9 - veterans' day

"so next time it's three a.m. and just on a whim you want to skate or drink or swim in the soft pink light of the dim and fading memories we once shared, give me a call, let me know you care." he waited for six weeks, got no availability. by now it was the end of december. he's afraid of this week. god knows he hates his misery. by now it was the end of his temper. "one of these days" he lies to himself, "someone will put me back on the shelf." nine months on and it's gone to his health. he stares at the moon and closes his eyes. it might be too soon but he knows his sighs. he's sick of the climb. three ticks and it's time. his life flies past in a flash. "so here's a picture of me for next morning's papers. you can stick it between the sex and mourning fakers." 'cause by this point he's out of joint and he's got no missed calls and hardly any mixed messages. no one noticed all his party envy. it's a mess and it's more than he can take. he's fading fast and breathing shallow. more than he can fake. stuck in the past, and he's too callow; just not meant for the rough and tumble. he found a nice cozy bathtub and filled it up warm. he'd always trip on cuts and stumble. it's time he made something useful out of himself. a war always ends in peace. it's best that a life should end in death. he's done with the games and the being left out. a tug at the blade, a look upwards. about the light, the only one still lit, he paused, exhaled, and said, "kill it."

8 - why me? (supersoak that hoe!!!)

love is just the preamble to heartbreak, and life is just delaying the inevitable. some things must be free, and those who start late can't slide in, but we say it's destiny. it's all bull. so here's a picture for next morning's papers, a mixture of death and warning vapours, i wash my hands of this affair. i'm sick and tired of being self-aware. so spit, spit, spit, 'cause this is it. spit, spit, spit. i'm sick of this skit. so snick, snick, snick, and steal a kiss. spit, spit, spit. i'm sick of this shit. there's a gooseneck hole in my heart. it's where you sit, cold, in my art. there's a loose-part hole in my neck. it's where you start calling my act and my bluff and my love all ridiculous. i'll rip it up. this has gone on for far too long. it's gone. i'm left and you're wrong. right around this time last year, we were duo-eschewing holiday cheer. next year, right around this time, you'll have a winter free of my stupid rhymes. last year, right around this time, i was starting to think that you could be mine. right around this time next year, you'll have to walk alone, 'cause i won't be here. so slit, slit, slit, and kill a kiss. snick, snick, snick. i'm sick of this shit. spit, spit, spit, 'cause this is it. slit, slit, slit. i'm sick of this shit.

7 - "into the air like a yellow balloon."

street stays shy, but the cold air hits like a reminder. these days i don't even know where the fuck to find her. kiss kiss, bang bang. drop dead. drop dead. it's missing, gang. drop dead. drop dead. at the very least drop anger. no? caught up in rooftop anchors? it's your loss. it's your cost. it's your debt. he's heard it all before. i'll be more direct. "hi, kids: it goes like this." kiss this gang bang. drop dead. drop dead. hit it and ran. drop dead. drop dead. but today i'm making motion to sail. i'm going to leave this one-man island behind. so gone are the days of hoping you'd fail and knowing you'd be the one that i let see my insides. it's high time we fly; it's high tide. so let's let go and bellow so that they know a yellow sun is rising. in a few minutes it'll be high noon. i'm done despising. gonna close my eyes, inhale. it's my due time.

6 - flesh

he thinks he's god in the flesh. she drinks these gauze-in-defence lies that he spits. he's just a chickenshit. he's just dreaming of her leaving. strip tease. she sings about being. he can never grab ahold of months. they always pass too fast. she can never only hold him once. days always have to amass in the end so they pretend no amount of time means anything. he's out of rhymes. she's everything but pretend. she'll leave eventually. it's last call, and that's all. he's just dreaming of her leaving. strip these feelings of all meaning. soon as she's got in his flesh, she's gone in a flash, and that's all. that's all.

5 - semper fugitive

i said, "kill the lights," he said, "hit the switch." i said, "thrill delights," he said, "hit this bitch upside her face." it's such a disgrace. but i did it anyway. and i didn't even say, "hit the lights." and he didn't even say, "kill the switch." instead, i said, "time, it flies." and he said, "kill this witch." and i did. i ruined it. upon waking i made a vow. keep on taking, i'll make it out. i'll be on the run forever. it doesn't bother me. my heart is only as head-strong as the rest of my body.

