The smell is metallic,


Like the muddle of sweat and a bitter perfume


Suspended in suffocating heat.

It is unbearable.
So much like iron that I swear blood is pooling in my nostrils. 


Will it drip onto my white shirt? 


I look down—


My shirt is streaked with red. 




I hurry through the closing door. 


Something causes the fluid in my veins to run quickly.



As I walk to her apartment I consume
One cigarette
After
Another. 


My throat burns,


My mouth turns dry and thick,


But my mind clears as if with each exhale I expel a little piece of a wish.




I change my shirt and clean my face.


I am now a new, dressed-up, decaying thing.




Tonight we shall ride a wave of liquid-fueled bliss. 


Tonight we shall fold ourselves into the brightness of our vices. 

We will not see the cracks in the walls. 


We will not hear the ticking of the clock.


Waxing louder,


Waning softer,


Sounding at intervals that match the coursing of our minds—


ANGER, Ambivalence, indifference, EXUBERANCE, Belligerence, regret. 

TICK, Tick, tock, TICK, Tick, tock.




More people. 


We move from apartment to street,


From street to avenue,


From avenue to a ******* box brimming with music,


And giddiness,


And little tabs on tongues that make the air visible and electric. 



We are one with the tragic ubiquities that march down concrete paths
to tiny oblivions.
Members of an organism that feeds on the wild night. 



We do not feel the cold,


The heat,


The pain,


The worry,


The wetness of blood and spit. 



We feel only feel that which has replaced our insides: 


Chemicals,


Feigned happiness,


Perceptions of worth and importance dressed in purchased smiles,

Perceived in strobing lights. 




I think that I will make myself sick,


Or fade into a nothingness that I create. 



I think that I shall glimpse into nonexistence


Just to see what I may find.



I am afraid though. 


These conflicting moments are too much for me to bear. 


And the coming-down is like falling thirteen stories onto a bed of red  cement and broken glass

,
Where I share tales of decadence, conquest and pleasure with rats and refuse.




Later,
I see and smell everything as I sit drinking fire by a window.


I feel the earth move a little.


There is a crack. 


I hear a sound that is not a horn or a siren or a reveler’s shout.


In the crack I see a man at his desk,


Staring at a glass,


His head in one hand. 



With his other hand the desk-bound man taps a pen.
With that pen he then scribbles the following:

          A boy can hardly kiss a girl's neck and breathe at the same time, eager to break himself upon her very heart. The girl smiles because she knows that with the pulsing flood of flesh and blood the boy will leave a part of his soul inside her. A second girl weeps bitterly, for in that moment all the little parts of that boy that she had stolen with every peck and every touch are ripped wholly from her.  She weeps because her love has become a man without her. And her warm, salty tears wash over the empty bed until she feels as if she is drowning.




The man at the desk pauses,
Ponders,
Then adds:

          We love for a moment, and in that moment we promise the pain of our leaving.




The whiskey the desk-bound man drinks is nearly finished.


Its love has made him warm and content,
.
Yet after those few insidious hours,


Alone,


The pain of its leaving will be a small torture. 


His bed will be barren,


His mind will be full,


And he will make himself sick, staring into emptiness until his next plunge.