A Possible Beginning

“This isn’t over; don’t think it is. It won’t end until I’m drinking from your heart.”
He sat before me as he said this, his long legs in front of him, hooked together at the ankles, the smooth black leather of his boots matching his poppy-black eyes.
The threat flowed from his mouth so incidentally that I didn’t even hear it. I’m a good listener, especially when I’m with someone I hate, but he was so relaxed, his demeanor flowed like oil from him. His arms were resting on the back of the bench, so I could see the emptiness of his short sleeves in that ugly, oversized brown bowling shirt. One button too many were undone, so I could see the border of tanned flesh and blue-veined chicken skin.
We had a history, long, dark and ugly, going back to Basic. But I figured, after last year, after what he took and who I killed, we were even. Or at least done.
It’s not like I’ve never been wrong before.
“So no truce?” I ask.
“What do you think?” he asks, and I get annoyed. It drove me nuts when someone would answer a question with a question. Be truthful, lie, be a smartass, whatever; just answer the fucking question!
“Did you hear me?” he asked, still just as casual as a Sunday out of church.
I hate it when it gets personal. It bodes poorly for business. And feelings get hurt, at the very least.

-Zeepdoggie

Happy Valentine's Day

I want your sweat
Staining my skin
Marking my sin.

I want to be drenched
In your
-warm
-soft
-wet
rain.

Make my heart
Bruise against my bones.

Deafen me with your moans.
Burn me in your embrace.
Suffocate me deep inside you.
Kill me, just a little.

Make me a fallen angel;
Rend my back;
Scar me;
Tear out my wings.

