Heloise Rape

Heloise Rape

Mark Coleman

  She seems to think that silver fork bull is still in style, that I belong to the castrati caste with Abelard: incompetent, impotent, and incomplete. Of course, being the fool I am, I had fallen in love with her knowing full well she was of the Magdalene Laundry Order. Like the nut in a comfit, I sought the heart buried in her breast, heedless of her wanton past. (Striking out, proof-wise, the lovers once attendant upon that slippery mound of Venus. Which waned elastic in accommodation of the alpha serpents. Tightening its Mother-Nature-Documentary-Jaws against the puny axolotl.)

  Wanting nothing more than for her to be desirous of me in turn. Feel the abundance of perdition passion that was rending me asunder. (A foul, besmirched, and blood spattered Bosch revenant and gouging and prodding and tearing. Wearing my insides as headdresses and ear-hole streamers. Setting the table with my very soul, and craving in as though it was a Thanksgiving turkey.)

  A glistering pair of eyes that just take me in despite an appalling belly tacked onto my otherwise feeble form. Without a blench, knowing my worth was entombed in the fat that was mortifying my adolescent frame. Those hazel lozenges meeting me in specie to my own unwavering, unflinching glare. The curiosity innate in the tilt of a dog’s head, when you are preparing a meal, mermaiding down fathomless pupils.

  A wedding ring, in a pocket, in a jacinth-jeweled velvet box, with a band of storks repasting on snakes. The divestment (presentiment) of which seemed fairly premature. Just as a quiver on a pair of salmoned lips signals the man to a kiss, so the romantic recognition and interchangeable bat of the lashes in guinea candlelight signals a proposal.

   Affreight and bed her ticker in a crate full of straw (its constitution being such that the introduction of ice seems unnecessary); nailing it shut against organ-harvesting highwaymen, and its own possible hasty retreat and emigration. An emigration that would be sure to end in the beefed-up-and-out arms of a sultry subaltern. The harem drought dry without so much as the glistening of expelled seed on a thigh.

   Foreskin dispelled from boudoir makeup. Going back to cap baby cock. The Mother Superior hitting you across your snitch-scarred face with a yardstick, and whispering that you will be chained from the rafters and beaten. A girl bruised along her cheeks with black eyes and blood coming out of both of her mouths begging mercy. Saying she won’t tell and will pray for and bead you.

  A nail between the teeth at the ready. The cacophonous neighbor-beating-wife hammering in the stockyard. The abattoir scarlet vomited from the blistering bilge in gutsy cascade. A deluge of hoofed monstrosities square dancing, can-canning, charlestoning to an upside down phonograph dangling at the end of a hawser. Bubbling out the sister crank confession necessitated by water torture. The new plank to be walked in chorus to the shiver-me-timber good cop/bad cop shakedown.

  The stevedores contortioning in an attempt to ascertain the source of the slaughter. Knocking about the steamer-shrouded gangway with their far inferior cargo. Grimacing at the intrusion upon their relative workaday peace. Biding the knockoff and punch out. Divers decantered whiskeys, with the relaxed hues of a beige-to-bole color wheel, preening and priming at their twofold reflection while they await the off-duty rakehelling. Sailors, with their proudly presented passes, thinking they’ve earned the right to bed down with twelve-year-olds under their parents’ roofs.

  Offspring brought forth while on a tour of the Pacific Theater. Howling and bleating like Anneliese Michel. Shunning a suckle from a wet nurse as though dentata crept up from the humid, lichen-growing depths, twaining itself, and divan-reclining on the divine orbs. Licorice flavored charcoal drops before frenching an oft-written sweetheart back in some angel-less city. Ridding the breath of Munich’s rathskellers and Paris’ bordellos. The pussy stink, unwilling to be ignored, fulminates out the pores. Gunboats full of cunt-ammunition firing at the shore. The scent alone is unmistakably bald. Smells of a baby boomed infant.

  Drag it off to Union Hall to enlist against its will. Remind ‘em they were chamberers before they got one between the eyes. Stethoscope out and at the ready. Want to listen one more time. Recall all that child doctor-playing. The sunflower aroma of her hair. The stolen berry taste on her lips. The tender way in which she kissed your navel and the nape of your neck, and later put a flower in your lapel when you took a prettier version of her to the dance.

