Femme Fatale

Femme Fatale

Mark Coleman

  We began to have sex. You pulled away. Not so much physically, but in an emotional way that manifested itself in your body. A physiological deprecation. It started in your eyes. A whirlpool dropping amphibian cool down your belly. 

   Your breasts turned into winter sand castles. Sculpted mud. Inside an unheated kiln, I moved. Just the tiny thrusts of an uncertain, certainly unwanted lover.

  I was determined to come if just to spite you. After Burt Bacharach, this is how you treat me? I gave you all the C.S. Lewis an atheist knows.

  The spirit you profess aloof and nonchalant as a nun in habit. Lips chapped to desiccation. Cigarette ash to the filter. Nonexistent drags. Lungs blackened by unspoken nothings. 

  The dying laurels of love make a pitiful bed. I rest my head but no one sleeps beside me. The street and field. Cold and empty. Rabbits in burrow. Cars all parked or tangled around lampposts. Both outside and inside the night is christened in virginal blood. You can’t dam the flow with your tourniquet.

  Decked this limited world of mine with all the flowers that meant something to you. A fistful of daisies. Parched sunflowers that once lit up your eyes and turned up the corners of your mouth. Such a simple flower able to add to your radiance. That natural glow that you carried through germanic countries so many years ago. Red roses with sneaky little thorns that I’d carefully snip off so you wouldn’t prick yourself. Done in private, of course, because it seemed such a feminine task. 

  Bunches of what were surely weeds wrapped up in little bows. You’d politely and carefully sniff them in the same way a sommelier would work over a sip of wine. Pensive in your consideration. The irony of a forget-me-not. Jaundiced about the pupil. I trust the lack of reflection in yours. 

  The flowers that I would adorn your head with. A May Queen half drowned in the bilious self hatred of a remorseless child. You dance. I fall behind the hedges. Not really bashful. Just unwilling and unforgiving.

  The pirouette of a music box ballerina on an unborn daughter’s grave. The tombstone looking down in indifference. Just ticking off the time in a cage of likemindedness. The stars have all gone. I embrace my own irrelevance. I will go too. Down the hangmen’s drop that no well meaning outlaw ever returned from. 

  Another vanishing act will not kill me. It may land me in a hospital bed with insolent nurses sticking I.V’s in my hand. The veins all blown elsewhere. Except where they go blue and chase each other across my chest. Pigs in wallow. Snouts abounding. 

   I tried to sail but I always confused fore with aft. The sirens belching out their once appealing tunes. They are not melodious, anymore. Glued to the rocks like fat seals. A cacophonous battle between alphorn and rainstick in throat. It comes out somewhere between a gurgle and a growl.

  You became synonymous with me. I wish it was mutual. I dreamed, last night, that the crabs were carrying all the pebbles on the beach away. They seemed so unconcerned with what it meant. Despite their hideous side-walking, they did not seem malevolent.

  Footstalks twisting caduceus. Eyes vomited upon the tile. Down the murder-hole at the waxworks. Dripping fresh. Growing. Expanding. Preparing to devour every deed done in private. Wagging tongues and beaten women.

  The faithfully still gone marionette. Playing Punch and Judy in the gallery. Cutting with surgical precision, they come down all claws and teeth. Screaming in clench. The wicket closing off the breakfast warmth. Slow splinters in pubic curls.

  Smashed together in a bed like a press. The screws spinning out. Unaided. Into the occipital bulge and temple. Making foul noise. Blood along the contours. Down nape of neck. Cysts in the socket. Knuckles branded in rage. Up and down your face.

  Crawling along the floor with a broken nose. I take a hit then aim the bottle at the knot of hair growing like an unruly tumor out the back of your head. Bring it down. Shards across the grain. In your palms and knees as you dog it to the kitchen. Stilettos in scramble. Step on a heel until it snaps. Then onto the other.

  You look more like a whore than you ever have. The mascara running with your tears as I kick you in your ribs and spit in your face. I drag you back a good five feet. Belt you. And watch you crawl again. A bachelor at the other end of the stage waves a dollar. You’ll just have to make your way across this broken glass and he’ll be yours to sell your body to for the rest of your life. The little harlot in your heart will finally be able come out and sing.

  You just stand there with a glass of water. Stare at your freshly manicured nails. A bored femme fatale behind the white rimmed shades. A bullet for every year. Another in the chamber for tonight. Wind at the curtains as I move and you play dead. It was always like this. I was a fool to think it was ever anything more.

