Ghost of the Lake Wire Motel

It's as if it never happened.
As if your brains were still there, intact in your skull.

How long has it been?  A year and a half?  Two?
I doubt I'd recognize you now.  You'd be a rotted corpse like any other.

I don't think about you much these days
but sometimes I remember our school-yard conversations about classic rock
or the pranks we pulled on that kid in our gym class in high-school
or that Halloween party in college when you went as the Grim Reaper.
         Or was that him standing behind you?

Shooting your self in the head
alone in a filthy motel room
because of some petty robbery gone bad,
well, it was a pretty dark move for a class clown.

Sometimes I'll see some blond haired, blue eyed Adonis
and I'll expect it to be you
and you'll explain the punchline
but I still wont get it.

I doubt anyone ever will.

So I'll drink one to you, Mike.
Hell, maybe a few.
But you're not around to take my keys when I've had too many.

Ghosts of the Old Haberdashery

Wallpaper like the skin of a leper.
The spiraling staircase creaks and moans and laments so many forgotten yesterdays as I ascend to floors displaced in time.
Under a thick blanket of dust a lizard's skeleton rests atop the arm of a broken chair smiling knowingly into the unknown.
Spider's have built cities between the columns of moldy boxes and splintered shelves.
"Welcome home" they whisper
"Stay with us"
But I climb the weary stairs past cracked windows and bored apparitions to a landing where the gray detritus of time lays scattered around my ox-blood shoes.
An age-stained ivory face peeks at me from a pile of mannequin parts.
It wears the same ironic expression as a traveller I once met from an antique land.
Two more pallid models stand destitute in the corner.
I feel like I've interrupted them, like they're waiting for me to leave.
The path before me is lit only by a singe weak ray of light leaking through a rotted hole in the roof.
The ladder across the room calls through the darkness in raspy tones.
It shivers as if it's reddish rungs were exposed nerves
but I climb it's tortuous length and open the hatch.
Daylight sprays me with a shotgun's mist,
it stings my eyes and confounds my senses.
Looking out over the downtown park the homeless look like stray dogs.
The stray dogs look like rats.
I scrape sediment from the reservoir of an ancient cooling unit,
desperately curious about how the sidewalk must taste.

Maybe...

Wearing whiskey like a winter coat

and melting like candle-wax tears down

the face of a crumbling monument.

This isn't the life I chose.  

So why did you give me an option?

Where's the glitz, the glamour,

the sex, bloodshed, and explosions?

Where's the gilded corridors and arabesque spires of pomp and intimidation?

Where's the Devil come to tell me that I'm his son?

In forgotten corners

spiders spin tapestries depicting centuries of treachery

but the flies

have no eye

for craftsmanship.

A leather-sole paints them all in two-dimensions and moves on.

Down cobblestone alleys where the homeless catch flicked cigarette butts in their mouths.

Downtown streets aglow with the red and yellow lights

like eyes to judge pedestrians.

So where are you?

What are you?

Are you drowned in the seas of moonless nights

that ebb and flow in discordant rhythm?

Or did you just forget?

Here I am all dressed up with nowhere to go

and no money for the fare to get there.

My pockets digests a couple of quarters, a broken pen, and a gun

as I walk to the docks with limp I'd never noticed before.

The world is so still that I wonder if it's dead.

Standing neck-deep in the frozen black waters,

I shove lose change under my eyelids

and reflect on my regrets.

Patch

So where do I begin?

Her posture or maybe her eye made apparent her role in this drama and I never questioned it.  My only concern was to find out what kind of sadness made her so attractive to me.

The night was as hazy as our heads and the fire was crackling and full of vigor.  We could have been gypsies by the way we danced, drank, and sang while she stayed seated and somber, her one eye gleaming from the fire and her countenance a study of consternation.

What does she see now?  I wondered as she gazed deep into the pyre, her thick mascara running down her cheek as she cried silently.

"What's wrong?"  I asked.
"Nothing.  Just a memory."

But to know that memory would be more intimate than sex.  She wore her mystery like a cosmetic and had all the appeal of Greek tragedy.

The next morning the wind brought the trees to life and they scratched at the windows as if begging to be taken in.  She was standing by the window.

"Do you want to see the inside of my head?" She asked abruptly, as if forcing the question through her teeth.
I didn't speak.  The most I could do was to nod my head, my eyes still unfocused and my mouth hanging slack and dry.

She lifted the black satin patch slowly, and as timid as if undressing in front of a stranger
and she told me her story.

Waiting for the Catalyst

Always on the brink without ever overflowing.
Always waiting for it.

But the catalyst is late and we stagnate
in the present and sometimes the past.

Eating Finger-nails for lunch
and toe-nails for dinner
in anticipation of a meteor
or an epidemic
or an opportunity.

Always nothing.
And back to my cob-web bed under a blanket of dust
in a bunker
I built
from a deck of playing cards.

Back to the static and the arbitrary numbers.
Back to a broken microscope
to follow fractals dance down the rabbit-hole.

Driftwood inn.

How far can their faces hang?
Their jowls rest in fleshy puddles on the bar.
Their eyes have fallen so low
they kick them as they shuffle off to the bathroom.

A travelling salesman sits sipping in silence
worrying about his wife fucking his neighbor
as he buys drinks for girls with syphilis.

The bartendress is the only one smiling.
Flashing lipstick teeth and whiskey breath.
Her smile is like a massacre.

And this bar is an abatoire of dreams.
But outside the wolves wait,
howling towards a red moon.

Sharks and Scorched Pavement

Lot-lizards and
Shim-sham wizards
Powder-nosed sharks
wearing cheap neck-ties.

Spewing smoke like dragons
Greasing down their silver tongues
Pavement pounding predators
with 5.7 liter V8 hearts.

Money is a cruel thing.
Money is everything.
"Lets not talk about money,
lets just find the vehicle that best suits you."

"Great!"
"Excellent!"
"Fantastic!"
Throwing out exclamations like they're going out of style.

Smile.
Make wild gestures with your hands.
It's all part of the show.
It's all psychology.

It's all -sniff sniff-
and "Buddy, listen..."
It's all too much
to handle.