4 - misty

spending these winter nights with this miss-splintered sight, i blink my eyes, and i drink my cries. guess cold and sadness are just in vogue. all the memories that lust invokes. i cough and swear, and my lungs are bare. two months and forever. he's stumped and i'm severed. funny how things work out—i was the vain one and he was the wildlife. hum it, or sing about another pain: when am i gonna smile like the way i used to just last year, when i was fucking honest? these days i guess you must not hear when i alone will call you on it. spending these winter nights with this miss-splintered sight, i spit and tear at this heart i bear. two months and forever. he's stumped and i'm severed. funny how things work out—i was the vain one and he was the wildlife. hum it, or sing about another pain: when am i gonna smile like the way i used to just last year, when i wasn't so haunted? these days i guess you must not hear that i am all you fucking wanted.

3 - rip movie nights/dead poet's sobriety

she keeps trying to smile harder, but he's every time a firestarter, feeling more and more like a tired martyr. he's angry for no fucking reason but even though she's always in season, well, he just can't keep his heart from seizing up. he works so much for so little to no touch. he's so brittle. she keeps her attire formal and smarter than the next girl. he sleeps while on fire, normal, and heart-burns when the sex works its way right out of such a bright picture. makes him wonder why he goes on every night hanging at the light fixture waiting for her slightest come-ons. he's a 'no-downers, no-uppers' case who never uses capitals. she can't slow down her 'so-outer-space' blues, and her youth is passing slow. she's wasting it on him. minute by minute by minute. she's wasting her life with him. the days go by and he's still in it. he flushes. "so, what do you, with armour, uh, plan on doing now?" she doesn't know what to rue. the camera pans. she's climbing out.

2 - not one but two pairs of pliers

i'm forever going to picture us as we never were: happy and in love. trusty and so mature. clapping, hand-in-glove. is that wrong? so lock me up and swallow the key. it'd be more or less par for the course. so, like me, i'll keep wallowing see; you can be whore, or dress up for the remorse. it's so wrong. so kiss me deadly, risky red meat, whiskey when we, tipsy, set free all of your black doves. all that you hacked off. i'm hollow, you're packed up. leaving. it's autumn, that makes sense. me, then, kissed god, and back breaks end. hiss. so long.

1 - november pain

hold on a sec, just need some rest and relapsation from this pace that's such a maze and gotta keep the music playing so i can't hear the sounds always emanating from your room at the end of the hall, the sex and the crying and all the phone calls, the goodnight fuck and the judas-miss. my fistfight luck that you dismiss. just wish i wasn't in stasis, in places that her memory erases. drowning in bathtubs that won't drain, sounding off dead loves that don't stain. it's enough to make you stop and think and drop and drink your way to the floor on the way out the door. go ahead. call me a whore again. i'm just in it for the rent money. my landlord can't fix this dent but he can give me those weary looks i was wearily looking for. swallow these teary rooks. what was she really looking for?

part two of day four

Character sighed and walked back to his room. His life was a swiftly sinking gannet. If only he could get the oil stains out of his eyes. He blinked a few times and pulled thumb and forefinger from his temples to the bridge of his nose, ruffling pink manhole covers on the way. It was a mess. He was far too much one for melodrama anyway, but it was still a mess. He wished it wasn't always two or three in the morning. It was too hard to think, and the refrigerator hum, and the sink drip, and

He woke up the next morning. His computer was still on, and Rushmore was still in the open tray of the DVD player. There was a grease smudge on the top side, but it wasn't quite worth either cleaning up or mentioning upon return. That was just the way of the world. "So you're not attracted to me. C'est la vie." Anyway the guy at the video rental place was a bit of a dick. Character lulled down the hallway, hardly touching the floor, feeling pulled slightly by something behind him and a few feet to his upper right. There was no mail. It was a Saturday, of course. Saturday morning. Afternoon. What time was it?