  Always these pity fucks better suited to alleys. Hand jobs at the Drive-in. Footsy at Thanksgiving dinner. Surreptitious powder room blowjobs. Stolen quickies in filthy gas station bathrooms. The aging condom dispenser hanging on the wall. Unused. Not for lack of change. But the desire to roll the dice. Chance fate with an unplanned pregnancy and an assumed commitment to monogamy.

The Ginger Werewolf

The Ginger Werewolf

Mark Coleman

  Every year comes another eccentricity thinking it's a New Year's resolution. Really it has more in common with a Christmas present. The kind of small item thrown in a large box as a means of throwing off the guesswork of children. Even though, of course, the rattle is telling.

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  Stopped in your tracks by the growl of an angry dog. The dripping jowls. The bristling hair. Bestial fury in her eyes.

  You can't understand what you've done wrong. What cause there is for offense. It seems a minute ago you were elevated in her estimate. Now, it's as though the minute hand has swirled back and you're reliving a moment in an alternate reality. 

  One in which there is no room to err in the slightest. The tiniest fluctuation of voice, at this junction, could come back at you a hundred fold. So, you step back a pace in your mind to chew on the druthers.

  How to darn a rip in the cloth of time? A rip that bleeds, no less. You look into her eyes for a clue. What you find there is a patient brutality.

  You keep your hands stiff at your sides. Bite the inside of your lip and think. You try to grasp her perspective, and come up short. 

  Surely, there's a hint beyond the imposing posture, the unromantic dilation of pupil, the tick of lip. Surely, there's a sentence you could string together not overly apologetic but still hitting a bedroom nerve.

  You know there will be no makeup sex. For without the passion you are so tenaciously trying to light, wordlessly, there can be no making of love. The stand-in would be a pornographic fuck. Replete with the obscenity of emotion you are trying, on your end, to avoid.

  You don't want a fight. You are all to familiar with the feminine K.O. The twisting of words into a knot of vines that canopy forests. The grandfather calls out an hour. Though, an hour has not passed.

  You race through an entire vocabulary only to palm a single vowel. This you grunt then retreat. You can see the string unravel. It hangs there against her breast.

  You wonder if you should try to pluck it. But like gray hairs, you know another will only take its place. These are growing at an astounding rate.

  You picture her as a werewolf. A lupine lover refusing to bite. The jaundiced eyes of a drunk with only 40% of his liver left. She will never stoop again to leashed companionship.

  You play your own trick on time and roll back the years. The first time you called her after pacing back and forth in your kitchen. Searching for an unassuming way to start a conversation with the girl who surreptitiously slipped her number into your liquor bag.

  You didn't know what she looked like then. Could never have imagined her as the ginger werewolf you picture now. She was more like a porcelain doll. Something to be treated with the utmost care.

  You ended up with a faux pas introduction that as far as you could tell, she did not hold against you. You suggested a time and place for a date. Here you faired better, for within the unread manual was the rule that a dinner and a movie was out of the question. The first impression you evidently made would have to be followed up with something unexpected yet within character.

  No time for apprehension or insignificant pauses. You had to strike and strike quick. A fencing move that could not be parried was in order.

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  The peach pit fell from her hand. It tumbled slowly along the gutter and into the ocean. She sat on the bench with you, and took your hand in hers. 

  She did not speak and she did not have to. The bench was warm. The sun was bright. 

  You leaned in and kissed her when it became too much. The old who had lived and outlived the moment walked by and smiled.

  Later you sung her a Leonard Cohen song. She asked if you were really her man. You answered, in no uncertain terms, that you were sure of it. Doubts belong to the future anyway.

  The first time you conjoined bodies was not the first for either of you but it seemed like it. Neither of you ever put any real heart into one night stands. Herein laid the revelation.

  She was exquisite in her movements which made you clumsy in yours. You left your socks on for fear that taking them off would send you tumbling backwards. You didn't want her to notice that she embodied everything that had ever overwhelmed you.

  In Cancun, when they came out and stuck their red flag in the sand. It took you so long to swim back to shore. The waves that tugged and begged for you. You thought you were going to drown. 

  Here in the future which is the past, you are drowning in such a different way. There's a rip in her stocking. You point it out jokingly. The jeans on the floor have rips in the knees.   

