One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #6.

See most of life is lived in anticipation, but what sacred bliss to know that the best is behind you? No more worrying will I miss it; will I recognize it when it comes; will it even come at all? What safety in retrospect, what undeniable grief and clearness of path! I am a made man, in a way. And so I am looking for ways to get killed, yet not relishing the thought at all. I am oblivious to action, in bed with passivity, extremely complacent in the most desperate way. I have evangelized the truth of mourning, and I am my biggest convert.

I tip my hat towards the rain and keep moseying down Main St. The double-breasted coat and fedora are a bit Noir for me, but I'm involved with the moment and so I play along. I kick off the wall with my cowboy heels, and land in the semi-puddle which is the entire street sidewalk. The streetlights glare like schoolmarms, and I pay no attention, hat brim averting their gaze.

In revision I find more comfort than I ever did in action. Her face becomes more beautiful with every passing day, her thighs slimmer, her waist more perfect. I remember her smile like a flashbacks in the movies, and the pavement where she lay is now a bed of roses; I planned to lay her there all the time. She is being transferred more and more into my Beauty, and I the Beast.

(Leave along the implications that has for me.) I am building a castle, a big one, and thinking of buying a clock and a candelabra. I am insisting on a large ball room; I don't really know why.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #5.

If you haven't figured it out by now, there's little rhyme or reason to what I'm doing. I'm buying vinyls and I don't even own a player. I'm buying large cups of coffee in the local diners and I don't even like coffee. I'm playing Barry Manilow at work, I don't even know why.

When I was young the monsters were all virtual, lives infinite. Now a bus or a trolley could say something about whether or not I should have crossed that street at that particular time, and I wouldn't even be able to finish reading about the newest Sushi restaurant in town, which I so wanted to go to. I am terrified about these things.

She has been appearing on street corners, and in the laundromat window or cab waving line. I hear this is normal for two weeks out. She is calling me from the other room, or to see if I want to go out to the movies--I can feel the phone vibrating in my pocket, while it sits directly in my sight. I am opening beers and windows, bank accounts and online dating profiles, umbrellas and cab doors. I am driving to where she would be, stepping out in the rain without a coat on, wishing I was dead.

And yet these are the best days of my life.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #4.

The world of the living and the world of the dead overlap like the body the soul. One is invisible, giving life to the visible. Do you see the sun, or its light? Do you see space, or the things suspended in it? These metaphors are not perfect, but the cell walls do not care. The security guards do not hear over TV sets and evening beers.

I've heard lyrics in favorite songs talk about my situation, so I pace the grounds, aware of my restraints: mountains to my right, oceans to my left, and I think about the silversmiths in old ages.

How does it feel to be eternally second best? Your very trade defines your position. Your metal will never raise in glorious usurpation (but will, later, fall to third, platinum the new King). There are things to think about here. I think about smoking a cigarette and walk on by.

2 a.m. is possibly my favorite time. It's when I dream I will find love; dream or imagine, I'm not sure which. Which is hopeful, or, no, more probable? I will believe in probability.

Long live probability!

I think about her, but she's probably not coming back.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #3.

I am finally speaking my mind, to curbs, to streets, to anything that will listen. She taught me to be free, but now her flesh is empty, festooned with dirt. The body is a prison, we all know, and the soul escapes so easily, given one condition; eggshells within eggshells, metaphors apply.

Cockroaches on the floors of my life's cell keep me alive. I play with them, make parades and charge admission to my imaginary friends; I grind them against the walls into fine powder, and suck on them as if they were delicacies, crunch crunch crunch, just to have stories to tell later.

I've never tasted alcohol behind my breath / 
and I've never seen a man before his death / 
but I've seen you lying homesick on the road / 
and I've tasted things that breath should never know.


The snow is falling, which is odd. But I guess in this dream world you get your romantic wish. Now, if only she would be walking this way in a dress...

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #2:

I am sipping my latte, cold as ice, warm as night. I am thinking about her, leaning in towards the center of the table, silent and wishing for love in all the same breathes. I am speechless at my own inability. She was cold before they picked her up; her earrings were 50 ft. apart.

The crunchy little bits of flashers and turn signals left on the side of the road by accidentsandwhatever have always fascinated me. Now I know where they come from. Turning too quickly, I nearly snap my neck, spinning my head 360. The jingle at the door is anonymous, but she always had a way of pushing that created a distinctive ring; why is this the same?