It was not until a few days later that Character and Analae first talked. She was putting a sock on her left foot, pulling it up her calf, and Character, again, was stepping back into the apartment from checking the mail. There was a package for him, a blue and black houndstooth scarf that he had ordered online some weeks prior. Her other sock was a different colour and her cheeks were somewhat flushed. She glanced from him, to his package, and then to the walls.

"Are you the uh the guy who wrote this stuff?"

Character was startled a little. "Yeah that's me."

"Yeah cause I asked Harry and he said it was one of his roommates and that it was probably the skinny one. I uh wasn't sure if you were more or less skinny than your other roommate."

Character nodded.

"I mean I haven't really seen him." A breath. "Yet." Another. "I mean I don't mean that you're too skinny or that it's a bad thing or that

Character raised his right hand, half in protest, half in absolution. He wasn't used to much dialogue anymore, but deep inside he knew it didn't matter how skinny he was really. He nodded blearily.

"But yeah... I read it all last time I was over. It's really..." she paused and lent to her voice a certain gravitas "interesting. I mean is it original?"

"Yeah. Um. I don't know. It just sorta came to me one night. For all I know I was just channelling some eighties tv show or something. You should copy a line or two and google it just to make sure."

She adjusted her hair. "I did. Um. I wrote it all down." She bit her lip. "Last time I was here. I was just so impressed. I fell in love with it a bit and then I thought i mean what if the landlord comes in and orders you to paint over it? Or something dumb like that. And then the next time I come back it's gone forever. I'd just keep remembering it at random times for the rest of my life and wishing I'd written it down. And i thought about that and it made me want to cry like a stupid eight-year old girl. So I copied it down right then and there so I could have it... you know... concretely. I didn't think to google it though." Another pause. "Although I suppose it could have been... not ... written by you... and still... not on the internet." She half-smiled, seemingly unintentionally. The wildlife guidebook of the wallflower. "It's really good, though." In Character's head "Ooh La La" started playing again. That song never put out. A piano melody like that, and a two-rhyme chorus. Pah. She half-smiled again. "Does it have... a title?"

Character blinked and turned his head a little. "Yeah. It's called." Again, a pause. "Uhm. 'What" He pointed at the closed door behind her, "are you doing with a guy like him?'" Again, a half-smile, this time with the other side of her mouth. She turned her face down a little, then brightened up and faced him.

"I like being contradictory." She leaned in and kissed him quickly on the cheek, reached behind him, and opened the door. "Well. Goodbye then."

As she was opening the front door to the building, Character called after her. "At least I had the balls not to make a dick joke of that!" and she laughed in a way that set off the marble floor of the entrance way. He closed the door with the space in between his shoulder blades and leaned on it, wistfully. "C'est la vie." he muttered to himself, and part of him was sad because it felt more trite than anything. He sauntered back to the bathroom to shower. "Shoot me on the lips. Kiss me in the face." In the tub he sat crouched in the fetal position for a few minutes before actually washing himself. There was red, frizzy hair in the drain so the water slowly licked up his toe-inlets and the thick veins on the top of his feet. He wondered about wrinkling, but not about aging. He'd never figured on living long enough to grow old. By the time he was done, Antimony had woken up, anyway, and was knocking on the bathroom door. So it goes, huh.

to something permanent

it kills like pink elephants. it rings like pill telephones. false or not at all. all sore, caught, and i'll waste my days away like this. i'll waste my ways. a day like this? call me a dumb waiter, all i have on my hands is time and signs. call-up—a scrum player—but i love her demands and diamond eyes and she hates my dying sighs. i'll read, i'll redial and speed-wile while speeding around in circles. i'll bleed in the ground she hurdles with such grace, lips, marchpane, a starch pace in this stark race. with pea-coat kisses and remote misses i'll touch faith in such places, lose face. i'm bruised, tasteless and from the landing banged up. please take my hand, don't hang up.

from sleep

dear me: by the time you get this letter you'll be free, and i suppose it's for the better. you need sleep, but these dreams will never be clean, or, for that matter, stop getting wetter and believe me, you'll never get her sweet screams or even the measly pleasure of getting to bed her mean streets. drums beat to something permanent: the numb deeps or at least a burning end. come, steep in something permanent. unclean but at least you're born again. her gleam's peaks, her mean streaks. you teen freak, you weak fiend, you keen creep. you speak? please. get yourself back together. sincerely, your indebtor, real me.

day three: redemption & exemptions

Character was drawing red exes all over the calendar. It was September 4th. He wasn't quite sure where, or why, all the time had gone. And even though it all went wrong, he though to himself, I'll stand before the lord of song with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah.

