Sleep Walk

Sleep Walk

Mark Coleman

  Somnophiliac with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Warhol's Sleep on simultaneous, continuous loops. A sort of cheval glass with an ocean of lust tilted between its frames. Out of that dark porthole comes barreling forth a lascivious madness. Eyes like pike congers boring into his in their unending, unendurable, sex crazed slumber.

  A pas seul around an apartment full of unwanted memories. A dreamer's dreams DOA, and the start of a misunderstood paraphilia. No cantharide was necessary as you slept with her as she slept. Her submission came in the form of a bumpering champagne flute.

  Call up the sex phone service and ask the woman on the other end to snore. She obliges but you imagine she rolls her eyes as she does so. Her lips must be vermilion, you think.  

  You imagine yourself poised over her alum tightened cunt. A sleep or cucumber mask on. Dozing off in a waiting room with a fashion magazine open to a photo of what most consider the feminine ideal.

  But you know better. It's all been photoshopped to Hell. The ideal is a Matryoshka doll living in its most Lilliputian hidden porcelain state. A crack or two down there where Kuahana blinks away his forty winks.

  A perennial sleep walk terminating at hot dog stands or strip clubs. A whiskey mac in front of you that you can't remember ordering. English faces all around the American sitting in confusion like a dumbfounded, angry, jet lagged IRA militant.

  From what you can understand you're in some pig 'n whistle off Cheyne Walk. The Shannon comes pouring into your veins as the Thames roars its way through a half aristocratic London. Monikered Lea you think of a woman you once knew who broke your heart, and promptly start a brawl.

  The blood on your face is warm and rejuvenating. You are now fully awake with the shards of someone's imperial pint at your feet.

  A puddle of piss on the floor at the Bristol. The sea lions greedily eat the shrimp tossed to them by little brats who begged and begged for cocktails with stiff, curling tails sticking out of them. Men in dresses walking up and down streets with their designer handbags made by small brown hands in sweat shops. The trolley cars pass them full of shocked, gawking mothers. Shielding their daughters' and sons' eyes.

  You look for Ferlinghetti at City Lights. He's not in. So you take a tour of Alcatraz instead. You think of Capone rotting away beneath a syphilitic mind. Yours has begun to rot away too. The women and girls swim back and forth with the peach fuzz or beardy bushes peaking out from their tight little asses. Perky tits and Crest whitened smiles. Like erotic dolphins too chipper for their own good.

  They unfasten their bikini tops in defiance of tan lines. Their bikini bottoms riding a bit low as though they were all New Jersey plumbers. They breath, eat, and sleep sex. 

  You can almost make them out through the spyglass down there on the nude beach that's supposed to be hidden by the cliffs that children fall off trying to catch a keyhole peep. They break their necks in the pursuit of knowledge as the buff darlings cavort with equally naked sailors on leave. After pension and free drinks they bat their eyelashes, and try their best to act virginal.