I don't believe anything anymore, but I am not exempt from the beliefs of others. Police reports, official statements, consoling words to family members, they all believe these things are necessary.

"Yes, I loved her very much." I say with the vacancy of a desert hotel.

"She was a spark in a dark world." I stare at a distant wall, unseeing, no expression in my voice.

"Of course, I will miss her dearly." My mouth barely moves. The words are flatline, monotone.

I sip my latte. Think.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #1.

I am driving in my car, wind cold, beer colder. I am resisting nothing; fear, love, telephone poles. I am driving smoothly, like hands on top of skin or a knife through meat, freshly sharpened (the knife or the meat?). I am driving away (towards?) something. All things are true: metaphorically, spirituality, blah blah blah.

Dichotomies are covalent atoms, simease twins, Abbot and Costello.

Glint of gun metal. Shift of steel. Engine hits 80 because its a nice round number, like the age you're going to die.

I've seen the flashing headlights of the coroner's car, arriving at your scene. (Why did they send headlights to such a routine suburban death) I wonder.

In the midwest, everything dies normally. Even catasrophic failures of safety equipment that cause multiple death and dismemberment to combine workers are ranked as "no special incident" in the police reports. Your smiling head on the side of the road will pose no exception to this rule.

At least you'll like you meant to do it, I think as I drive by.

The Glory Days

The punches come swift, fast, hard. Hydraulic jacks are twigs compared to this kind of pain. Roof rafters falling on your head would hurt less. Good thing he's dealing and not taking, he thinks. And good thing this is virtual reality.

Sam takes his fists from the dangling boxing gloves and rubs his arms, exhausted. Slumping towards the change machine, he tears a strip of tickets from the box and walks towards the ticket counter.

5,000 for the PlayStation?! He eyes his stash.

"Kid, you know you could just get a job or save up your allowance... or ask your parents to buy you one for Christmas, right?" The arcade keep prattles. He is 45, bald as a tire, an Italian plumber nursing a rotund gut he must have been born with.

"Sure," says Sam, finger the end of a long, taped together roll of tickets protruding from his backpack, "but that wouldn't be nearly as much fun, would it?"

Out of Area

A bruise marks the spot where the beer bottle struck him, unintentionally. His three buddies laugh harder than the incident deserves, in that way only fourteen year olds are supposed to laugh when they're still fourteen and naive. He smiles, knowing things they'll never know.

He doesn't even know why he hangs out with them anymore.

"Another one on the house?" inquires the bartender, good-naturedly. He grins through the scar which cuts both the top and bottom of his mouth, and pours a double shot of scotch into a tumbler.

Slide. Catch.

He grips the glass like his future, forcibly, and doesn't know where to pour it.

"Why do we drink boys?"

CHORUS:
We drink for the fun.
We drink for the sex.
We drink for the love.
We drink to forget.

He slams the tumbler back, irrespective of the contents pouring down his cheek and chin. He wipes too vaguely, gratuitously, and sets the glass back on the counter. Pulling a book of translated Cicero from his pocket, he stands to leave.

Page 23: As the old proverb says, "Like readily consorts with like."

Page 43: Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.

Page 54: It is a great thing to know our vices.

Operation

The medical supplies from the local hospital total thousands, but for some reason there isn't a scalpel among them. They chock it up to “collateral damage,” and proceed.

“Carve deeper. I want there to be scars,” he manages through clenched teeth, gripping the arm and back of the park bench like the victim of a gassing.

The sick sounds of glass through flesh echoed in the empty park. There is a sucking sound.

“I’m doing my best,” she says, pressing the ragged edge of the merlot bottle harder into his right atrium, for emphasis.

Scrape scrape, cut cut, slash slash.

“There, happy?”

She straightens, exhaling heavily, hands covered with plasma and bits of ventricle.

“Perfect. Now where’s my shirt?”

He pulls together the ragged edges of his chest cavity, and pins them with the tattered flannel button-down she throws him.

“Well, nice knowing you,” he throws back, staggering slightly to find his feet.

A slow rain begins to wash the traces of blood from his back. Her fingers feel the same relief.

“I’m not paying you back for the wine!” she yells, half-screams, waving the jagged edged cap and stem in his direction.

“Oh you earned it, kid. Don’t worry about it; you deserve it,” comes the final response. He half-waves a weak hand over his shoulder, without turning, and mumbles a final salvo of words, nearing the center of the field:

“Plus, you drank most of it, right?”