  Remembering. Wishing those days would come again. Waking up in cold sweats, and shooting morphine into collapsed veins. Coagulated night terrors browning the sheets. The pillow full of reminiscences that is painful to lay your head on. The sheep you count turning goat. Turning vicious faces to you. Overflowing with hatred.

Twisting spasmodically around damnation. Turning biped, and dragging you out of bed by your feet. The canopy parting to flame that your tears cannot extinguish. Screaming and blowing your whistle all the way down.

Diner Obssesion

Diner Obsession

Mark Coleman

  In the diner, she ran the blintze in and out of her mouth like a miniscule, tartaric dick. Momentarily forgot her Post, I guess. Her lips moist. A bit of spittle here and there. She acted as though it belonged to the largest Negro in Africa. In and out. In and out. Upon exiting, she curled her tongue around the tip. The illusion was a pretty dull one, seeing that the tip was uniform with the rest of the slender member. Yet the way she went at it certainly didn’t lack gusto. The lactic marrow would have to disembogue at some point. And I figured that some point would be sooner than later.

  She half-closed her eyes then closed them all the way. Gave a little moan. I squinted at her from the semi-blindness of alcohol overindulgence. Took a sip of lukewarm coffee that had not been heated by a top-off. The waiter also refrained from refilling our water or asking how the food was. Assuming that he already knew the answer from the ecstatic way my date was eating. Not that I had set out on a proper date with her, just picked her up in some dive on Broadway.

  Showed me Tantric sex books she had bought earlier when she was doing the rounds with her shopping. Compulsive buy that she was eager to put into practice. I didn’t have a condom on me, but decided that the situation could be dealt with when it was come to. She bent her head back, and tried to deepthroat, giving a sudden, shocked gag. Eyes grew large and watery. I imagine someone had done this to her recently. And I’d wager you two-to-one that it was before the week(end) was out.

  It was 3 am on a Sunday morning. I didn’t see myself going to church, and figured I’d see how far this would go. The eggs in front of me were starting to get cold. The bacon somehow still sizzling. The cigarette I had lit (without the paper fully catching) long dead. The coffee went from lukewarm to lukecold. Hers drowned in creamer, and fed an inordinate amount of sugar. The cook peered out the wicket then stuck his head back in. The waiter still didn’t come, so, by way of jest, I asked her how her food was. She gurgled an unintelligible reply to which I smiled with nothing but the corners of my mouth.

  I got the Tabasco then saw the Cholula. Generously dowsed my eggs then dashed a finger of pepper on them. Lifted a forkful to my mouth; my eyes still fixed upon what was happening across from me. In addition to already being cold, the eggs were undercooked, and the probably Mexican-Blend-bag-cheese was not fully melted. I tried a piece of bacon, and faired slightly better with this. It had a nice crunch to it, at least. I was washing down a mouthful with the glass of water, which at this point was nothing but half an inch of dissolved ice, when I felt her shoeless foot in my crotch. I looked down, and there were her adolescent-flower-patterned-socked-toes massaging me in dexterous, little squeezes alternated with small circular motions.

  I wondered if she intended to bring me to a climax in this manner. After all, she had no way of knowing the amount of sweat and number of thrusts it would take to achieve that aim. I’ve never been able to ejaculate in a timely manner, and so much the worse if I was wearing protection.

   Sometimes it works out, and a girl will do those nasty things she’d obstinately deny ever having even thought of, (not to mention actually have partaken in) otherwise. And there she is, in a cinch, making strange, forbidden tableaux with me on the sheets just to get the spurt out. The springs, realizing the uncouth encounter above their heads, giving diminutive chirps opposed to the full-on nest-of-mice squeaks they would let out on a more appropriate occasion.

