I try to move but I’m stuck on a piece of fly paper. The slightest stretch breaks my legs off. I watch the careless frolicking of others. Mandibles twitching, mustache dripping bile. The sunlight in my eyes carrying the daggers to my heart. Stabbing out the signs of life.
The fish hook of depression pierces every segment of my body. I stare at the images flickering out from the television. The idiot parade that composes the soundtrack to this sedentary life. A drop of sweat sitting in the end of the trough cleft of my nose. The skylights pouring vats of molten lead on my head. Burning through the cigarette paper, and dashing the ash across the floor.
The ashtray and highball glass prisms dancing at my side. I shut my eyes, and sink into such a nauseating nose dive that when I surface again; I’m dry heaving. The smoke choked air breathed in gasps. I’m on the brink of hyperventilation. Fingernails dug into the armchair. Every muscle tightening, face red and head throbbing. Every hair on my body like a dew covered blade of grass. My teeth clenched so hard that I’m afraid they’ll shatter.
Then as soon as it comes, it goes. All that remains is the moisture. I sit back, and my hands loosen with the splinters beneath the nails drawing a minutiae of blood. The television making indistinguishable sounds. Someone rolling around in a semi-epileptic fit on the floor with a contraption between their legs. Absurdity overriding any sexual innuendo. The labia rendered moot in the weight loss voodoo rite.
Pouring myself half a glass of scotch, I try to relax. But my episode, and its counter part on the screen, keeps my body tense. I down the scotch, and a bit of cumulus cloud briefly floats over my eyes. My mind swells, impregnated by a few unhealthy thoughts, then retreats and hides in the corner. Refusing to ruminate after the brief storm of suicide apparatus. Unwilling to process the contours of the anti-sex flooding into my living room.
My eyelids flutter, and I reach for the bottle. On auto-pilot now. Everything devoid of any deeper meaning than what’s immediately perceptible on the surface. The illusion of space on the television not even coming through. Just stickmen running around with slices cut out of their pie chart heads. Babbling what one would assume is infomercial speak despite the half day roman numeral that the clock hands rest on. The lock latch clicking away.
I turn my head towards a snapping sound. Staring into the loll tongued eyes of a mouse with its neck broke in the trap that I set a week ago. My mind snaps back into action, overflowing with sights of gibbets and collapsing floors. Fleshing out the room with track mark pores from which nooses dangle and accusing fingers point. The leathery tail hitting the floor in one last death throe. Protesting certainty and pre-determination.
With a sudden lurch I’m out of my chair, over the trap, and at the knife block. I remove the varying lengths and widths buried in its heart. Laying them across the cutting board. Lifting one, then another. Examining each with a pseudo jeweler’s eye. Running my index along the blades to the tip. I feel out the handles, until I find a fit. I take a few deep breaths. Inhaling through dilated nostrils, exhaling through slightly parted lips. I lift it up in the way that I imagine samurais do before committing hara-kiri.
I plunge it to the hilt in my chest. It takes more strength than I’ve exerted in my entire life to break through the sternum. Both hands slip from the bloodied wooden handle as I fall back against the lip of the sink. My knees give out beneath me, and I collapse onto the kitchen floor.
The puddle begins to form about my frame. Rivulets of red branching out between the tiles. Meeting resistance at the trap, it forms a sort of halo that sends out little diamonds of light that are the twinkling of stars here. The only sound that remains is a revving engine in the street. The cable just went out leaving noiseless static in its wake. An ocean of electric mote, blotting out the barren stolidity of a few unconcerned faces.