  There's a little crosshatched bow on her purple bra. The three rows of semi-circular hooks you have to get past. The straps slip from her shoulders. Leaving half then the entirety of her breasts showing.

  A suckle at the teats of the She-Wolf of Rome. Tarzan like you climb up and up until you reach her lips again. You undress each other.

  Thinking back on it. It seems there was a misplaced hair. You chalked it up as a fluke of the gods. No god is perfect even when you capitalize the "g."

The Cul-De-Sac

The Cul-De-Sac

Mark Coleman

  On the Fourth of July, our fireworks show came from the heavens. We were too broke for so much as snakes, anyway.
  The wind blew back my tore up peacoat. Exposing blood stained jeans. It changed directions. Trying to knock me over like an adolescent cow tipper.
  They go off. You listen to them as you lie drunk in your room. You thought of walking down to the park. But you don't need to see them. You've seen them before. It's better to just hear the dogs reaction to them.
  Earlier it was just kids throwing poppers at each other. You thought it was funny to do it in theaters at that age. Unfortunately, you could never throw them hard enough that they'd explode against someone's head.
  They symbolize sex in the movies. You think of the sex you're not having. All the hand holding you're not doing beneath that display of patriotism.
  All the drunks in tanks with small windows and no glass feel abandoned and forgotten as the semi-elite nation fattens itself up on the Stars and Stripes with friends and family at beer cooler barbecues. You're a step away from suburbia but you haven't made it yet.
  The city is a broken shard you want to cut yourself with. A shattered reflection of the humanity you've never mustered the courage to regain.
  Godless this nation of man made meteor showers. Dreams forgotten. The Sandman an Indian Giver.
  The gun shoots peacock plumage that try as it might will never reach the stars. Duds those that are not gun powder flowers. They are impertinent enough to not give us the microcosms of color that we so desire.
  It sounds like the finale. You cross your hands over your chest. Your breathing is labored. You use sparklers to light your cigarette butts. Toast a hungover nation with vodka that could strip paint.
  It sounds like Iraq out there. A homeless vet with PTSD cowers on a bus bench wishing he could disappear. He doesn't. The war drags on and on.
  The people revolt. Their morality rewarded with bullet holes in their heads. The puddles of blood expand, and the nations fuck themselves in them.
  Hermaphroditic in self accolades. The essence pouring into their cunts from their cocks. An essence with the past stamped over its face.
  The mouths snarl as we beg for scraps. Threaten to snap and bite. The main target in the killing field zigzags. Hoping to throw them off.
  The scope that holds the murderous eye crosshairs him. A minute later, and his brains are on the asphalt.
  The brains to which a mind was knighted. A "Sir" of beliefs that the average man would not find unreasonable.
  Children of napalm run down the streets naked. The refuges lose their cubs, and cry against concrete pillars. The niggers are given syphilis. Transformed into sideshow attractions.
  Their noses fall off and their cocks turn into unruly blisters. Run down the legs of their pants. Rivers as brown as the Platte.
  MK-Ultra watches spiked johns scream and convulse. MK-Ultra erects towers. MK-Ultra drinks too much whiskey.
  The Stingray watches. The sky watches. You didn't want tan lines. You wanted to impress him, and ended up impressing them.
  They size you up, and eat your innards in the airport. Play tug of war with your large intestine. Trampoline on your udder sized breasts.
  They drag him out of their patrol car and slam his head against the wall. In the cell, they are unrelenting. This is the American way.
  Bleeding and apologizing as they strap him into the chair. Bleeding and apologizing as they spatter him with more threats that come out as spittle.
  A broken nose with a thumb driven into it. A beaten companion trying to fade away into its paws. Forgets its species and thinks its a hedgehog. The canine unit is ready.
  They round us up. The tanks run down the gardens with all their carefully selected perennials. Wives weep as they look down at their severed green thumbs.
  The tank men wail beneath the unrelenting tracks of wheel. Tiananmen Square is far from here. This is just a neighborhood street.
  That is just an arm that belonged to a mechanic. That is just a leg that belonged to a marathon runner. That is just a head that belonged to a philosopher. This is just a Cul-de-sac. You'll never escape.

