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.