Xenophobia

Xenophobia
Mark Coleman

She raises and lowers the plunger. Unclogs the syringe over the laundry cluttered back seat of my car. The light goes out of her eyes, and the lids descend. A smile of content just lifting the extreme corners of her lips. I take a swig from my bottle, put it in reverse and then drive. Out across the desert. Lauded by tumble weeds and side winders. Sit out by the drive-in that is just a screen, and a few old stands sauntering up to within fifty feet of it.
Roll down the window, and motion a coyote closer. Hoping that he will except the invitation so I can wring his fucking neck. Wanted nothing more than to not be watched. Besides, there’s a show on. Not some humbug monster movie; it’s more Delmore Schwartz than Ray Harryhausen. I’m a wallflower at a party, just wanting to chain smoke in peace. Found in the back alone, but lost in the hustle and bustle of the crowd.
Someone always wants to drag me into their self indulgent shit. I figure that if I clench my eyes tight enough, maybe I can be left on the waterfront, just once. Let them eddy and tide beyond me. Me spinning soul-ward in a washer that you don’t have to check every other minute. Welcome to crash, but never forced to remain standing, or, worse yet, converse.
I fall down, and my head makes quite a dint in the wall. But I’m up, immediately, protesting against the assaults of the worrisome. Bee-lining for the bathroom. Creating a bandanna out of hard-to-tie toilet paper. Find some hair dye in the cabinet, and try to make it look like some horse shit, artistic, fashion statement. Then with blood running from under my makeshift bandage, try to relocate the bar.
She finds me with a margarita, and the promise of more liquor in her Volvo. I follow her out after downing the drink in T minus. Sit there being nursed on a pint of whiskey, and gagged on the smell of stale perfume. She’s not the crowd type either, so we head back to her place. I walk in expecting nothing. Imagine my surprise than when I’m greeted by a fully stocked bar. It’s like a homecoming party: Jager, Jim, Marie, and Night are the first to greet me. My three beloved brothers, and nurturing, but never smothering, sister. Mother coming over and giving me a suck on her tit.
I can see in her eyes that she needs love. But never having been shown it myself, I’m at a loss. I try to focus on the orgasm on her face, but it’s the best that I can do. Afterwards, I return to the bar, where we drink her offerings sweaty and naked, but unconnected. An unspoken sadness between us. Holding hands, knowing that the other’s as foreign as aboriginal customs.
She makes me feel her heart, but all I know is that her beat is a bit sex exhilarated, otherwise completely normal. She kisses me, but I turn my head so that it’s only on the cheek. Tell her that I have to leave. Makes me promise that I’ll call the number that she’s written on my palm. Dismisses me with a bottle of her best whiskey, and her need to see me again.
I locate my car, run into an old flame that’s wasting away beneath the needle. We hit her connection, and I wait anxiously for her return. I guess maybe the dealer wanted more than a sweaty fistful of short change. When, she comes out with a black and a mean fuck smell to her; I’m sure of it. I peak at her legs, and have to look away.
As we pull out, I find myself wishing there were still dressed to the fives drive-in shows worth necking to. And ratty ones worth hollering at, when you’re all coked out and drunk, with like minded cronies. There’s always that partition between yesterday and today. Grass and all that jazz. Automobiles that could kill you, but lookouts that could make you...believe. It or not, there are a few miracles up life’s sleeves. Even if they’re way, way up there.

The Hill

The Hill
Mark Coleman

My life’s as unsympathetic as a day spent under Filostrato’s reign. At the end of the day, I order myself to sing melancholic depression era songs on the street corner. Shaking and looking into the eyes passing by for something resembling a ducat. All I find is a penny, face up, on the curb. I wander out to the island- where no one thought to leave a dollar- and I lay in the road. Boccaccio knew the power that this thing could have on people.
She issues forth from Sicily with long legs and the resilience typical of Palermo. I eat pasta sans antipasto, every night, due to Fortune. I’m not the kind that The Decameron considers worthy of true love. I struggle like a thief, in a pocket not suited to me. Nothing beyond the foreseen response transpires:
“I love you.”
“Likewise.”
I flip a coin precociously, feeling very Wisecarver, while watching Old Kong climb. Gradually, the shooter becomes the shot. Coughing after an unprepared for swig of whiskey, I take a few more. Collapse is imminent. Once it hits the tongue, it doesn’t leave before the deluge.
Julie walks up, with fleas in her hair, and asks how I am. My response is along the lines of something like as good as to be expected. She smiles and asks if I want to fuck. To which I reply,
“Of course.”
“Drop ‘em. I’ll suck you off, first.” She runs her tongue up and down me, like a finger over a message delivering viol. She tickles the heart shaped monstrosity called the glans. Moistened and bucking, she takes me into her disease ridden cunt. There, I sow what I have no plans of reaping. Grows like a weed with my own proclivities. Budget restraints wouldn’t allow a cock cosy. Poverty can be very Catholic.
I pull out and start begging. Priapism forcing my fedora to shield my member. Took off quite a few caps in my day. Awful bloody mess. Swimming through geysers of pink ejaculate in search of a queen. I want to contemplate my reflection in a railway station more beautiful than the Quirinal. Main station offers nothing, but consensual rape.
So, I take what I can get on the bus to Boulder. Praying that Morselli will send the Count to me, advising a sojourn to Switzerland. Hunting in the Alps, before retreating to the Alder. She takes me in her, out by the frozen creek, before we pay a visit to my friend who’s drinking himself to death.
Opens the door, then does a stage into the living room table. We both pass on the food that he offers us with blood obscuring his vision. He suggests heading up to the hill. We hit up a frat party. Someone gives me his pot, when the police come, and I hide it in a vaseline jar next to the Playboys. The festivities resume after a handful of arrests. I retrieve the bag, and roll a joint, which I giddily smoke in the corner. She finds me, and I’m forced to share.

