Big Day Coming

Did I tell you of the dark and lonely road?  Can you feel the bullying wind? We'd wake up the neighbours but the neighbours are all dead. We'd walk into town but the town's burned down. There's a big day coming and I can hardly wait.  

The broken leaves cackle as they flee from the dying oak tree. Tiny hibernating mammals lie underground, their slow hearts grow cold and halt.  There's a big day coming and I can hardly wait.

The blackbirds are running out of time.  They panic and explode in the sky, bloody feathers, beaks and bits rain down.  For once the void inside attains equilibrium with the world.  Mirror of shame, mirror of guilt, reflects the way everything is.  We are the only ones left.  In a world where even the ghosts are gone, we are the most hardy of wraiths.

Watch the sun go down forever.  I've never been more ready.  I've never been... 

On darken streets tonight I see the warning lights, I see the sky catch fire.  The orange glow of eyelid interior turns to brown, turns to black.  From the hot soup of creation to the cool air of indifferent world, to the ultimate numb.  There's a big day coming, and I can hardly wait.

I take your skeletal claw in mine.  I look into the dark and seeping skull-holes. Watch the melting flesh dangle from your bones, and drip onto the cold earth.  We burn in the cold of death, and wait for everything to turn inside-out.  There's a big day coming, and I can hardly wait.

The fifth season creeps up like perversion, it smells of whiskey and the seaside. We played in the sun, a long time ago.  We played in pretty radiation and forgot.  Is this the season of relief?  Hell is here.  Heaven is here.  Pain and pleasure all played out, bored and old and all burnt away in the void.  The world is neverbeen.

There's a big day coming, and I can't even wait.

Reflections On The Water

Lunar twins shine and glisten in the heavy night air.  One sits on its throne in the indigo wrap, noble and imperious on the great cosmic map.  The other lurks lows and leers at me, elusive and mysterious, shifting with silent schemes.  On high a witness, ready to disown and decry.  Below, the accessory, in deeds complicit and in morals awry.  I dip down into the lake, through weathered reeds and wade through mud toward my shimmering confidante.   

Her body is blue and bloodless.  Swollen and bloated, ready to be infested, ready to rot.  My mind keeps asking about guilt, and why it ain't registering none.  So many fictitious folks are wracked by guilt, haunted by nightmares.  I'm feeling pragmatic.  There was little I could do, she was obsessed.  Those ideas she'd got, she just couldn't let go of them.  She couldn't handle reality.  It had to be this way.

Still, hauling her heavy frame from the muddy bank has prompts me to remember fonder terms.  The first time, the same venue and much the same audience.  The crickets called out as soft, sallow light guided me into her.  Our blood boiled and bubbled inside, and the water rocked and thrashed around us.  A hungry kiss and a hissing urge, the panting harmony of urgent union.  We rose to the moon and back down again, exhibitionists to the cosmic voyeur.  Redemption among flesh and bone, bona-fide salvation from the abyss.  Salvation, though not for long.

She said she wanted to float toward the stars, lose herself in the nebulae, drift forever a celestial body.  Ripples drifted out from us, circles of life, messages sent out across the dark expanse.  As I drag her in by her legs, different messages drift outwards.  Splashdown, finally.  She bobs and weaves, still being evasive, slipping from my reach.  I got her now though.  Got her.

Don't leave me.  I'm hurting.

You and me both.

It doesn't have to be like this.

It's over.  You've got to realise that.  I'm sorry.  I've got to go. Jesus.

Sweetheart...

She didn't get it.  Didn't understand.  Her tongue pushed out vitriol past contorted lips, birthing hurt in bloody pools of castigation.  Miscarried thoughts, stillborn words slopped out, all bloody and dripping with failure and blame.

I'm burping here in the cold water.  My reflux brings blood and pills half dissolved.  The rope is secured, a union made before a pair of lunar twins.  You're not rid of me.  Not now, not ever.  Sweetheart.

We'll float, now, babe.  We'll float.

h o r s e f e a t h e r s

we thought you were dead

let us tend to your wounds

wash the dust from your dry, broken lips

throw down your bones on this bed of

. . . h o r s e f e a t h e r s . . .

i am Gone, and this is Longing

we thought you were dead

Red Letter Day

  
It was a red letter day all right. John Law was turning up the heat. John Law wasn't the only one. The rumble on the street was that Jimmy Cohan was sending out droppers to keep the job hush-hush. He was taking out his own men to make sure they didn't talk. 

People were always talking. They talked a lot, people. They said I'd been hitting the giggle-juice too hard. That my brain was fried. They were right. Why else would I work for Jimmy Cohan? I guess a dog can only be a dog, a cat a cat. You take a hood from the slums and bars and what, you expect a choir boy? You can't change what you are. 