Summer Showers

Summer Showers

Mark Coleman

  They tore off her hijab as well as the rest of her clothes, threw her on the ground, and gang raped her. Each seemed as though assigned before hand to a specific orifice. Switching it up, so each man could enjoy another stolen pleasure.
  I watched on in disbelief. Women like these don't own rape whistles. They ignorantly think that nothing of the kind could ever happen to them. They believe that God will protect them. They are wrong.
  God still lives in the Old Testament. Wrathful. Murderous. Willing to commit filicide. Unrepentant. Lying under oath. All the stenographer has to do is type it all out, and throw New in front of the Word.
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  We made love with Serge Gainsbourg singing low in the background. The music of sex. The needle comes down. Finds the vein ready and willing. Concupiscent in fact. The barrel fills with blood, and the phonograph becomes sugary.
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  Listening to the hail do car damage and drinking margaritas. An all nude strip club. An all you can eat buffet with pubic hair in the food. A touch lap dance.
  Buying strippers cognac. Stumbling home drunk. Pissed. Pelted. The cloud formations look like cauliflower. The women all want diamonds mined for by children with missing hands.
  Looking very much like a luna moth in her green and blue getup. One of those nice girls for sure. You smell of sweaty, gyrated pussy and cigarette smoke.
  Your wallet empty. Tapped. Couldn't afford to buy another woman a drink, take her to a movie, dinner. Any of it.
  Some men use a clip with the large bills on top in a cock of the walk bid. You wished you had one of those now. Filled to the brim. Full of whiskey confidence, you decide to approach her, anyway.
  Soaked through, you stumble over and slur a few words at her rather than to her. Inquiring about her relationship status and so forth in the chopped bass growl that comes after a night like this.
   She doesn't answer any of this but to your surprise, she shares her umbrella with you. Both of you under that tortoiseshell, turquoise sky. Her hand accidentally brushes yours. You want to hold it more than anything in the world, right now.
  Sweet is the adjective that comes to mind. Not a girl throwing herself all over a stage, and nearly breaking what's left of her hymen with your limp dick, dildo, Jew nose.
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  Chalk art kids run over to the Van Gogh, and start dotting in their own stars. Throw rocks bigger than their hands up there. Taking away the rain.
  You notice that the underside of her umbrella is a simulated depiction of the heavens. It's what you'd expect to see lighted above a baby's crib or hanging in a museum. It seems to create a separate cosmos in every strand of her hair.
  It's dazzling. As stunning as any of the rest of this slim girl's natural radiance. You see that its just a light posse of fireflies. When you were a child, you used to catch them in mason jars, and watch them for hours on end.
  She walks. Looking straight ahead. Oblivious to all of this. It could be the Garden of Eden, and she wouldn't even notice the apple or the serpent proffering it.
  You're at peace with yourself for the first time in your life. All the atrocities being committed at this moment, the world over, couldn't take any of this away.
  The second hand has seized to tick. The minutes die away. The clock falls to pieces in the loss of its conception of time. It falls into the ocean of forgetfulness that steals loved ones locked away in nursing homes.
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  She speaks for the first time. "It looks like rain." You can't understand why she hasn't noticed what has essentially become a flash flood. You're walking through rivers. No garters. But no gators either.
  Noah could be waving mankind away, and this girl wouldn't notice. She would just keep up the clip clop stride or splash away until the whole of this macrocosm parted like the Red Sea.
  Then you see she means something completely different. What that is you haven't the slightest clue. She seems to know but her head is somewhere between a coma and the wall that divides the people.
  You begin to become conscious of what is going on here. This girl can't possibly have a boyfriend or a girlfriend for that matter.
  She is nothing but a child dressed up in a woman's body. Blissfully ignorant to the point of stupidity. It's almost a certainty that she is as virginal as a Madonna.
  She has yet to look at you. Has only spoken four words. It's doubtful she will speak anymore. Her greeting took the form of a gesture. A kind one but an unspoken one still.
  What she might be thinking is anyone's guess. But she must be thinking. Right? You begin to doubt even this. There's a nirvana like quality to her. Certainly, transient.