Mocking

Mocking
Mark Coleman

My friend lights up a Black Hawk, so I light up a Marlboro. I suppose that we’re trying to recapture our youth. If only I could relive my first kiss as sloppy and inexperienced, though it was. Still kind of beautiful. My hand in her hair. Her hand on my bald cheek. Our lips awkwardly locked, tongues dancing within our own mouths, wondering how uncouth their venturing out would be viewed by the other.
I inhale the smoke into my hurting lungs, and give a little cough. Nicotine greeting the liquor in my bloodstream. Little curtsy, little obeisance learned in preparatory school. She was so damn proper. Always standing on ceremony. I’m in my coonskin hat, hollering and raising Hell. She’s in a little pinafore, having tea with dolls.
Meet at the creek where I show her the craw-dads that I caught that afternoon. Tell her that she can play with my BB gun, but she doesn’t want to. So I content myself with shooting at the crows in the willows. Go wander around the dilapidated plantation house that’s supposedly haunted. Looking for signs of hoodoo, or ghastly faces peering out of the windows.
Don’t see a thing. She goes skipping through a field, picking forget-me-nots, which she carefully arranges in her basket. Places one willy-nilly in her bonnet. I just chew a bit of weed, and squintingly watch her prance about. Saunter out along the road, me with my craw-dads, her with her forget-me-nots. She tosses pedals along the way. A very picture of Hansel and Gretel.
Standing on her verandah. Munching her mother’s proffered corn bread. Her pops sitting in a rocking chair drinking mason jar whiskey. The moon bleeding all over everyone and everything. Pipes giving glimpses of the people’s faces who sometimes pop out of the house across the street. Music drifting along with the smoke.
A piano sometimes soft and jazzy accompanied by an air of melancholic silence, sometimes loud and boisterous accompanied by stomping feet and hooting. Must be throwing a party of some kind. All those women dressed for hooch drinking aren’t anything besides my girl dressed for tea drinking. I’d hold her hand, if it wasn’t for the watchful eyes behind us.
I bid her good night, and we make plans for the morrow. Slip into my house, then into bed, staring at the ceiling. Envision an old, wizened mockingbird mocking away. It’s song lulls me to sleep. The sweet slumber of young, if stillborn, love.

Muslims and Christians

Muslims and Christians
Mark Coleman

“Muslims nullified the Christian decree against sex before marriage. The Christians postulated that you would be divided amongst your partners in Heaven. The virgin aspect of the Muslim’s Heaven made this an ideal.” He says as he draws on his cigarette. The mouths of the group turn either up or down. Mine stays neutral. I take a swig from my bottle and walk out.
On the street, they’re all on their soap boxes too. Even if some of them do not realize it. Everyone thinking in their own way that they’re geniuses. Right, no matter what challenges are leveled at their insolence. They stand tall, even when they’re dope sick. I turn into an alley, and sit on a mattress forgotten beside the dumpster. Good as place as any to think and drink.
My mind turns over and over. One minute with a commercial jingle, the next with a profundity under-minded by very human uncertainty. I pass my eyes over the darkened windows of the tenement directly before me. A few shady characters exit the building, and walking to the end of the alley, enter the back entrance of a strip club. I take another swig, the warmth spreading through me as though my veins were blanketed in pocket warmers.
I stash my bottle behind the dumpster, and follow the boogies’ example. Inside, after paying the cover, I walk to the bar with a mouth full of breath mints. Order a scotch on the rocks and lean against the bar. The gyrations of the girls on stage remind one of the snake charmer’s cobra in some distant bazaar. The important spots are accentuated by search lights to which the moth-like patrons flutter. Waving coke residue bills in sweaty, greedy hands. An ocean of sun spot bald pates and silver spoons.
I finish my drink, and dance-strut to a chair at the stage on which a particularly nubile one is spidering. The deliciously precocious fiend’s lips are covered in that glistening balm that is designed to make a man think of but one thing. My cock bucks, hoping that it can force the zipper in a way that is contrary to its nature. I can almost hear the Baby Jane scream of the top heavy monstrosity. I could free it, but if I did I would run the risk of never allowing it this pleasurable setting again.
The girl crawls over to me, at the same time that a topless cocktail waitress approaches. Subconsciously, I reach up and grab her breast. At least, that’s what I think I do, because the next thing that I know I’m belting out of the alley on stilted, but adrenaline heavy, legs. I’m drenched in sweat, and out of breath as I enter my apartment. Collapsing on the bed, I realize that I forgot my bottle. Cursing myself for ever entering that damned place, I walk down to the neighborhood liquor store.
I figure I’ll retrieve my bottle after closing time, but after a few gin and tonics, it completely slips my mind. By the time that I remember the next morning, I imagine that the hobo, on whose bed I had sat, probably had found it. Besides, who knows when the bouncer pops out for a smoke. I resign myself to the loss, and contend myself with a shower of gin. It sticks on my throat, when I cough a bit up. The first shot can be the hardest, but its all smooth sailing from there.

