Contrition

Contrition

Mark Coleman

  Drinking rum with the captain, and I get to thinking of you. The high esteem that you held me in. Wanting so badly for me to let you in. Surprise myself. Hold it together with just the bottle of wine we shared at the little bistro that you loved so much. You thought that I was shaking because I was nervous. So many years knowing each other, and soon that knowledge would extend to the bedroom.   

  That manner of thinking was soon dispelled. I live in squalor with a well stocked liquor cabinet. A bit of coke residue on a mirrored table top that I'd one day smash in a drunken rage. Boxing my own ears, and crashing face first into a counter top.

  My hands are too slippery for this goddamn leather covered steering wheel. It's Denver and my hands aren't the only slippery thing. I make the machine obey only because you are in the passenger seat. You take my head in your hands after taking off my shades so I can't see. Giving that age old excuse that you want to see my eyes. After they adjust, I can just make out a bit of azure.

  Of course, I already knew you were beautiful. We grew up together. I thought one day that we'd grow old together. Night after night, passing out on you rather than fucking you. Never making love to you in a way that everyone knows you deserve. The envious pilfer scheming in the wings and arcades.

  I couldn't stand it when you slept on my arm. Could never get any sleep of my own simply because you were by my side. The warmth of your body commixing with the booze warmth on my breath. You couldn't stand it when I came home blotto waving my martyred hands around. Screaming or sussurrating depending on how many cigarettes I'd smoked that particular night.

  Saying things that I'd try to take back. Without success, of course. I might as well have pushed you into a radiator every time that I came home from the dive, hot and angry. Locking myself in my room. Alone with a bad acid trip. You beat on the door. I didn't answer. Just yelled half decipherable obscene gibberish at a phantom ship full of all my dead dreams. You thought that I was blaming you. I never corrected you. I didn't have the heart to rob you of your own nightmare. Though, I tried to comfort you when you woke up telling me that you dreamt of my funeral or just that I was dead on the curbside so many times when no shooting stars fell outside the window for you to wish upon.

  Maybe, we were too young. I don't know. All I know is that I can almost see you out there on the rooster tail from the tuna tower. An abboritional memory in the mind of a ghost or perhaps more appropriately a poltergeist. Throwing or dropping whatever I damn well please. Haunting whole households of happy families. A snake charmer conjuring the asp that killed Cleopatra out of his carefully woven basket. Shrunken heads on coat hangers grinning out at horrified spectators.

  The grade school teachers wouldn't let us use pens until we perfected our currsive. I have a pen now but can't find it so this chicken scrawl, chicken shit missive is in a lead-less, number 2 pencil that I keep having to sharpen. Writing feverishly beneath the light of a hurricane lamp in my cabin. The moon's beneath a cloud denying the late night sledding of children on a snow day.

  The lines are never perfect, now. They've become nations at war. Clashing over the territorial rights to a holy sight. Neither side is in the right. There was never any ascension there. The only things I've ever seen rise are balloons, Chinese lanterns, and bloodthirsty dictators.

  My heart's been in a meat grinder too long to ever be able to make sense of anything. So many years playing Cain to your Abel. Now the sex is never any good. I pick up whores sometimes when I'm away from my wife too long. I don't understand this seperation anxiety. I don't even like the woman that much.

 A splinter in my wrist, and a congealing trickle of blood down my face. A cantankerous longing twenty thousand leagues within me. You can't plumb that deep. Wondering whose lips yours are locked with as she goes down on me. Wishing that I could play the harmonica. Something doeful with all my soul in it that people would pay to hear. Just to have their eyes fill with tears. A flavored gas station dispenser condom on. Filling it up with ejaculate that hurts to come. 

    I'm aft looking back. Sometimes, forward only to see your face on the figurehead. This is a maiden voyage. I was the first to ever charter such a magnificent boat. They tell me as far as out here the people still sometimes suffer. The little childrens' wooden toy horses still break and they wail over the loss of their first possession. The women still leave their husbands for men with better muscle tone. 

    This could have been something else, altogether. It could have been more than reminiscences and driftwood. It is christened in the blood of fish that didn't want to die. The blood of you and me. Take my sea bag full of worthless shit. I never want to come here again. There are scales and entrails all over. I throw up into the sea from the stench and the gentleless rocking of the sea. I'd rather ride the rails to an antipode. 

  The crew laughs and hazes me calling what's half splattered on the bilge fish food in Kanaka. For some reason, I respond with a Mahalo and retire belowdecks with a clusterheadache, and a panic attack in the works. 

 Although this is my stop, I can't pull the cord because I'm twitching with nerves. Telling myself that everything will be alright after a few drinks. I have a chance to test this theory, albeit on a microscopic scale, in an enroute Port-A-Potty. I throw up on the shit stained floor. I send you this communique as I watch the vomit stain slowly warp the wood.

  On the boots that I still direct kicks with at the wall of bars where the keeps refuse me service. Looking out the portholes for a sign of Pele with the help of a landlubbing native in a lighthouse. Some of the ships we pass have rusted engine rooms. Steve Mcqueen's abandoned all of them to the "slopeheads." They run like mad dingos asking to be shoot with dusky rats waving their tails from their scarlet maws. I take a handful of Dramamine and just watch to see how it will all play out.