  You pass a man sleeping on a bus bench. Or are you in a park, now. The street has seemed to fallen into the same ocean as the clock. But instead of forgetting something intangible it has instead forgotten itself.
  You would like to offer the man money. But in the absence of that luxury at least a kind word. But it would seem an affront to her own kindness. Somehow.
  Besides, you're afraid this whole land that seems wholly nonexistent would complete its dissolution and she would dissolve with it.
  The man dissolves once out of sight. The deluged brown paper bagged bottle held tightly to his chest.
  A newspaper boat floats by. You read a headline that you instantly forget. You're sure it's war.
  It is not a painful process but a slow and arduous one. He can only ascertain that certain parts of himself have begun to costively dematerialize.
  You realize how attached you've become to this woman/girl/child in such a short amount of time. She's existed in a mercurial state within your heart, forever. Before you were born or even conceived, she was there swimming within you. A mermaid with precious gems for eyes.
  Thinking of mermaids you once again look at her hair. It flows as do these tributaries along this strange but wondrous path. It has a Medusa-like quality to it. Even in the absence of fireflies. It lives. It flames.
  But there is nothing there hungry for a mouse. There is probably nothing there hungry for you either. With this awakening, almost rebirth, you begin to take in the rest of her. In pieces.
  Starting with her face you work your way down until you reach her unseen/seen toes. There is certainly an almost timeless bond. But does this bond attach in any true sense?
  Is this all just a fantasy? A drunken delusion? Very unlike those delusions of the DT variety.
  You now do take her hand. Press it. She does not squeeze yours knowingly or in acknowledgement. She unmistakably exists. Her flesh is as soft and warm as you would imagine. To your astonishment she speaks again.
  "There is a place beyond this." Again, she does not elaborate but you somehow know that she is not speaking of an afterlife.
  Is the place even a place? Does the path that you are traversing lead there? You doubt and do not doubt this, simultaneously.
  You had begun to think you were walking her home. Now, you know that this is not the case. She is walking you. There is a reason she lent you shelter beneath this umbrella.
  Perhaps, someone or some force outside of herself had commanded this of her. You rationalize that this place must be an idea. Either hers or yours. You could have not foreseen its actualization. Then you again think of the place as a place.
  There is such a confusion here. Nothing is logically sound. Nothing is as it seems. Ideas cannot be walked to with a beautiful woman who will not take your arm or even your hand.
  They are possessions that not even a prison guard or solitary confinement can take away. Are these new ideas? Sentient ideas? Revolutionary? Political? Romantic? Terrifying?
  Well, certainly not the latter. Why would such a resplendent guide lead you to them if such were the case? And besides, you are not terrified.
  You have never had feelings quite like these. They seem as new as the ideas may prove to be. Feelings of tenderness. Akin to love but not love. Well, maybe that's not quite true. What else could one label your feelings for her?
  Albeit, very rudimentary you do feel that flutter of the heart the poets speak of. Your breath catches in your throat. You try to swallow it and find you cannot.
  This could be the love of your life. The one you have been waiting for so patiently. Wanting to love. To have that exuberant feeling for yourself. Selfish, sure. And you know that love should be unselfish.
  Love should be able to be willing to die for someone else. Would you die for her? Someone that you don't even know. Well, you do seem to know her. After a brief moment of contemplation, you decide definitely that yes, you would.
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  In the morning, a friend stops by. He's brought by a bottle and was going to see if you were up. It's not morning exactly but just a little before noon. He knows that you wake up around nine, and usually need a drink.
  It's as much a kindness as an act of sociability. He'll have one too, sure. But he doesn't need one. Especially, so early in the day when the sun, though it should be wide awake, is still dragging its feet into day.
  He knocks on your door repeatedly, knowing you should be home. He calls your phone. Tries your door. Your door is unlocked. He finds you in bed. Smiling in your sleep.
  He's never seen you smile like this. Never seen anyone smile like this before. Never seen anyone sleep like this before in fact. It dawns on him to check your pulse.
  The paramedics pronounce you DOA. After the coroner's inquest, it is revealed that you died in your sleep. Reasons unknown.