American Rush

American Rush
Mark Coleman

I hurry to my room with a glass of ice and my handle. Down it with some cola, cause I’ve been vomiting blood, and I can’t handle straight whiskey yet. I quickly pour myself another. I don’t slow down until the shaking subsides, and I can manage to tilt the bottle without half of it ending up on the carpet. I sit and stare at the un-wall papered white through a disappearing glass of light brown.
The melting cubes question me, as I switch to my cheese ball Vegas shot glass. Plenty of people count down before sinking a shot; I count all the fucking shots I take. I try to find some imagined reason in the undulating lines to convince me to not put a gun in my mouth. The hinges creak blasphemy, and the wind’s a semen thirsty whore. They’re equally sickening.
I just walked to the liquor store on legs that felt like they were permanently attached to stilts. Real slow over the ice. I’ve split open my brow, and broken a lot of teeth lately. I’m half way through the booze that the greenbacks allotted to me, and I’m slurring at my own reflection in the bathroom mirror. The bastard looks like someone that I’d like to get in a fight with. You know when you see someone, and whimsically wish them nothing but harm. The asshole in you kicks in, and you’d love to see a stranger get pummeled by a revolving door. That’s how I feel.
Punch the mirror, and wrap my bleeding hand in toilet paper. Pieces of glass are standing proud in my knuckles. For a minute, I think that I’m an asshole. But than I realize that assholes get laid, far more often than me. All of a sudden, I feel strangulated by an overwhelming sense of guilt. Pulling the glass out of my knuckles, I try to put the mirror back together, but it’s a no go. I wrap my hand tighter, and resume my drinking.
The world swims around me. I stare at the fish tank, and I’m sure that by some witchcraft, I’ve been transported into the plastic pirate’s body. Maybe my hiccups are producing the bubbles that are emerging from his helmet. I do about ten double takes, before I realize that, maybe, I’m being slightly ridiculous.

Kentucky Deluxe

Kentucky Deluxe
Mark Coleman

 She invites me up. I have no cigarettes for afterwards, but she says that we can just stink up her place with week old refries. I wish that I could have afforded something other than a jug of Carlos Rossi. As it turns out, watching the sun rise makes up for this.
When it decides to show up, it turns her cheeks crimson and her hair gold. Just like that, I forget that she’s a whore. I take her hand in mine, and she gives it a “hello” squeeze.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a half crescent of lip. It’s more beautiful than watching every building come to life, and I tell it so with a kiss. She bears into me with all the weight in her eyes and I feel overwhelmed. But I don’t break away.
The irises are so green that the pupils start to recede. Vertigo takes charge as she lowers herself onto my lap. I can feel her sex pulsating, and respond accordingly. As her tongue moistens my beard, I grab her ass, and pull her closer.
I can’t tell which one of us is trembling. It continues unabated as she takes off her shirt, and I clumsily try to unhook her bra. She takes my hands in hers, and shows me how it’s done.
At this point I know that I’m supposed to do something, but I can’t remember what. Her eyes won’t let go of me. I’m looking into someone’s soul. She smiles, and says something that I can’t hear. I realize that I’m inside of her.
The thing bucks a few times, and it’s over. She informs me that it’s the longest she’s ever gone as I go soft between her thighs. I can’t find words for what I just experienced. For the first time in my life, I didn’t fuck. I made love. She lays down on top of me, and remains there in my embrace.
It must be going on an hour, before she gets up, and tells me that she has to go to work. I feel like crying. I ask her if she would like to have another glass of wine, first. She says that that would be nice.
We sit there, sipping our wine, and don’t speak. What just happened is bad for business. I open my mouth but the words won’t come. After that, I drive by her place a few times. The shadows in the window are like knives in my side.
I pick up more girls than I can handle, but afterwards I just sit on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands. If I hadn’t told her that I didn’t care what she did, and started to take her out every night, I wouldn’t be in this mess. I could be drunkenly stabbing at cunts. Not wanting a person beneath me.
I can’t sleep at night. I know that someone undeserving is peeling off her clothes. Perhaps, making a few sarcastic professions of love over fine wine. I win a few hundred on a scratch ticket, and dine alone in the best restaurant that I can think of. I order for two, and sit there waiting. I get stood up by a dream.
Afterwards, I buy another scratch ticket. Nothing. I ask what their cheapest pint of whiskey is, and polish it off in the alley. I go back to my house, and pretend that it’s a home. Then draw the shades, and get into a cold bed.