heart ache
sometimes friends just suck… and suck a lot.
to ellen.
Hibernian friend, you left the dance floor in clonky wingtip heels and graced the snack table with your presence. you shoved some corn chips in your mouth, talking loudly and wildly about der baader meinhof. i watched as some of the fried maize bits cascaded in rumble tumble from the corners of your lips and found themselves plastered to your pimpled chin.
one…two…three…four… the band started to tumble rumble. we raised our pit stained silk blouses to the heavens and danced danced danced in orgiastic expectation. “oh great god Dionysus, plunge your horns inside our wames and impregnate us with hungry fetuses; hedonistic babes of the hermetic dawn.” theosophy. you whispered through the hole in your hubris that you believed in the afterlife.
when i die, carry me sad and lonesome through the night, to the edge of that great river- the hudson. burn my body on the marge of lake labarge. scatter my ashes in the winds of the winsome, oh Pollyanna. then take a steaming piss at the corner where no ends meet.
I gave him 2 dollars for his time, he said “bless your heart when you’re dead.”
i feel a deep fear when my mortality is thrown unexpectedly at my eyes and ears. i touch my lips with my fingertips, feel the nerve synapses fire, and realize i’m still here. as i grow older, my legs will dissolve into puddles of flesh and veins, shoved willy nilly into chunky clunky wingtip heels. you’ll see me hobble on fulton street, plastic bonnet on my head to protect against the rain, purse clutched vulnerably in my shaking hands, the smell of fish ripe in the hot and musty city. then one day i’ll complete the subtle, on a geological timescale, transition from flesh to dust. and from dust to amino acids to protein chains, i will reconstitute one day. but memory- the soul?- the essence of being?!- will never return. just end. like a wiped hard drive. and the great cogs of life will continue to roll on, even if my hand gets stuck in the gears.