    There are strippers out there in both the shady and the high class joints who will offer you a handjob at the end of a round of lap dances. The session drawing to a close as the music begins to fade, and you pay for yet another. Hoping against all hope that some twinkle of non-monetary cupidity, or at least real human compassion, would enter her eyes in lieu of the faux lust and expected sensuality. But alas you’re not even ships that pass in the night for she is a siren surrounded by wreckage, and you’re nothing but a lousy bit of flotsam washed up at her feet. She gives insincere thank-you’s that she make sound like declarations of love to the sharply dressed men who present her with only-a-botanist-could-identify-flowers and expensive baubles, night after night.

  So, in some remorseful fit of jealousy, you follow your itching feet out the exit with maybe a crust of pre-come in your shorts, and a bit of a bun tied on. Take out your pack and chain-smoke your way to a rooming house where the fluorescent tubes flicker in the hall, and the bulbs are all burned out in your room. Sinking into bed unable to sleep with the stages still lit up in your head, and the tassels still spinning on fresh, cameo nipples that look to be straight off of the harp strewn assembly line.

  Beating your head against the wall in half-dream, and repeating the more mellifluous of the stage names. Maybe a Melody or a Bettie that recalls a more famous Bettie sans bondage. Dressed in apricot colored and scented panties that those fortunate enough to be close to without a barrier of heavy precipitation could attest to. Say she’s straight out of a jojoba bath, perfumed and through with a time consuming toilet, and she hasn’t dressed beyond those cotton divinities to which you would willingly build a shrine, and pass the rest of your days in secluded worship.

  Maybe, she sits in front of a miniature looking glass that sits atop a dresser containing letters from old flames and postcards from a dead grandmother, and slowly brushes her hair with an azure-tinted silver hilted brush. An heirloom of sorts from a mother that works at a more conventional grind (or, maybe, still a housewife to a husband who has not aged well.) Then she purses her lips and applies a conservative amount of lavender lipstick followed by a smidgen of rouge. Maybe, she has on more than a pair of work-write-off-panties, though they can still be seen where a kimono swimming with Koi and lotus—or, and this seems the most romantic scenario, Oshidori—parts. Then again, maybe its just a simple cotton-to-silk dressing gown, and maybe, and far more likely, no such Horai nonsense takes place, but she finishes her toilet in front of some mindless soap that cliffhangs on the commercial breaks. All that babble-babble for the lonely. But you doubt she’s lonely.

  Sitting there with a dog-eared, but rich, boyfriend. Painting her nails the mellow pink that adorned them tonight with a cigarette perched in the crenel of a marble ashtray. Another heirloom? Eating cold pizza from a generic pizza box; the kind all the mom-and-pops seem to carry in Hollywood? What floor? How often does she take air if at all? Does her beau shell out a pittance more to have admirers-from-the-club-flowers in pots lynched from the balcony? Does he content/placate her with diamonds? How many facets? How often does she go to the movies? Does she get off on all that sappy tripe they force feed the fairer sex? Does she drink often? Does she have a problem with cocaine? Whose lockers are hers bordered by at the club? Do they ever have disputes? Does she apologetically decorate the interior with yellowing valentines?
  She sits there, and looks tired. She hasn’t masked the lines on either side of her mouth nor the dark circles under her eyes. She had an appointment with her chiropractor that she had to cancel because the owner called her in to cover a shift. Her back and neck ache from pole tricks. She doesn’t want to go in, but she needs the money. Some of the guys in there spend a lot. More than they can afford. Sometimes, their whole paycheck. Just for a duck and rub from an ass and a pair of tits.

Psych Ward

Psych Ward

Mark Coleman

  It’s been a week full of showers. The hospital tape still won’t come off my arms and chest. Soap. Razors. Ether. They told me to quit pulling out my IV’s. I promised not to then pulled them back out again. Fuming. Ripped off my wristband and threw it on the floor. Laid there watching a game between two teams of assholes. I could give a shit less about football, but the security guard had the only remote to three rooms, and apparently he was a fan. Nurses too.

  Kept buzzing for the menu. Poured over it. Had I decided yet? No. No. What about now? Just another bottle of water, please. Saw if I could spit a mouthful onto the heart monitor. Kicked off the covers. Tried to eat the nicotine patch. Eventually, settled on the Udon noodles that just fell off the plastic spoon.