No. No. That was a lie. There were criticisms, too. He was justifiably bitter and cynical. He searched for a meaning, a reason. Was it Fall already? It wasn't, of course; not for another 17 days. But still. He never paid as much attention to equinoxes and solstices as he did to calendar pages. In his mind, his days were numbered, and every new month meant ripping away the dead husk of the old one, replete with arrow wounds where X had marked a spot of misery or misfortune — or maybe just misremembering.

Last night he had ended up on the phone with a girl he knew from high school. They talked until all the plumbers and magicians were at home, safe in bed from wracking self-doubt and dreams of career suicide. He could never quite figure what they saw in each other. He had started, as a way to escape a conversation he was too bored not to have, to write, blindly flying across a spare piece of lined paper that had been lying within reach. This had not let up overnight. He was writing everything, everywhere. By now the September page had been filled to bursting with his thoughts and his exes. He contemplated stutteringly turning the page to continue on with his work, but thought better of it. Time was inconstant enough, making a lunatic ass of himself whenever sanity sought to control him, without obnoxiously speeding through the remaining months of the year in a sad fit of excess. He wasn't even writing, he was dimly aware, anything worth reading. Just —

He gave up and went to answer the doorbell. He didn't recognize the face behind the peephole. It was solemn, unsmiling. He wasn't in the mood tonight. Tonight...

Tonight he was in the mood for dancing. For painting. For something. For anything. Tonight he was in the mood to transcend everything and go straight to fifth base. His birthday was in a few weeks. That was reason enough.

A fly buzzed furiously by. This one was alone, and smaller, than the ones that had visited during the summer. Like a death throe from the greater entity of flies, a desperado that refused to land. He laughed at himself for not really making sense. It was reason enough.

a city visible but un-scene

blow a kiss and stow your hiss away, i won't bite anymore. 'cause it's saturday night prayers and sunday morning lights. and now i'm dumb from this plastic crap riff-raff shit that drowns my steps and thoughts. and now i'm getting hot. i'm so hard to turn off. a quiet "can't," a little lie, the riot tents, the longest lines. i need you to need me more than you need this. i've seen you less greedy before. can't you leave it alone? i should have known. walking off, feet rotting the dirt. i'll remember, i'm just meant for fucking off, feet caught in the hurt. i'll remember, i'm just meant for following the crowd, swallowing my proud anger and your refusal to apologize. if you still do i'll call it nice instead of off. that's the only way you blow me anyway. but after all this is done, who would you rather be? the loner or the one bemoaned? oh, seriously. you're gonna make mistakes, you know. eventually. shake your hips. take your lips back, they're not mine anymore. now it's saturday night dares and sunday morning slights. and now that all this is done, who would you rather be? the beater or the broken-boned? be serious, baby. you've gone and made a mistake now. pretend you see. and come on, baby, talk to me: after all of this is gone, who would you rather be? the seagulls, or the ocean foam?

a long time coming

It was late at night. The hour at which taxis alone, taxis and stragglers, and early early-morning wakebirds mistakebirds, ride the streets. Mostly just taxis.

Character was listless relentless lackluster all over some stupid parkbench, tackling his fear of the dark by playing into its hands. Outside dark was easier to deal with than inside dark, in any case. He drifted in and out of being tired, watching the flicking lights slide by. 485-8585. There's always someone who needs to get somewhere, somewhere. He zigged/zagged through markets and demands bullshit. Gravity was bearish. He was a blow-up float in his own tickertape parade. 7 3/4. 7 1/2. Somewhere in there was his apartment. His concept of home was so fractured nowadays. The costs rose, slowly, steadily, like taxi meters. His wallet was dead and stuffed with empty. He hummed

i did my best, it wasn't much.
i couldn't feel, so i learned to touch.

