REALICIDE
YOUTH RECORDS
EVOLVE PROSE
SELECTIONS
Strangers in a Bar
Numerous men with scrunched baseball caps leaned over a bar with
axle-greased elbows. The exhaustion of a day’s work fell, useless, droning from
their tongues, and flowed inside of open bottles. A man sat alone, unlike the
other men, on the very last stool, nearest the swinging doors and fractured
windowpanes. He was directed within himself, his eyes were fixed to the
counter, a feather stuck out of his brimmed hat. He glanced across to the other
side of the bar where sat the ghost of his former lover, crossed legs, tight
skirt, swimming in shadow, her invisible hands drew a cigarette; simmering, she
failed to meet his eyes in contact. He squirmed on his bar stool, rearranged
his testicles, the force of habit, removed his eyeballs, and placed them in a
highball glass. A stranger sitting next to him said, “Ice cubes,” and squashed
a flapping goldfish in his palm. A curtain of dust rose up from the ashtrays.
The room became as liquid, the faces flowed into one another, garbled music
sounds, the notes like bubbles rising in a pond.
His hands shook, the same way he had entered her, like hard thick
weary dreams, cigarette smoke clung to the ceiling and he gripped the edge of
the bar to brace himself as his eyeballs swam in a highball glass.
A woman with tattooed serpents curtsied on a stage of bone, the
dim bulb of a ceiling fan flickered, and men with phallic horns emptied spit
valves. The crowd of mostly men roared, heaving signs of approval as she drove
a spiked heel into her crotch. Virgin’s blood flowed up from the cracks in the
floor and melted wax bubbled in the jukebox. Huddled rows of people like houses
to the wind-torn-city, holding umbrellas in torrential rain. torn sneakers
trotting across concrete. hail to phantom taxis in the growing fog. All the
images of the unspeakable city which cannot be denied or forgotten. Sound for
which there is no relief. Gunshots ringing in cobblestone allies, tires
screeching, sirens singing, worms writhing between the cracks of brick. “Alone
in this bar again, alone,” he sat and murmured. A pinched rat face man next to
him held, between his thumb and forefinger, a white handkerchief dowsed in
gasoline: a man across the bar flicked the heads of matchsticks, he dropped
them once they were black and singed his fingertips. “If only they could meet
each other,” he thought, “Perhaps this bar would not be so dim and perhaps my
pain would lessen.” At a table directly behind him was a gypsy woman. She had
curly black hair that fell over her shoulders, hoop earrings, and a long white
nose with specks of freckle. She glowed behind her cigarette’s ember, she sat
and coughed, complaining.
When at last the giddy thrill of
liquor seized him: nail bitten razors massaged pubic beards and dry lips
whistled sand paper tunes. A thirsty cactus ached on the windowsill. The image
of his former lover became more allusive than ever. She was spread thinly
across the bar room, like butter across bread, she was spread, across the
stools and chairs and tables and pool rooms, moaning and gasping, festering in
memories of echo. Finally broke apart in golden light and specks of dust.
He strokes an empty blade in his
coat pocket. He feels the warm blood trickle down his leg and splotch his
shoes. He leaps up, raises his voice to a terrifying pitch and shrieks. It
travels out of the bar and down the street, across the shimmering lamp posts
and slumbering store fonts; across the moaning traffic, the sobbing train’s
wheels, the poverty-stricken misunderstood ghettoes of man. It transforms into
a single, howling, tormented frequency. It causes the gutter children to all
pause in their frolicking twilight and startles the sleeping birds from their
nesting. Their eggs and dreams crumble under pebbles, concrete, gnashing teeth
of asphalt; cranes, mixed-concrete-condos, section 8 the suburbs. Her image
becomes more and more allusive, finally disintegrates into golden light and
specks of dust.
He glances across the street at a
blinking neon open sign. It’s blue and violet light is reflected in a dingy
midnight puddle before a cars wheels break it up, Autumn’s final leaves settle
on the top of the puddle, languid icicles droop from tapered awnings, and dandelions
sprout from sidewalk cracks. The storefronts return to their nightly slumber
and the stars of the thousands dead appear violently electric in the sky’s
reflection.
It was a Wednesday. And I have
always found that Wednesday is a peculiar day. I walk the city and it’s as if a
thousand glowing hearts are waiting to receieve, and
that is not enough. Love is not enough for there is she: breaking the
boundaries of illusion; she is speaking softly and watching from the corner of
her eye. To catch her, is to tame her, and to be wild and free is similar to
beast. Find me on a boat, far off in the ocean icicles hanging from the deck.
The crew is assembled ragamuffins from the output cultures of civilization. I
have named her our destination, but we refuse to speak her name out loud in
front of strangers.
This life is a terrible thing to
waste, but it is also a terrible thing any way to begin with: so I will let the
waters flow/ I am thinking nothing of a conquest, here we go. It is a pity that
my body is so narrow: so fragile that our hearts don’t beat as one. It is
squeaky clean triumphant, I am clutching to this paper like I’m holding on to
breath. I visualize underwater castles, secluded hills and mountains stretching
into endless light; allowing for my bliss an angel’s voice. The radio is Billie
Holiday as warm and elegant as arms unfolding. A sculptor’s hand is tracing a
figure, gliding down the street, and speaking in a tongue of rhythm, turns to
me. “Ain’t she neat, smart, clean, everything a man
could dream?” Yeah. I’m nodding. Yeah. I’m nodding. moving towards the great.
carpe diem: seize the day, seize the day:
today.
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