  I don’t care if I end up digging through trash cans on 16^th Street for aluminum when I get out of here. All I want is a cigarette. How much longer will it be? Shouldn’t be too much longer before you’re transferred. Oh, yeah, and where might I be getting transferred to? The Hilton?

  Ambulance attendant tells me that he’s only seen two other people with that high of a BAC. Thinks he recognizes me. My address is on his route. Tells me he was in the psych ward once for showing up to the hospital drunk. Tells me that he got so drunk once that there was a three day backwash. That his friend’s a real dick when he’s hungover. Everybody hates him then.

  There’s gonna be a couple of bumps exiting. Okay. Fine. Throws an ECG pad from the front desk on the driver’s ass. Gives me an excuse to look at it, seeing that I’m a gentleman I hadn't done so yet. It’s tight and her pants fit nicely. Tried to jerk off in the shower to it later. But I’ve gotten to the point where I generally can’t get a hard-on without material, and it’s not as though I was donating sperm with a wide assortment of videos and mags at my disposal. They did give me a cheap pair of reading glasses later, though.

  Read over their little pamphlets and literature. Hope your stay is as brief and beneficial as possible. Alliteration’s nice. Go to group. Know your nurse’s name. The date and day. What your medication is, and when you take it. Show up at the station at your scheduled time. Cope. Eat right. Wipe your ass.

  Eat. Put Your Arm in a Cuff and Let Them Listen with a Stethoscope. Group. Group. Group. Eat. Group. Sit Alone in Your Room and Draw Stick Figures. Put Your Arm in a Cuff and Let Them Listen with a Stethoscope. Group. Eat. Group. Watch a Cartoon or Play Risk. Try to Sleep with the Snakes and the Demons Coming Out of The Walls.

  Someone snores during meditation. Someone sighs. Someone moans. Someone farts. Someone laughs at that. The man on the cassette tape sounds like he hates his job. A far too alert forty year old asks for the meditation guru’s name. Even after it’s spelled out to him three times he can’t get it down right in his notebook. The instructor says he’ll write it down for him later. A chubby eighteen year old is stupid enough to scribble everything said down. The class commends her for her diligence. One old-timer throws it out that maybe she’s writing a novel.

  Everyone’s walking around wrapped up in blankets. Everyone’s crying about something. Divorces. Parents. Addiction. One girl doesn’t cry. She says that she was chained to a radiator for four years and that her little sister is also her daughter, but she’ll always think of her as her little sister. Her parents are both in jail, and that’s why she doesn’t get visitors. She thinks of this place as home.

  We listen. A woman who probably has kids gets up and walks away with tears in her eyes. No one else cries even though they do when they share. I don’t cry either. An inquisitive girl who seems to have taken a liking to me waves when she leaves. I wave back. Her parents look nice. The nurse-in-training has kind eyes. It’s only her second day. She seems a little embarrassed when I pull up my gown so they can inspect my legs.

  They tell me that I have to keep my socks on at all times. But I see a girl walk by barefoot. A male staff member with a floral tattoo on his bicep tells a pitch-black fellow whose back after a week on the outside to stop talking about alcohol and guns. He ended up playing pool by himself, I think.

  A 20-something vet lets us know that a little girl’s head fell apart in his hands, and his four best friends exploded when they ran into an IED. His rifle jammed. The radiator slave said he was meant to be here. Some blowhard stretches and talks about his sponsor. No one talks about god or heaven.

  The guy whose room I got has shaky hands and is angry that I got his room. There’s a girl who doesn’t talk to anybody, and has a blanket with the words “sex” and “love” patterned on it. She’s probably been raped but doesn’t look loved. 

  They gave me a menu but I didn’t fill it out. I get eggs, hash browns, milk, and a piece of toast. The girl who waved as she left offered me the rest of her breakfast. She didn’t have an appetite. Maybe a side effect of her meds. She was cute with long lashes, average legs, and had gashes on her wrist that looked like maybe she actually tried.