Across the street, the lamppost bathed him in a sickly light. i've told the truth, i didn't come all this way to fool you. Somehow, there must have been a gap between the glass and the metal,
yeah even though it all went wrong, i'll stand right here before the lord of Song, flies had obviously gotten in.

Their dead corpses, wings and not much else, of course he thought, who needs rationality when you can fly, perhaps this is the logic behind the non-invention of flying cars, had pooled together into a crocodilian sort of face. It shed no tears but light.

Oh to be so great. A long thin metal tail, and jaws composed of decaying mandibles. He was sweaty. with nothing on my lips but hallelujah.

He was in the mood, he realized, for something. Were he but a newcomer to this town, he shuffled, he might ask a taxi driver to take him, "downtown, where all the action is at" or some such nonsense but he wasn't really smart enough to play that dumb. Thoughts fluttered at him like moths, clustering and flustering his naked, cluttered, random body. As they alit, wings aflitter, they fried. His rashness stood out against the darkness and to it they came. He wanted eightballs, highballs, speedballs, powerballs. He wanted handholding maintenant. Harder better faster stronger. He started singing again, getting up and measuredly falling eastwards, though how quickly he could not tell. you say i took the name in vain. i don't even know then name, but if i did, well, really, what's it to you?

there's a blaze of light in ever word, he gasped for breath, it doesn't matter which you heard, the holy or the broken hallelujah.

In earlier years he might have felt sorry for the crocodile-mouth dead flies, but this was before he moved into the apartment. This was, he supposed, one of the pitfalls of shopping for a place, it's difficult to encounter all the possible problems that might arise living somewhere in a quarter-hour. One such possible problem was the existence of very large houseflies. He no longer trusted dark spots unless he was wearing his glasses. Frequently they would start to move. They were easy enough to kill; their continued existence brought out a sort of animal rage in the roommates, and a repeated banging of something papery, light and yet — they didn't get the newspaper, which Character sometimes regretted during scrambles to find appropriate weaponry, although the BestBuy flyers that always seemed to clog up their mailbox made decent enough substitutes — heavy and worthless enough to use for fly-killing, against a wall. There was always blood. So far as they could tell the flies did not bite or sting but they did bleed. Parts of Harry knew this was only to make the roommates feel guilty for their dirty deeds. The blood raised them up, made them human. Unsurprising, then, that they were so maddening in their refusal to disappear entirely. And so whack whack whack whack you goddamn motherfucker whack the roommates lost their sympathy for various families of Insectidae — not that they were particularly fond of them to begin with, of course.

And like this, wholly unsteadily, he made his way across the fourfivesix a.m. streets, as grey as the pavement he walked and twice as cracked. He was looking for a fix.

Overhead, the sun unfurled, heavenly, westward, though, how quickly, he could not tell.

the fighting temeraire

i'm prince rainiest the third. in a rinse-rain he kissed the word "tomorrow" and the number "11." his sorrow became dumber and leaden and fell away by pieces. until a day when she says "stop," keep going. it's the only way to stay sane these days; drops keep growing and plowing their way down my "please" face. they form a crown around my shoes, a smattering of "whatsamatter, kid?," a worn-up down that surrounds my dues, and splattering an "i don't matter" king. but i'm just prince rainiest the third. to evince pain he just demurred and turned his face away. no yearnings came today, he'll have to wait 'til tomorrow at eleven and borrow a mask, and a ring, and a throne, and some grace for a task where he'll sing for a bone and his place and the key to the royal coffer for he can't take his thoughts up off her. for a kiss he'll dismiss all of his manservants. he'll lean in with a grin and a face that's nervous and hope that she'll acquiesce to float and feel happiness.