Apocalyptic Sex

Apocalyptic Sex

Mark Coleman

  The lowboy starts to walk towards you on its wobbly, stupid legs. Vomiting out its idiotic contents. Knickknacks that could be civil war relics hitting you in the face. Giving you black eyes and a fat lip.
  She takes off one article of clothing at a time. Making a real sexy show with the stockings. Rolling them down to her ankles in a way that could make a man have a heart attack.
  After taking them off, she throws them to you. As though they were souvenirs. Say a band's set list.
  A gray haired Tommy Atkins who survived the war without a scratch sits in his bedroom frantically making zip guns because his gun safe just took issue with him. Bringing out the heavy artillery and blowing holes in the walls.
   She doesn't so much lick her lips as run her tongue over them as though trying to get rid of some imperfection that occurred in the application of her lipstick. Maybe, the bathroom mirror hadn't been cleaned in a while. Or maybe it was just haste.
  A little girl's lunchbox tries to eat her as she's walking to school. A woman's bed jacket rises, and comes at her waving its arms and screaming. Or, maybe, just making spooky ghost sounds.
  She walks, or more accurately struts/saunters, to where you sit on the bed naked. Though, you're hard as a rock, you hope your eagerness doesn't show in your eyes.
  A teenage boy's boutineer shoots out of his tux's buttonhole and kills the prom queen just as they're crowning her.
  A bouquet of flowers clutched tightly to her chest. Now another flower embedded in her skull. Bleeding profusely.
  She looks like Botticelli's Venus. Except she's not trying to cover anything with her hair. It flows over her breasts out of its own volition. You always did like women with long hair. Even if it does tend to cover their other charms.
  A German heart-faced teen darling is doing battle with an army of dirndls. Bolos come flying like geese out of the jewels of the Earth. Sending the villagers running with their children clutched to them. Weeping on their breasts.
  As she comes over to you you think, Jesus, what an angel. And here with you for some reason. Her red bra and panties on your floor. Her dress a crumpled mass near the bedroom door.
  A car full of hooligans are playing mailbox baseball. One mailbox isn't having any of it, jumps into the car with them, and starts ripping out their throats. A boy scout watches an old lady cross the road, get hit by a car, and shrugs.
  As she comes nearer to you, it's as though she's begun to walk on eggshells. Suddenly shy, apprehensive, having second thoughts? Christ, you hope it's not the latter. These sorts of encounters are becoming exceedingly more rare.
  A Catholic's rosary coils around her neck and strangles her. An Orthodox Jew's tefillin turns anti-Semitic, and with the help of his tallit, drives his head into a brick wall. Killing him instantly.
  Your doubts seem to have been unfounded. She doesn't full on kiss you. Just brush your lips with her's then lifts her leg, foot on the bed, giving you a view of her pouting sex.
  Inviting you to kiss her there. You do so. Not so much with gusto but just a peck. The more passionate kissing will come later.
  A homeless junkie overdoses. He had a good heart but no comes to his funeral. Not even his own mother. No one mourns or even cares.
  She bats her long mascaraed eyelashes. Seems suddenly to be the coquette. You'd take her for a good girl. Full of innocence.
  Perhaps, waiting for marriage or the right man to fuck. Make love to? You can't make out any of this.
  A girl stands on the side of the road with a sign that reads, "Travillin Hungry Full of Love." No one gives her a dime. So, she leaves the sign on the sidewalk and walks away.
  This off and on thing is kind of strange. Yet undeniably sexy. She leans down and embraces you as though you were the only man in the world. The transition from slut to prude continues. Either way, you'll soon possess her.
  A child is molested by his stepfather. He grows up depressed and suicidal. He sees therapists but they can do nothing for him. He sleeps around with men. Giving them blowjobs in their cars for money to support a crack habit.
  She takes you in her mouth for about a minute or so then slowly climbs on top of you. After a bit of this you go down on her. Your hands firmly grasping her buttocks. Then she's back guiding you into her.
  This time you're on top. You massage her breasts. You kiss her repeatedly. She returns your kisses. Thrusting her tongue into your mouth.
  A vet keeps calling the hotline. Not the sex kind. He's on hold for such a long time that he gets his army issue and does what the war failed to do.
  Despite the fact that you have blue balls, you don't come for awhile. She moans like it's the best she's ever had. You want to roll your eyes or stick out your tongue. Could always just flip her the bird.
  An old man's cancer is causing him so much pain that he shoots himself in the head. Another just decides that he has nothing to live for, and after getting off work from the job he always hated, comes home and does the same.
  You finally do come. You wonder if she can feel it filling her. You're sure she can. This is what the whole act is about.
  In the end, you always feel empty or disappointed that it's over. Like a good book or movie. But, of course, it can't go on forever.
  She might sleep with you till morning. She might not. You might have breakfast or brunch. Then you will part ways and you will never see this girl again.
  His wife hears the gunshot. Comes running in. Finds him. His head lying on the table in a pool of his own blood. She becomes hysterical and starts screaming. The children cry. Not understanding. Just knowing their mother is upset. But that's just the way it goes. Life can't be all orgasms.