  There’s another pretty little one in a turquoise gown who is on the verge of some sort of seizure. The vet asks her how she’s doing. She says that her nurse is a bitch. He says the lady in question does indeed look like a bitch. I wish I could do something for her. Even if that something’s just slipping a ring on her finger, and holding her every night for the rest of our lives. But there’s a policy about not touching. There’s a purple line you can’t cross. And the bathroom sink’s in the bedroom. I get a piece of nicotine gum every hour.

  

Twinkle, Twinkle

Twinkle, Twinkle

Mark Coleman

  The moment passed. She walked one way, and I walked the other. Towards the flashing 24. Took a seat. Ordered a drink. The lights dancing at the bottom of the glass. Schools of neon fish behind the bar. Grabbed a ponytail and pulled back a head. Question marks in the eyes. Exclamations gathering. A weak laugh. Put it back where I found it, and step out.

  The flame twisting away. Avoiding the tip. Toss it in the gutter, and head towards the end of the block. An alley looking enticing but unsure in the gaits it swallows. Go down it. Legs everywhere. Down the middle and up the sides. Race to the other end. Hunched over with the breath choking out. Get the pack back out, this one lights. Saunter. Headlights closing in. Staring straight at me. Malicious as Hell. Buy a newspaper. The words come twisting out, snapping and snarling.

  A little Classified boat, and a hot dog cart spilling mustard. Make my way to it. Screaming Armenian throwing relish. Children crying. Panic. Headlines deny solace. Almost lose my footing. Castors spinning out. Hands in pockets. Head further down. Radulae scaling the lampposts. Skinned cats hanging from balcony windows. Saucers shattered underneath. Rivulets of milk running like spilt seed down a catamite’s back.

  Try to find relief on a stranger’s shoulder. Fedora shadow creeping down the ridges to the toothy smile. Words splash out. Start planting their flags and proclaiming victory. Tears turning yellow and flowing back. Pouts sitting defiant. Swinging at a prick below the belt. Catch it on the nose. But fail to knock its block off. Grin caught up skirts decorating the missing person posters.

   Knife and fork fighting it out over a steak bleeding out on a lusterless platter. Staining the tablecloth. Silver napkin rings with cocks pushed through them. Needle play from a collared harlot with a sewing basket at her side. Blanket over her legs. Calico in her lap. Rocking chair scowling. Varnish bubbling. Pustules on whore’s tongues that are marionettes in Sunday cabarets for venomous looking tykes.

  Pot shots taken at pot bellies. Run. Gnarled hands sneaking their way between barred windows. Index finger curling. Fiery pinwheel lollipops. Tossed off the roller coaster. Drowning. Vats of fat kicked into the street. Liposuction machines sucking like cheap streetwalkers. Head bobbing up and down. Hair slithering on the thighs. Fangs at a vein. Confusion.

  Walking down the aisle with a flashlight flickering. Romantic gibber gabber on the screen. Projector making strange noises. Discovering the butter greased handjobs. Squinty ching chong blowjobs. Popcorn bucket tricks. Heads swaying. Mouths receiving. Cunts snaking fists. Twizzler straws up anus and urethra alike. Sugary secretions puddling. Dykes fellating top heavy dildos. Slapping dicks pocketed in cheeks. Trying to force two down a gullet. Twinks twinkling. Batting eyelashes.

  Usher with nightmares reflected in his inky pupils. Brained with a fire extinguisher, and dragged out the exit. Cut wide open. Stuffing ripped out, and used for on-set snow. Director bullhorning festive cheer. Jesus boning Magdalene. Wolves baring foam and too many teeth. Tethered up. Awaiting snuff stuff for the discerning viewer.

  Hollywood sign rotting away. Green dripping. Dreams stabbed repeatedly after a cramped trip in a trunk to the hills where they’ve been finding severed heads. Break out successes in the back rooms that reek of charred flesh. Fucked like a star but denied a spot in the constellation. Just dust off a moth. Beating against the lampshade. A bulb on a wire in an unfinished basement.

  Birds with their asses hanging out of their shorts making bulges in little boy’s pants. Birds in cages shocked. Dragged through electrified water. Birds in nests pecking through freshly laid eggs. Feathers floating down. Man on corner. Cigar in mouth. Puffing away. Shades and a wide brimmed hat. Birds with their beaks snipped off still stupidly trying to wing it to the top.