I was drifting around before I found my calling. Learned from the best can-opener there ever was. Paulie Fingers. There wasn't a safe he couldn't crack. He disappeared a few years ago. Whacked, sure, but by who and why? I found no answers, but you don't find many on the floor of the gin mill. Recently, I tried to lay off the sauce, get my act together. That's how I wound up with this job. Another good career move. Knocked over the wrong people. Diamonds and pearls, ice and marbles, and more mazuma than I'd ever seen in my life. I was there for the box-job. The buttons arrived just as we were through. They plugged Sid the Kid but the rest of us shot out way out. Somebody ratted on us. The swag got back to Cohan, but I never did get paid. 

I was about to skip. Packing a bag with a bottle or two, clutching a train ticket in a sweaty hand. 

"You look like a little flushed, Red. You feeling okay?" 

I turned to find Edie Cohan standing in furs and finery. Yeah, that's right, Cohan. Daughter of the big cheese. Forbidden fruit for the goon crew. Gams like a stairway to heaven, heart like the pit of hell. Here she was in my basement apartment while orders for my head were being placed. I just stood there, wondered if some Bruno had his piece aimed at the back of my head, waiting to take me down a lead-ladened highway. 

"I'm here alone." 

Sure you are, dollface. Eyes the colour of a summer evening's sky. Black hair like a curtain, to be drawn or veiled as required. Her lips didn't posture or pout, they remained matter-of-fact, with an innocence I assumed was greatly deceptive. Yeah, so she was a looker. Like any amount of them. But she was a formal invitation to dinner with the ballyhoos. Everything's on the menu, except the concrete footwear. That's the reason I never acknowledged her presence any time I visited the Cohan's. I'm clever, see? Just not clever enough. 

"Oh yeah? You ever heard of knocking? How'd you get in here, anyway?" 

"The door was open." 

Of course it was, Red, you left it open. Real clever. 

"Doesn't mean you can just swan right in here. What're you doing here anyway? This place will be crawling with buttons soon." 

Edie laughed and for once I thought she looked older than she was. Like she knows the score too well. 

"It'll take the police at least a couple of days before they come looking here." 

"Well what about the goon squad your father sent out. I'll be taken out. Or is that why you're here, to keep me busy? Well I'd like to, sweetcakes, but I'd prefer to die with my pants on." 

She wrinkled her nose up at my coarse words. It was a good-looking nose. 

"I don't like your manners." 

"Well I'm not crazy about yours, either. Now what are you here for?" 

"I'm in trouble." 

"What kind of trouble?" 

"From my father. I need your help." 

"What, you think I fell off the last melon wagon? Maybe you don't realise, honey, but you're part of this town's biggest gang family. Anyone who even gives you the once-over ends up as fish food. But you need my help?" 

"Yes. I'm trapped. I can't live, can't do anything." 

'What, the swanky pad not plush enough? Your allowance not big enough? You'll forgive me if I'm not buying." 

"I don't care if you buy it or not. My life is controlled by my father, I can't do anything without him demanding to know about it. You should have seen what it took to be here right now." 

"No I shouldn't. I don't want to know. You're going to get me killed. Now scram, will ya?" 

Starting to sob, she sat on the edge of an old armchair. Curious, the silk dress pressed against a scratched and mangy armrest. She looked old again. Old and tired. 

"You're not on the list. For the goons." 

That pricked up my ears. 

"Oh yeah?" 

"Daddy thought you were different. You weren't like the others. You had skills." 

"Damn right." 

"He said he could use a man like you." 

"I bet he could. Suddenly I'm in demand." 

"You also never sleazed all over me. You positively ignored me. That's another reason." 

I was starting to buy it. If it was a set-up, it wasn't a very good one. Then again, I was starting to buy it. 

"So how do you expect me to help?" 

She answered quickly, too quickly. 

"Take me away with you. Out west. Or to the south. Anywhere." 

I waved the half-packed bag at her. 

"Sure, yeah, we can survive on two bottles of bourbon and my whites. That should tide us for quite some time." 

She raised an eyebrow and stood up. I saw for first time the small case on the floor. 

"It's most of it. The stones and quite a lot of... what do you guys call it?" 

"Mazuma?" 

"Right. As precious as your whites are, Red, this case could be useful too." 

I was impressed. I was more than impressed. It's not everyday some dish arrives at your door with that kind of scratch. 

"Could be. So why don't you just split. Take off." 

"On my own? I'd last five seconds." 

"You're not scared I'll bump you off?" 

She laughed quietly. Perhaps it was my choice of words, but I thought it was the very notion that I could bump her off that amused her. I could tell this was a dame who certainly would be able to last five seconds. 

"You can't change what you are, Red. You're just wrong about what you are." 

The dame was the bee's knees. The 'rat' who put the heat on? Yeah, you guessed it. She had it all mapped out. All the crew accounted for, heat drawn to everyone except us. And, yeah, so I was sweet on her. There's that. And yeah, she was a looker. There's that too. I tell myself that's the reason I ignored her, I saved us both. I tell myself that some part of me knew the score all along. But who am I kidding, it was all Edie. Sitting on a train headed to the sun, away from streets awash with villainy. Under skies as blue as her eyes, I'm drying up. Can't ignore the dame now. 

Couldn't if I tried.