Detox

Detox

Mark Coleman

  I just want to find someone to spend my life with. Someone to comfort me when a friend dies. I want what others have.
  It broke my heart to see you sitting on the floor. Head in your hands, crying. Couldn't really understand what happened. Except that you hate yourself for it.
  I just sat there and ate my shitty detox waffles. Trying to think of something to say. Tried to make small talk and failed. But for some reason out of all the open chairs, you chose the one right next to me.
  I caught your name, and that was about all. Asked a guy in my room what I should do with my dirty scrubs. He said that some people keep them or I could hang myself with them. He said that earlier he wanted to shoot himself.
  Told the staff on intake that he was suicidal. Another guy and I asked who the hell says that, and then I joked about the homicidal question.
   "Every time that I come in here. I want to kill all you, motherfuckers!" We had a good laugh. If you know where to look and your timing's not shit, you can have a few belly laughs here.
 Occasionally, someone smokes a cigarette in the shower. I did it myself. Last time, the stunt was pulled they looked in everyone's pockets and rooms for contraband. A madman got dragged to the psych for going for the girls' room with his cane.
  A young DUI kid told us that he had a beer in his bag. As he was getting discharged, he said that he was going to chug it and throw the can at the wall of the facility. An older man with brain damage said he realized he had a fifth of vodka in his bag and went to the bathroom and pounded it.
  Some of us look like boxers with the damage done by falling down on our faces. I asked a pretty Mexican if she had a boyfriend. She did. A boyfriend and three kids that she just wanted to get out and see. At night, they bring out the T.V. and some asshole picks out a garbage movie to watch.
  They had a Gore Vidal and Joyce Carol Oates, I came close to stealing. I came home to broken reading glasses, anyway. Several of us came here, just for walking down the street. The women are all pretty but heart broken. The majority of the men want to fill their souls with something more than this unbearable pain that comes with just having to get up in the morning. With very few exceptions, none of us are bad people.

Muzzle Climb

Muzzle Climb

Mark Coleman

   The delphiniums can grow as tall as they want. They're not going to hide anything. The caterpillar will always be distinguishable from the stalk of the weed.
  She stands rigid in sleepshirt and kitty heeled slingbacks. No bra. No panties. Just her underneath. Exquisite although askance.
  She has those lips you always want to press yours against. The hair you constantly want to run your fingers through. Wanted so badly to spend your life with her. Wanted to explain to her that everything would be alright. Even though, this would be a lie. Hear people speak about her only in terms of sex.
  Her sweat band discarded after tennis. A bikini on a banister back chair after a swim meet. Dangling there like shed skin.
  Your instructor just left you in the deep end. You thought you were going to drown. You feel that way now. A pool of obfuscation that mists its way into your eyes.
  The book case stares you down. The sofa swallows you. Looking for loose change in its cushions. Knowing there's none to be found.
  It was all just a college try, after all. You try to wish away the memories. Try to obliterate retention and reason. Sink slowly into ready made madness. The insanity where a different sort of angel lives.
  Sometimes, we descend to the attic and ascend to the cellar. Falling into blue skies. Rising into turbulent seas. The plane you know will never leave the tarmac. The oxygen masks that drop, regardless. A bird must have flown into the fuselage again. I think they must get sick of being that close to heaven.
  A crash is the same as a layover. Nine times out of ten. We smoke too many cigarettes and drink too many drinks in the lounge. There's an I that was buried with You. They're starting to stack the bodies because they've run out of room.
  The family plots no longer contain family members but just odd bits of consanguineous appendages. A distant cousin's head rests on the thighs of a stranger. Rape becomes a necessity of the tomb.
  Feeling like a Bolero painting, even though, you haven't eaten in days. Sitting on the floor with your whiskey. Staring at the wall. Trying to find some pattern there. There's nothing but scuff marks that seep into your heart.
  You'll never write the great American novel. Never write a short story that anyone will ever want to publish. You're relegated to obscurity. You are obsolete.
  Take a few Clorazepate. It helps, I suppose. But in such a small way that I might as well have left them in the bottle till I seized.
  I become less sure of myself everyday. Excoriating mirrors that only show how pale my life is compared to my dreams.