The Devil's Dance

Youth lived the sweet life on the south side of the parking lot. But, the Devil's car was up for grabs, and it was either a BMW or a Bentley, but -- according to the stock market -- he didn't have that kind of money anymore. It was without an allotment that the wonder years had faded quickly enough to cause a musical era, but no artistic movement. Rebellion was left over for the teens in France, and matriarchy was being absorbed by the British walls with enough fervor to make a whole new revival of the Renaissance. Options being limited, the round about way that the trail leads to home base seems to be a good enough decision for the masses; however, with your coffee stained eyelids, you see a little opening on that same south side of the parking lot, and you've stolen the key to the car in the center, all red and glistening, with real, genuine leather seats. Nothing in there was tested on animals, unless you consider your neighbors animals too. You've got a plan to get out on the first train to the tiny town where it's too cold nine months of the year to remember you've left someone behind. It smells like marijuana by the oak tree that they've stationed themselves inside of, and there is a wafting breeze that tints the air with the realization that being "cool kids" only lasts as long as it's "cool" to be a waste of space.

People are starting to value the volume of the atmosphere.

They're left smoking their weed and wondering where I went.
We all left as they admired the veins in the leaves and the gum on the underside of their shoes. 

Marilyn

Pertaining to the beauty of youth, she was something of an obsolete expert. But when her hips felt like butter in the middle of April, all moldable and deceivingly tasteful, she was a mastermind in the rawest sense. Her lips, like chocolate shavings on a chocolate frosted chocolate cake, were a little too rich for the poor man to handle. Without a diamond adorning her every breath, she was unhappy enough to pretend that she was middle class in order to feel love. She met herself, all reflected like a grimy mirror, in a lovely man on the subway one afternoon, with her fur wrapped close to her slender shoulders and her breasts like pillows, and no matter what the honesty that hid underneath their made up facades was, they could’ve been the advertisement of the way the other half lived. Her cheeks and eyes were 14 carats and his teeth were pearls from the Mediterranean Sea. It was a little bit more than serendipity that they found one another on the season’s closing night, with glimmering stars even this far underground, so when she stole his heart and tucked it deep into her clutch, resting beside a notably blue box of diamonds from another man whose effortless wealth held her attention for long enough to prove that she was still a material snob, nobody was surprised. He slid to his knee beside the homeless man, muttering about the hibernation of the human race, and he watched her golden aura shimmering in the muted lights, and told her that he would never find another like her. She didn’t know her name. He didn’t know his. They only knew of a little spark of fantasy that they had found in that moment, manipulated by the senses to be something more of a beautiful memory made up of black-and-white film moments than anything that could’ve been manufactured by the Gods at all. It was much more man-made than anything else in the questionably close proximity of tomorrow. They stole away that night into the black velvet sky and red satin sheets of the hotel room with a veranda along the French quarter in the city that slept in the morning. The jazz music was still falling into her pillow when the bubbles from the champagne began to flatten and the only thing that made it worthwhile was the way that it warmed when it went down and the wonder that it wove around her head. He looked like the sun and she felt like the moon. It was the romance of a society of thieves, all built to take everything they could and give nothing in return. They would hold on to the effervescence of the locked doors and safes with no code until the old folks died and they became the generation who knew better after all.  

Musical Admirer

Little drops kept hitting the side of the cd player that she had taped to her window so that her parents would finally believe she had an admirer to throw stones and serenade her in smooth jazz. Without consciousness, the wind kept blowing away the leaves that kept up the illusion of an autumn that couldn't be left behind, and the starlight that kept fading until it was nothing more than a guiding way home hinted that it might be morning before anybody intended it to be. Nobody's schedule allowed reverence or experience or leisure alongside all of the terrifyingly young and heart-breakingly old masterpieces that dotted all of the screens in front of every single eye. Her calculator was from another country, but her shoes were made in China by the tiny fingers of tiny children whose tiny salaries couldn't make up for their tiny, tiny dreams. It wasn't anything different than the reciprocity act told her, but it felt a bit heavier than her own nightmares and the karma she thought she had coming.

From Behind

The divots of his back threw shadows across his porcelain skin, already dotted and scared with burns. He illustrated his arms with ink so that the complexity of his stature made you rethink his age. From behind, he was a tortured mastermind, whose effervescence came more from his relative mortality than anything he said. It’s easier to judge a person’s thoughts when they think that nobody is watching. He pulled at the skin on his arms instead of playing with his teeth like everyone imagined that he would. Look closer, but not so close that he feels your breath on his skin or understands he’s not alone. Everything that he must see could have been a million years away, but it just looked white; he was encapsulated in an endless cloud field of majority rule over his minority rights. Nobody saw his face because he always walked like a soldier in front of the crowd until he hit the Berlin wall in 1988. He’s standing there now, with his nose pressed up against the grime and the darkness of his own imagined aura reflecting like a glittering diamond against the light of a happier tomorrow. We’re standing behind him, all monochromatic black and white, holding on to a vision of movement. The bones of his back are hidden by childhood, but we still watch for his wisdom. We are all holding our breaths until he lets out his. 