lo-fi

like a steamship with only words to live, we gobble, gargle and then burn the midnight oil to piss. we're kept hanging on by pocketbook mistakes. come home to bed to find a pick-locket just took the drapes. so we keep drumming, waiting for whatever's coming and the last thing that gets summoned is the always heat of the moment. can you tell me why i feel so hoarse? i can't stop ponying up tears from the lint-encrusted depths of my eyes. can you tell me why i feel no remorse? i want to love 'em and leave 'em but my throat always gets stuck on goodbyes. the water never washes anything away. the rust just keeps building up. and i never sleep either, at least not until you're away. the lust is all that's keeping us together in my mind. i know it's ill-defined through the haze that cloaks my eyes but i could have sworn i saw a dagger in your alibis. you think you look good while smoking, and i look good in mirrors. you are my queen but i am no king, and (no jest) i fucking revere us.

marshmallow bananas

it's high time for high tide to hogtie the tongue-timed. she chimed in but i couldn't hear her over the rhyme din and the leak spin; i couldn't get near her. it was a weak win. a pause. did you mean this? a cause? please. have you seen a kiss romantic as that? slow-dancing, is that what i think it is? not what i think of this, but what this thinks of me. abet this sick story. we want to vanish to venice, see how deep the seine is. i wanted to be an actor; went through life actin' it, but if the eyes are the windows to the soul, then the mouth is the door and i've got a foot in it, and i'm about to swallow it whole. i'll take a long walk with some short-sighted peers. the last man to yell "abort!" died in fear. these are rough times for tough guys around here. in a town where fluff flies you'd best believe huff lies around here. my ears are ringing off the hook. we'll make this thing by the book or by crook. we want to vanish to venice, see how deep the seine is by the book or by crook. not what this thinks of me, but what i think of this. wanna bet? this is for me. i know it is. fuck every prick history. i know this is for me.

writing childhood hockey again

Character was in the hallway, when Harry emerged eventually, drawing patterns on the wall. Not in or obtrusively. At ankle level. Little black lines here and there. It was almost cute. He was reminiscing about his childhood. He'd grown up in a bad neighbourhood. Riding his bike, training-wheels-less, through sidewalk cracks and dogshit, dodging ghetto gepettoes and drugs that he hadn't at the time realized were there. I don't think he realized, back then, the importance of any of it. He was just being, in that way children are. The poverty was just life. It never really affected him. Then his parents moved a little to the north. The mean streets of Westmount were just a wholly different type of cutthroat. Old blood, old money. He didn't believe in ghosts, not then not now, holy or otherwise, although he did like them conceptually and in songtitles when they meant memories and forgotten feelings, trading places like fading faces, but Westmount was definitely a ghost township if ever there was one. The façades. Oh god, the façades. They were everywhere; brick, make-up, chequebook, fender, fuck fuck fuck. Everything. The smiles were wanton and rampant and everyone was up to his neck in self-righteousness. He made it through, though. His out had been hockey. He hadn't responded to any ropings-in, any accusatory, finger-pointing posters. I want YOU to waste your youth skating in circles. No, he'd seen another poster entirely. Tight fingers sink gunslingers. Dead or alive, he wanted to be a goalie.

He'd skated down, I guess, between the pipes. There was no time to tap any remorse code messages on the red steel, his mom had put the pads on the wrong legs at first and had had to go through them, strap by aching strap, loosening, removing, and then redoing. He'd barely made it out on time. He probably stopped the first shot he faced, and the second, and maybe the third and fourth and fifth. He probably let a few in but came out of it feeling that kind of kiddy giddy high that creates behavioural patterns. And voilà: he spent a lot of his youth skating in circles around the defensive zone face-off dots, waiting for something, anything, to come his way. A metaphor, if you will, for his problems later on in life. There was never enough adversity for his tastes. You figure after a while someone like that's bound to do something stupid like race an oncoming forward to the puck at the blueline. And whether or not he makes it there first, and whether or not he sprawls the right way and miraculously knocks the puck away, and whether or not the forward misses the net anyway, he decides to try it again, maybe. Maybe. It happens.

a few paragraphs

They had stopped getting the newspaper a month or two earlier. Current events weighed on Character. The cost weighed on Antimony’s wallet. Harry never read them enough to even take them lightly. A silent consensus (of sorts; as you might have guessed, this was the only kind of consensus the three ever arrived at) was reached. It stopped coming. They found new ways to occupy their mornings.