-Zeepdoggie

A Little Slip

Walking down the street on the way to Eric’s, with Gary depressed and Dani feeling for him, as she always did when he got like this, they were hoping for a cup of coffee and an empty diner.
“I don’t know what I did wrong, Dani. I really tried this time, y’know? I was as perfect as I can be with her.”
Gary was one of Dani’s best friends. They had known each other for well over ten years now and she was his favorite person to talk to. They agreed that she was the smarter of the two of them, and seemed to be good at taking in a lot and saying just the right thing at the right time.
“I can’t think of a girl who made me happier than her, Dani-mal. She’s just so…everything!”
Dani tripped on a broken bit of sidewalk. She had tripped at this spot quite often, and chastised herself every time. “Stupid,” she said.
“What did I say?” he asked.
“Not you, me. The sidewalk, again.”
“I never did get around to putting up that sign for you.”
“That’s okay. I probably wouldn’t see it anyway.” Dani walked head down a lot.
At Eric’s, it was not busy. They got a booth in the corner furthest from the door. There was a nice view of the main drag of town. Setting down their coffees, he said, “You know where we should go one of these days?”
“Where?” Dani asked, feeling better to see him enthused about something.
“Remember that little greasy spoon by Morrie Mage’s? On Halsted, I think, or near Ontario, something like that.” He was almost smiling.
“Yeah, what about it?”
“When was the last time we hung out downtown?”
“We doubled that one time,” she said, knowing it was the wrong thing to say. She could see him falling into memories of the beginnings of his relationship with Melanie, when the world was sunshine auburn-gold and perfect breezes pushed him down the street to his love. For her, it was the end of that last relationship; nothing seemed to last too long for her. Stupid, she thought.
“What?” he asked. Sometimes he was in her head.
“What?”
“You said, ‘Stupid.’”
“That was out loud?”
“Uh- huh.” He looked like a thundercloud.
“Not you, me.”
They sat in silence. After a few minutes, Dani got up and bought a chocolate brownie and got a carafe of coffee. She sat back down and handed him the brownie. He smiled immediately. “How’d you know?”
“Best friend’s sense plus a good dose of women’s intuition.”
“Thanks, kiddo.”
“I hate it when you call me that, you know.”
“And that is the root of why I call you that.”
“Give me back the brownie!”
“No! I’m sorry, I won’t do it again!”
“Yes you will.”
“Yeah,” and he smirked in that scoundrel’s way.
Four hours and not a few beers later, at Healy’s (the old Healy’s, not the new, shiny pretender to the throne), she was embroiled in selling him on Melanie’s lesser points, while Alanis Morisssette fell head over feet out of the jukebox.
“And she was not perfect, Gary. Even you know that. Didn’t she kick you out of the house one day because you talked to her father for too long?”
“I was ignoring her!”
“No, you were enjoying someone else’s company other than hers. She was always like that.”
“Really?”
“Why wouldn’t she come and hang out with us? Because she was too good for us, that’s why. She couldn’t share you with anybody or anything.”
“We’re not the easiest group to get into, Dani. The conversations we have are years old. Hell, you and Pete have been having that argument about the Citation for seven years now!”
“Still, she didn’t make the effort to try. She hung out twice and never came back out.”
“I guess.”
“She wasn’t good enough for you, Gary.”
Perplexed as only someone inebriated could be, he asked, “What do you mean?”
Sighing, then taking a deep breath before continuing, Dani said, “She never bothered to learn about you, Gar. It was all about her; you had to know about her, and yet she never asked anything about you.
“You could sit here all night and half the next day and tell me about every facet of her life, but she couldn’t tell you the name of your first dog, or your most hated movie, or the first time you swore. She never learned you Gary; she never studied you. She was with you during the easy part, and then when she thought it got hard, she left.”
“So she wasn’t good enough?”
“Nope.”
“And that’s why?”
“That, and other stuff.”
“So, Dani, who would be good enough for me?”
“I don’t know if I will ever think anyone’s good enough for you, Gary.” And she felt herself slip in her chair.
“What does that mean?” He looked so stupid right now, confused like a puppy that just heard it’s bark for the first time. She felt the flush in her skin as her beers encouraged her further despite the glow of suspicion she saw in Gary’s eyes.
“Because you’re a great guy! You’re a poet and a musician, you’re well read, responsible, punctual and a really good listener. You like to be romantic and do little things for people. You’re polite, damn near chivalrous. You’re smart and funny and you have a thing about you that makes people smile when you talk to them and everyone feels special when you’re around. You’re respectful and sweet and have a great smile and you’re strong in every way.”
She didn’t want to stop, even though she knew she should. She decided to ignore herself this one time. “Every girl should love you, Gary. You are as close to perfect as any man not Jesus has a right to be.”
Looking up at him, she said with a trembling voice, “You’re the best.”
He couldn’t respond, she saw. She was wrong; the first voice was right; she should have just shut up, she should run from the bar, from him, never looking back, forget he and his little smirk and hazel eyes that glow gold in the sunshine ever existed.
Looking down, she said, “Stupid.”
He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, and gently lifted her eyes to his, and said, “Not you, me.”

-Zeepdoggie

White Wall

This semester I am taking ENGL 212, a.k.a. the intro to writing fiction. My prof is big on us writing really short stories, and suggested that we think about a song as a good example. So i listened to a song called "White Wall" by Lights of Eurphoria and came up with this. It turns out that it takes as long to listen to the song as it does to read this bad boy fairly carefully.

Enjoy!