Words words words

There are less words than ever in my mouth, and even when I write on the walls, I find a strange sensation in my hand that radiates through my veins to tell me that the feeling of endless monstrosity can only be the result of running. Nobody remembers when I go.

Contagious

Hanging from the trapezoidal recommendations for the links inside of the novelist's daydream, she held boiling tea up to her eyes so that she couldn't see what was staring back at her in the mirror. Every time she looked at herself, it seemed like another feature had been blurred away to leave a half-erased version of someone who was once considered beautiful. One day, however, when the purple specked sunrise had begun to fade into the same crystalline blue that hummed in her eyes, everyone realized in a stroke of genius, like a lightning crack to the skin, that they had bit off more than they could chew with her. She was a little bit contagious at all times, and always walked too close, held too tight, and left you with bruises and burns of which you could not identify the source. Under the influence of fairies and rocking in a hammock with a shot of vodka being dripped into her veins, she attempt to reason with the fact that she would never be good for anyone. Truth be told, it was painful enough to feel like death. When she fell asleep, everyone half hoped she wouldn't wake up.

Harassment

She had a terrible feeling that everyone was better off before they met her. Like an infection of the brain, she sunk into everyone's spinal cord until they were paralyzed with or without her.
They couldn't run away, no matter how much they wanted to.
The local supermarket ran out of straws because everyone who watched the midnight train that she rode on so silently needed someone to chew up their food so that they could be nourished enough to conform.
Harassment came in plenty of forms.

Dinner

He lost the key

She changed the lock

They wouldn't walk

and couldn't talk

They didn't drink

Only got stoned

So they could pretend

that they were alone. 

The Ramones

Hanging like a little fly-away kite on the downside of the rain cloud, she realized, when the lights were lowering next to her, that the white-washed paint wasn't really all that white anymore. She was coated in an endless supply of Reganomics and wondered whether it would ever, truly trickle down. The lights were dimming beside her until the moon showed brighter than the rest of the Las Vegas strip-show spotlights, and she couldn't tell whether North was South or East was West. All the tests she passed and failed had been dumped into the trash can that was being burned like a fireplace by the homeless man down the street, giving enough minute warmth to make this night an ounce less unbearable than the last. The letter in her pocket was a ticket to wherever she wanted to be, on the next train to get there, without a penny in interest or a braincell of trust; she would've left had her shoes not been tied down in freshly glued tar and her clothes too tattered and torn from giving more every day day than the president gives in a lifetime. An m&m had stained her jacket. She couldn't stop humming the Ramones. It was time for her to quit.

Schema

Bearing children in color palettes
and wandering without an aimlessness at all
It becomes too cold to hold a period
While you watch the smoke stain the white-washed wall.

You've bought all you need to re-carpet
You're swallowing your pride
And when it's harder to express your feelings
You impress what you've started to hide.

Dialogue doesn't write itself
Nor either do the constellation radio stars
Superstitiously making an effort
To project Grease on the dark side of Mars.

It's everybody's birthday
But no one's day of birth
Likening themselves to rounded marks
They question their own worth.

I'm bringing in my matches to the office store
To burn up all the calendars they're holding in their stock
Because it's sickening to count the days like they're too old to matter
And watch the seconds tick away off the clock.

Marxist Daydream

She would slide                               backwards and
                                                     right and up and down to
unlock the treason buried under her bed,
         next to the tattered copy of her

 BMW owners manual. 

She ripped it up and gave 

a

 page 

to every kid in the neighborhood because she didn't believe she deserved it anymore than anyone else. 

Truthfully, she deserved nothing less than everything.

 By night,                                   she would stencil 

                                                words of encouragement on electrical boxes 

that told everybody to ask someone to be their valentine and nobody to end their life. 

Everyone was beautiful. 

Everyone was beautifully flawed. 

Everyone was beautifully, flawlessly imperfect in her eyes. 

  She was decked in decadent pearls,                    fished from the nickel machine at the local arcade.

 She wore clothes that were handed down from 

a grandfather to 

his son 

to the thrift store 

to a garage sale then to her closet 

because she took the time to wonder about the histories woven delicately into the ripped up yarn of every sweater she donned and every shoe she slipped into. 

Always wet, 

always warm, 

always smooth, 

always effervescent, 

she smelled like Sunday morning, 

                                              the sun kissing your cheeks,

                                                                                      when you realize that there's no school the next day.

 She's a lost weekend that you found in the back of your closet and decide to cash in every morning until the sun ceases to rise and the moon stays out.

Even then, she'll be escapism, wrapped up in yellow, tied with a bow, and dedicated to those need her most.