Harry slept in more. Character worried more. Antimony went in to school earlier. They were an odd company, the id, the ego and the alter ego. A sittragicom of sorts. None of them had the balls or the time to write a pilot episode, though. Character had half-heartedly tried to make a pilot light joke once or twice, but neither of his roommates had laughed. It happens.

This particular avant-meridian caught the trio sleepily and solemnly unaware of a terrorist attack that had gone on in some far-off corner of the western world the night before. The mourning and patriotism were just rearing their geary heads. There was a television, I suppose, if you could call it that. The only thing they saw on it was dust, and not from very far away, either, so the roots, mixed-dead-language, were both shallow and meaningless here. The radio, too, was silent. They were cut off from the world, awash in an island of silence, lies and liaisons with telescopes and stargazer lilies. They did not function like normal people.

In this spirit of abnormalcy, Antimony went jogging. Whenever he went off wandering and started wondering his mind would go money laundering. His thoughts were easily the most valuable ones the apartment produced. He had a career ahead of him. They lived in Montreal, under the shadow of the very summit of veracity, but he had better places to go. Truth concerned him only so much as it could be used as a means to an end. And so he was a friend to the fiends and did nothing to curb cocaine use. He let the grunge build up when it suited him. And when it didn't, he went jogging. He reminisced, from under his jetset black hair, about Character. A younger, fresher-laced, straighter-faced Character.

As fans tie fantasies, like Hermesian wings, to the ankles of their heroes, so, in his blundering, did this Character tear asunder the sundry tundra of his hundred hungry minds. The stress of his teen years was too much to bare his skinny hips and awkward ribs to the world. His pregnant, penitent, solemnly raging desires went unnoticed. In stations of the metro, in grocery store checkout lines, he was cloistered up inside. His dry split lips spilt no tales, his effusive veins moaned in vain. His walls were unbreakable. He was a fortress, constantly under siege. From the inside. I sincerely wish it had been resolved in a battle. The Battle of Stalingrad rather than Leningrad. I don't know. For his sake — he loves grandeur and artifice — it should have been a crack bang powhatan pow-wow. An explosion of feathers and anti-aircraft guns. Takka takka takka tik tik tik takka takka. Drums and the most intense high you ever hat. It sort of diffused. Like a crowd in a lobby somewhere. The agonizing slowness would have killed him if the siege hadn't starved him, fractionally, to death already. It happens. Noms de plume are too easy to come by these days, anyway, to say nothing of the guns of the never home. Maybe it had been for the better. But he had changed, he had changed, slowly, impurely, he came into his shaky own.

This exercise-as-catharsis conception was not unique to the tallest of the three. Character had a punching bag in his room. As they lived in an apartment, it was not bolted to the ceiling, but lay on the floor in a corner. Every now and then, in fits of rage and self-hatred, he would beat his impertinent and unimportant fists against it uselessly and collapse, panting, on top of it, the way he might ride a pummel-horse, chest heaving and galloping, legs abandoned to the breeze behind him, arms wrapped around a head no doubt left in someone's bed somewhere. In French class once he had meditated on the irony of the horse's head in the capo's bed. Maybe an alternate universe culture mob boss would receive the heart. The head was pretty useless anyway. All that came of it were thoughts and coughs and no days off.

For his part, Harry walked the length of NDG nights, bathed in calmly neon lights. Nocturning of tables meant nothing anymore. The night was practically as bright as the day. Modernity, the future, had, like it did in so many situations, blurred the line between black and white. Defibrillators and such. Inter-racial couples. Ha. He paced like a clock, like a ticking time bomb that will never ever explode through crackedpavement streets and immigrant apartment complexes, rife with inferiorities and gods. He saw no one, and was seen by fewer still.

