I did this one for the PHC contest and wrote it over a few nights sitting in the bar not really thinking that much...
Photo by Stéphan Valentin on Unsplash
I could feel my dreams dying in the dust of my life as I walked down the road, and snow was covering everything, and it was cold as doom.
Crackpots in the gin houses were inviting me in, it was nothing personal, I could tell, but an invite is an invite, and I always like going in. So in I went to the one that I was closest to and sat down at the first bar I came across.
Gimme a beer I said to the face pulling near, and hold the trombone blues, I got plenty of that.
I like long yellow hair, I really do, and I’m not fussy most of the time, I’ll take whatever comes along, but tonight I needed something more than yellow hair.
I see your heart is still beating she said as she drew near with her yellow hair and blowing bubbles.
Image by engin akyurt from Pixabay
I felt a little shiver coming on, like the landlady was going to come home at any time and catch me out, or something.
I’ll take anything you recommend I said then, and no ice.
She blew a wish in my face and went to fix my drink.
I was studying my hands very closely when she came back with a glass filled with what I wanted. And handing it to me she went off to the other end of the bar to serve someone else.
Looking at the drink before me I didn’t really know if it would be enough. And as I stared at it, it started talking to me…
The machines are ruling us in marshmallow spirits while speaking in assumed tongues and scratching the pillow of your lust that you deny so much; talk to me.
I didn’t want to talk to my drink that was asking me to talk to it. So I said: bottoms up... and drank the whole lot straight down into my doom.
Image by Zaccaria Boschetti from Pixabay
I pushed the glass back over the bar and waited for a refill and glossed up my eyes from the mirror in the bar that came with mascara dripping down her face and staring back at me.
I was looking old and thinking I could cook off for one more night, maybe, when out of the blue walked an announcement that was painting her nails multi-couloured and giving me a headache to boot.
Aint’ you got another place to do that I said and sent her on her way with a hefty head-nod that almost broke my neck.
Turning back to my drink on some kind of elastic band I felt that I wanted something more than the doom and gloom; so I concentrated harder on the outcome that I really wanted, and thought: river fish and any September Monday, and lots of other things too until my head wouldn’t take it anymore, and growled from out of its secret mouth: it’s all marshmallow spirits in the dust you know.
I was becoming inebriated for sure, and wanted more, and so put my hand up and asked for another drink of whatever I’d had before.
A photograph at night one lifetime away from the moment I was in gave me a grin and raised his drink to me from further along the bar.
I gave him a nod and turned back to what I was having and found that I was giving myself to it completely, almost like a lost spanner in the degrees of climbing to heaven.
I was the advertised advertisement, the third finger from god and trying to break out…
And just sitting there staring into my drink.
Image by Michael Schwarzenberger from Pixabay
Sometimes I am the master of my own fate, and sometimes I’m not, and sometimes I’m just dust in the wind.
Of course, this doesn’t explain everything of my dreams dying, doesn’t explain the dust either, but then that’s life isn’t it, as it winds down…
I guess life is but a dream really, just a short dream that passes in the blink of an eye. And you get what you get; and nothing else at all.
The next drink came and I drowned that too.
After paying my bill I went back out into the cold snow ridden night, maybe to get my rocks off, and find love, or die trying, or maybe just to go home somehow and sleep it off.
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
Free donuts, free donuts I heard as I walked out the door into another world with the wind rustling my hair and the distance of where I was lost all about me.
I’m my own world I said to myself, and ventured on into it…
The machine is crazy, and it grows absurd the more it is seen for what it is. And, voyeurs welcome, it beamed.
Crazy machine I said, and gave it a ribald grin and two marshmallow spirits in the dust of the idea, and found myself rubbing up against some lamp pole that was as hard as steel and twice as thick.
And it had my attention…
So that’s why men grow mustachios I thought and untangled myself from where I’d fallen and laddered myself onwards, half on the sidewalk, and half somewhere else, and no change for the beggars holding out for me.
There were mountains yet to climb, no matter what, but not tonight I said to myself and struggled onwards….
Oh, the night was as black as some black man singing from his jail all that he’d been caged for and wanting out. But as black as it was, I felt to stand up and shine and take that next step home and hope I wasn't lost.
Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay
I tell you, I'm beginning to believ
With an e
missing
Some days I think I'm the hero
And some days I don't.
Images from Pixabay
