Every Night

The same things run through his head every night;

The whisky bottle.  No, not back to that.  He’d been down that road.  He’d been to the bottom of that.  It was part of what got him here.

The other thing.  A series of sensations.  The decision made, then a kind of gentle hardening of his mind.  It will not change now.

He feels his face twist into a smile.  It makes him happy now, that thought which used to turn him so sad: no one knows where he is, what he’s doing.  No one cares, is wondering.   He does not have a thought-self, living in someone else’s mind.

He puts on shoes, and heavy clothes, in spite of the heat.  The feeling of lightness, of freedom, leaving all that behind.  He leaves the apartment without the mobile phone, the laptop, no books, no music player.  The stacks of records and books that he spent so much on, so much in time and money, they will belong to someone else now.  His face is concerned and focused as he locks the door.  Then he turns, feels the tether breaking.  He owns nothing.  Rid of it.

Wooden stairs, always creaking, about to fall apart.  He walks out the door of the apartment building, pauses, turns toward the trash cans.  In go his keys.  He drops them and they hit the trash inside with an uncertain scrape.  He smiles, an average smile, and easy smile.

Concrete, the sidewalk.  Smiling, avoiding eye contact with neighbors.  For a moment, he wishes for a soundtrack, for his player – but he has left all that.  He hops the thick metal rail.  Different concrete now, the walkway beside the wide road.  Up the bridge.

Tall fence gives way to short, waist-high fence as the land below gives way to water.  Not too much thought.  Snapshots.  He is standing on the bridge.  He is perched on the top of the fence.  He is in the air, a man collaged onto the open sky.

Then water.

a memory

I am a shell, a gaunt, a wraith.  I am the memory of a man that was, and is not.

On the way home from the train, crossing the bridge on the footpath, a man was jerking off.  He hid behind a steel support beam so that no one would notice until they got close.  I blocked the view with a box I was carrying, but had to glance back to make sure he did not move closer.  As I glanced back, he moved into the center of the walkway, displaying his performance lewdly, a challenge.  I was far enough away to just keep walking.

It reminded me of something else.  It was hot and humid enough to break records, and my office was not adequately air conditioned.  I took a break and went to a large air-conditioned chain bookstore.  I browsed, asked an employee about the reading that night, bought a book.  Emerging into the bright sunlight and crowds on the sidewalk, somewhat refreshed, I headed back to work.  At the corner of the bookstore a man lay on the sidewalk, streams of khaki, sunglasses, and messenger bags flowing around him.  His white eyes bulged from his skin which was the color of deep dirt, bowling balls, ash.  His clothes in tatters, the remains of a polo shirt and khakis.  He lay face down, thrusting against the pavement.  Thousands of years ago men spilled their seed on the ground, hoping for fertility, for their family, for the crops.  Now there is only this concrete, this abrasive layer, impenetrable by tender flesh.  A flash of what must be happening to his skin against that sidewalk in my mind, dirt being ground into blood, I hurried on.

These men are images, images of hell, out of Bosch, of others, images and realities of the only hell that exists, the hell of men’s minds and the hell of this concrete steel monstrosity.  We are insignificant in the scope of what we have created.  This hell fills me, all footfalls on concrete, fingers only touching steel, or plastic.  It pushes out what was there when I came here, I vomit out myself to be force fed more of this.  I stumble home, an empty-eyed waste, the only thing telling my feet to move the beat playing in the plastic buds in my ears.

Even in this, my one joy, my soul only lives in the past.  Thirty year old music emulating hundred year old music.

Made sick by my addictions, I’ve started dreaming of you.

The beasts in me that I have kept chained, they have waited for so long, they hold up their chains, now decayed and broken.  They smile, and all I can see is the shine of their teeth.