it takes a planet of billions to hold us back

bare hands and naked eyes, my pickup lines are really compact. broken glass and raking sighs, my fuck-up fines are chilly and cracked. i'm axing my fears away as fast as i can hit 'em. you're taxing your "heres" and may's as slow as a quicksand victim. i put the online in nonlinear. you put the "i'm fine" in "not this, dear." but we're so good at talking it out. sad candles, flames and steam. in the hood and stalking with clout, mad handles, game, and a gleam in my grills. end my ills, s'il te plait. got hell to play, a mile left to race, but a smile on my face. i'm a wind and i'm crushing. you won't rescind but we're not rushing. i'm a misanthrope, you're a liberal. i'll try to kiss and rope you in. pivotal lines go unheard. i'll sit and wait and watch our minds intertwine and grow a cure.

cut the fuck up

still stuck in still hives, drowning in your dust moats. ill-will fucking still cries, hounding friends in rust coats. the wind winds through these codex passages. i'm moving on to better and stronger things. the sand sings. you need no ex-pats in this. absence makes the heart go wandering. had enough of this shit-taking, bit of hit-or-mistaken. cry and the world laughs at you, laugh and you laugh alone. die and cenotaphs laugh too, pass on? you'll have to groan and shudder like the cold mettle i know you don't possess. sinking in the north-atlantic. hands, upper, break the "i'll settle." i know you're in distress, but i can't stop being shy and frantic. don't acknowledge me, i don't need apologies. i'll keep up my never-ending runs. please don't start my lips from coming undone. and now you see him, now you don't want to. how museums turned from a yawn to a blast to a wreck, titanic: hold fast to my neck, don't panic. it's women and children first, and you're both of. keep winning and you'll be cursed. please don't ghost us.

Pirouette

The newspapers were right: I'm going to drink myself to death tonight. Wait, stop, back up. I just caught myself taking myself seriously again. Weight drops, facts, loves. Eyes. Lust, not myself, was faking nice well. Seriously? Again? I'm shocked and a pallbearer. It's locked in: a call fearer. I don't want to hear the news. Shut myself back in with a tear and a bruise in a shallow place, wearing away at this callow face. So what if I'm clichéd? Let's call this heart a three of spades and start digging me up. Send a kiss through the mail and keep on rigging me luck. Knowing this, I won't bail but I may stop to waste my hunch money. Something about the knows kept the launch runny, but on this jaunt through Hell, I'll still want to taste your smell. There're only a million ways to say "Better to burn out than fade away." I'm not the one from your dreams: things are just the way the seams tear me an opening. You spared me the jokes and things.

manus haec inimica tyrannis

how many slaves did you enlist to build this wall? too scared to deal with whatever free-for-all? berlin has got shit on my feelings. how many generations until it falls? how could you ever love a horde like the mongols? i can see you through the brickwork, and i'm trying so goddamn hard to make this thick jerk seem convincing despite the joy i take in wincing. keep hiding among the parapets, we'll see how corrupt power gets when i make a move to invade lands for which you prayed. we're both haunted; neither of us wants this.

like the english patient, but more breakdowns

i swear the sigh of relief you heard wasn't from my lips. mine, sure, but not mine, and in case you're wondering what gives, i apologize for the two-facedness and the saying what you want to hear. it's just that to see you trace it, miss, as far as warmth i've got naught to fear. i just wish going to bed alone wasn't set in stone. and it's you, doctor, i presume and we met while traveling through my room. it's a jungle in here, but darling, so long as you don't tumble, don't fear. i'm struck and/or stuck mute. (i'm half-tempted to say, "fuck cute," but my heart's acting up again. my lungs are squeezing shut and playing the part's acting, but again these rungs are teasing shut-ins.) it's jurisprudence, it's written in cold blood. it's your twist movements, and i'm smitten in the bud. i just wish going to bed alone wasn't set in stone. i presume these writings will also spell my doom.

"you needed nothing of mine" (shitty eyes)

i miss the snow, the miles and miles to go. such a barometer of our society, white gets grey and then fuck purity. through the flakes you'd rise higher and higher, kept adrift above these lakes on wings of my stupid, dumb desire. take this advice: never stop to think or look twice. where faces are wreckful and bites go for a neckful you're better off aloft. i'd tell you to save yourself but i know you're out of my range anyway. i know i won't have to say you fell 'cause i know you know that i'm strange, and he may treat you real nice but never stop to drink or fuck twice. keep flying, i'll see you around. i'll keep trying to make it off the ground.