December 28th, 2007

I remember that when lights shine dim to loathe the cloak of dark...
I sense the seeming unpredictability of shadowy villains when purged upon by shimmering doves...
I clench my teeth and seethe at familiar phantoms should cackles trump the catharsis...
I bemoan restless urges when whatever heaven is smirks a mirthful grin...
I entangle wits at will when angels and devils collide...
I marvel at indifference and enact the throes of wist at wishes...
I enable pits of contrast when alone, affable, atrophied from stoic columns of trust...
I notice the slur, cadence, courage, fear, cowardice, peace meal marinade of voices smoky in the cold...
I insist on brooding, lonesome, pathetic Id and selfless admiration for lust and for living...

I blush at bravery, blasphemy, dime-store wisdoms blurted through million-dollar mouths...
I cringe at self-inequities, quivering lips at dawn when truth lunges to expel from every pore...
I burst for beauty and hide the detritus for languishing osmosis and dutiful class...
I bellow meaningless opus for you and shiver at stutters in Squire Room nights...
I love and I loathe and I lather the ebbs with the flows of a humbled heart...
I muse at your mask, shading life from a lithe and supple shield too thin for Earth's encounter...
I search for the will, way, and want to fester the windy gusts of change...
I twinge at the insistence of the steady love and long instead for lust's cruel labor...
I age and crumble at visions of a face that scares me to my core...
I dig into murky depths, damp and dirty, for claims of false reception, in no uncertain terms, but certain of a kind of love...
I sink in crinkled bed sheets, crumpled with clairvoyance for the higher yearn of man...
I endeavor to be true, to aim low when high and high when low, wherever the light of the sun warms me...
I preen my hair and tousle the strands of fate to make tender their unknowing lie...
I sit in a room with relics of a bygone era and dream of the future...
I bask in a glory too heavy with doubt to be glorious at all...
I sift through abstracts and yawn when eccentrics garner all the gold...
I prime the globe for the commoner to even the playing field...
I kill them with kindness until too much blood spurts into my eyes...
I cry and cry and cry for a life too well lived for my grizzled cast...
I shoot the moon and dusty space clogs my windpipes with the wisdom of forever...
I sing into sky for you, and wait, for you, and moan for you to know my moan for you...
I sleep the sleep of the careless man and awake to fever dreams of hope in crooked corners...
I gasp for air when known to those I want to know...
I sweat and tingle with prickly unease when secret names unearth to secret nights...
I miss you when you stray from my orbit to lurk on falling stars...
I own my feelings and belie the standards of the Roman birthright...
I gaze and guzzle in your eyes to see clearer the mysteries of me...
I dip and dive and deliver myself unto your unwitting beauty...
I need more fleeting bravado, more than your smile...
I found you...
I tire...
I finish...
I...

The Cult of Julia - Unmasked in the Shadow of the Night

The cackling stopped when Julia entered the room. Whichever direction the lazy winds blew before her arrival at the lounge, well, they'd quit dead and all mischief and debauchery would cease, with everyone suddenly maintaining strict levels of courteousness and digging deep into their dirty pockets, fishing for loose dollar bills. They'd sneak quick wettings of their palms with gooey saliva to slick back their hair in a sort of makeshift Sinatra do, hoping beyond hope that tonight could be the night where fair Julia might indulge them in a harmless drink and hardy conversation.
Julia had her routine too. She'd hold up two fingers, suggestively to the bar keep, willing him to send over two beers to the petite corner table and plushy parlor chair she'd sink into, methodically, and with sometimes ghoulish, aimless swigs from her bottle.
From what some in the bar had been able to gather during drunken rants - the devious truths of sour mash and suds - Julia worked as a "goddamn waitress" and that she didn't "make shit for tips." It was true; she waltzed in each night with a name tag and clicking high-heeled shoes, a sad curl fixed to her otherwise pouty lips. Her hair was normally fashioned up in a shell-like swirl before it ended finally in a tight bun at the crest of her head. Her eyes bore heavy black shadow, which within the dim saloon would reflect bony disposition to her face, a sunken socket pair that sometimes frightened those who were seeing it for the first time. Her curvy figure bowed left and right in an ancient dance with once-resilient physique, belabored now by an ancient affinity for alcohol. It wasn't Julia's body anyone cared about. It wasn't her eyes, or her hair, her lips or her desperate clicking heels; it was the holy match and clash of sorrow and benevolence that sat rigid and very alive on her face. Hers was a facade wrought with the sweet and the sour in equal measure, the dark and the light, the trinity of hardened, contemplative and forgiving all at once. She was a gift to man to learn the ways of man. She was the key to a heart too big and too bold for Earth. She was it.
Paul felt that he must have known Julia in another realm in time, that she must have graced only his sweetest dreams and pucker-kissed his furled brow in times of cold and solitude. Her aura radiated manic reverberations around Paul's crazy, buzzing, numbed head with calculated frenzy, strategically straightening the dormant neck hairs to a full and respectful attention, like frightened privates saluting a war-hardened general. Paul thought that finally, finally, this could be love. This could be it...


Paul awoke at 5 AM to the pre-sunrise mist of old, cruel , crumbling, sleeping New York. His virgin white walls sat lifeless in the void, still. Today was like every other day with regard to measure of repetitiveness. His keen awareness of place seemed still intact, unshakable somehow, save for the previous night's zombified focus upon his Julia. He wiped the sleep from the corners of his eyes to slander the mental image of her swaying bosom, her surly taunting and simultaneous tenderness with which she carried herself among the evening jackals at the lounge. The fuzzy silhouette mutilating his inner eye began to rival the stoic brood of Paul's antiquated day-to-day. His cell phone flickered and buzzed, luring Paul to rise, shower, get to work, never break the cycle, never falter from the winning formula that's brought him so many riches. The time was now 5:30 AM. And though Paul's workday did not officially commence until 8, he always arrived for the the pre-game tipsters at Emilio's Cafe.
Emilio's was a swanky, sueded den for moral arbiters and degenerate gambling swine to huddle and hunt for hidden trade secrets, to smoke cigars, to drink coffee, and to operate in generally mischievous fashion, even after the morning bell had rung. Before Paul began his regular jaunts to the lounge, Emilio's had been the impending degradation of his outwardly plastic disposition. Still, he managed to swindle his way into their circle. Except for today.
Paul hammered hard onto his buzzing phone. Everything grew brisk. Every focus mounted weerily upon holy wooden planks and the heavy steps of department store flats that were being planted on them. The pickled rows would bend, creak, bow at the insistence of ambling progression. Old maple stock sunk in pitiful angles 'gainst meaningless lunges and lurching toward the fabled tomorrows of the men and women of yesterday's promise. There was a twitch there. Paul blinked with rapid panic. His vision fuzzy, he rose from what he thought was bed. He phantom-felt for familiar paths to the bathroom where he could cool his head with brisk cold tap water and maybe a miracle pill. He tripped at the doorway when thinking that the bookshelf would balance his sway. Were it dreams that made the mind so crystalline? Were the heavens really there? Was Paul dreaming? Was Paul Paul? Suddenly, and with violent accuracy, the glass came down on the crown of Paul's head. Hot blood rushed down his face, burning his eyes, flooding his mouth. He heard the same faint steps of department store flats, quicker now, in an unknown direction. He fell asleep, and wouldn't wake again until the following winter.