The night was cool, but the club was hot. The guest DJ from Germany never let up, the crowd continuously pulsing and in motion like blood cells in the veins of a predator. They had come to witness his spinning, hear his magic of weaving new music from old. She and he were no exception.
She made it to the bar first, because women always make it to the bar first. She ordered their waters. They were both good and buzzed, sweating from exertion much like anyone in the club. The time for shots and beers had past; hydration was her goal and she didn’t want him getting tired or sick. He roared like a lion when he vomited.
There would be none of that tonight. This night, tonight, was the night.
Weeks before, she saw him opening up the record store on her way to work. She had made passes, looked in, but never entered before she saw him open up the store. After work, she bought a CD and he rang her up. It was his favorite DJ. Hers, too!
The got coffee. They had dinners. They had drinks. They watched movies, and swapped books and music, and they shared their first kiss, and kissed more. They had gone out, and they had stayed in. Once, she cried, and as he held her she smiled through her tears.
The DJ was coming to town, and he knew the club owner. They were going.
He had never danced, not really, until he danced with her. Responding to her body awoke in him a new rhythm, a strong coordination to her eyes, hips, hands and feet. He felt like hers, and he wasn’t frightened.
Finishing their second waters, they heard the odd staccato guitar, and before the bass thump began, she grabbed his hand, eyes wide with joyful recognition. They screamed “White Wall!” in unison. The CD she bought that first day, their day, in his store.
Rushing to the middle of the floor, with every body jumping, gyrating, jostling, around them, they found their way below three mirrored globes; this was the center.
Knowing intimately every beat to the song, they moved as if a perfect string tied every joint, every ounce of blood pumped by their hearts (beating in simpatico), every gaze, together. They moved closer and closer, the strings shortening, becoming nonessential when they finally touched. The bass stopped, and lush, synthesized strings float up, and they are so close that she knows the tremble of the muscles under his skin under her hands and he can smell nothing but her sweat and shampoo and that she blushes wherever he touches.
When the bass returns and drives the dancers into a fresh frenzy, they stand and sway, holding each other. She hears of the dark room, and the white wall, and she feels the helping hands on her hips as she starts to fall.


-Zeepdoggie

It's the Little Rules...

Nicotine is the smell
of my new rage.
If you light that,
I want to say,
on this stop,
I will
kill you.
And I could
I so could
my hands are itching
to drive your head into the first
No Smoking/Fumar Prohibido sign
that I can find.

I don’t share my cancers with you;
I keep my poisons to myself.

Do you see me
showing you the things I see
that make me beg for blindness?
How the world’s constant barrage
of its message of nothing
and nothing and nothing and
nothing
make me listen to my music
so loudly
that my ears ring for hours,
for days,
for my life?
Do I share the scent of the air
that makes my stomach
pull itself free of my body,
purging while I gag?

This life gives me tumors
malign
and inoperable.
No chemo
and no soft bed for the last
choking breath;
that you’ll have.
I just get to sit here
while you shit here
and share your death with you
and keep mine all mine.

It's how societies treat the little rules, the ones that are written for the concern of others, that tell you about the societies. How they're followed and how they're enforced.

I can't figure out what is more frustrating: the guy smoking while LEANING AGAINST THE POST with the above sign on it, or the four CTA workers who have to be reminded that it's against the fucking law that Captain Cancer is smoking.

Of course, I may also be angry about something else, classically displacing any aggression or anxiety on an outside agent.
Still, the sign says "No Smoking." Asshole.

Remembrance: 141

Paris-
my God!
Of all the times
I could be wrong,
why is this not then?

This city surprises me little;
I knew going in
rude was the official language.
It smells better than New York,
but is that a compliment?

This city is your dream
and you sleepwalk the ever-circling streets.
And small parks
are your Edens built into the
hillsides.
Gossamer wings invisibly
lift you up the many stairs
and drift you down
the sloping sidewalks
littered with cafes.
Oblivious to you reverie,
or in spite of it,
my ugly Americanness
mocks your joy, but you don’t care.

Champs Ellyses
and the Seine make you
smile your blissful smile;
I almost don’t recognize it.
And your laughter at my
“little man, big hang-up” jokes
remind me that I love you.

The Louvre
on the second day
makes me forget all of my ire
and all of our fights
because I
so easily
see what inspires
all this beauty here
when I see you.
Divorce is as far away
as my crazy family,
and I am not disaffected
with you in the Louvre.

But I am too dark
inside to let that
temporary perfection
spoil my discomfort.
Trouble rambles on
like a Parisian argument,
and I turn away
before I can remember
that I love you.

Flying home, you sit beside me,
lulled by great dreams fulfilled
and great engines’ muffled roar.
We pass over Ireland,
where I wanted to be
but had no choice.
I don’t wake you as I cry
over Ireland
and that I had no choice
about how I love you now.

Of all the times
I could be wrong,
why is this not then?