  

In the Cold

In the Cold

Mark Coleman

  The rain washes away what remains of the child’s smile, and all that’s left behind is the man. Bent over. Catching bits of the past in his pockets. Straightening up to meet the woman whose eyes seek to console, but whose heart beats in time to another.

  The kindred under the neon “Jesus Saves’.” Standing in bread lines. Palming crumbs for the long days ahead. Army coats soiled and muddied. Bedraggled strands of hair splitting vision in two. Beards sloppily slapped on. Tin cups shaking blind dimes together. The street musician rusting. The guitar begging. The chords lost.

  An ambulance’s lights going out as it turns the corner after cutting off a few cars. Leaning in a doorway. Locking lips. Hand running through her locks. The perfume you can taste.  Her gloss glittering your lips on contact. Walking past a park transformed and enchanted in the twilight. Swings like phantom limbs reaching back to schoolyard romances. Innocence and that chest pain that did not signal cardiac arrest.

  A bed disheveled, and losing corporeal form after prolonged bouts of lovemaking. Candied pillowcases with an auburn wisp or two left behind to compete in magnificence with the few rays of sunlight that manage to force their way through the blinds. A bottle on the dresser losing its volume. A book laying open to a page with a passage you had read to her. Underlined by passion.

  Booths in the back of restaurants where the waiters let you be. Flash bulbs at the scene when flashed forward, but here only mood lighting. Excruciatingly slow Mondays in the office with the calendar like a game of Tic-Tac-Toe. The X’s leading to the O’s. The dance floor like a beached whale. Jonah finding a flute to pass the three. Trying to paste back the shorn hair. More stubble on the cheek.

  On the corner with a tinny cricket in the branch drooped over the fence. The stop sign at the end of the road far too red. Dripping on the sidewalk. Applying pressure to the wound. Traffic lights too quick to change. Puddles too quick to reflect. A boot coming down, and wiping away the wearied face with the same eyes as you. Heavy hearted. Hands limped and dwarfing.

  Loneliness turning to a sob in the throat. Trouts thrown back, but unable to find the river. The sundress clinging and changing colors. Whimsical kaleidoscoping. Whispering in one another’s ears. Biting the lobes occasionally. An earring taken between the teeth which playfully tug. Tip of the tongue sliding along the loop. Scent of Chanel and her sex. The throbbing that synchronizes.

  Lying there, staring at the ceiling, fancying that you can see the sky beyond. Toes curled up under the covers. Resting hand in hand. Pining for someone in your arms. A waltz with delirium and the sister of a friend. Trembling lips that lack the courage to consummate. Wanting nothing more than to kiss her.

   Her absence knifing at your heart. Ailing intermissions. Interrupted. Fracturing out. Broken ashtrays. Mirrors hung as crooked on the walls as your dreams on the crescent up there among the stars.

  Kids out hopscotching beneath parental umbrellas. Marbles and Hula-hoops. Saturn with its rings grown wider and further apart. A doorbell forgetting its function. The inhabitants unaware that someone stands in the shelter of the porch. The boards all warped. Bowlegged and unwanted. Tie with a sloppy knot. Or maybe just a clip-on. Pants with a wiped-out crease. Nothing much to look at. The yawn excusing the arm around the shoulders. Mindful of the popcorn bucket.

 Exhaustion in the back seat. Fogged windows. Perspiration clinging to the brow. Parked up the hill with the city spread out below. Lit up like a Christmas tree. The advent chocolates half melted in the moonlight.  The weeping willows hiding feral cats, and pianos with missing teeth. The heat waves streaking desert asphault in the morning. Compulsive daytrip. Odds seeming good.

  Socials forcing adolescent backs up against the wall. Spiked punch bowls bleeding into soup kitchens. Courageous girls grabbing a boy here and there. Whores in the homeless bar drinking away their fathers. Winos in the library waiting for the storm to pass. But the clouds keep gathering. Piling on top of one another. A man taking a deep breath as his foot leaves the curb. The bus swerving, but not missing.