His love is given to silicon, his heart spilled on the unfeeling capacitors of his binary mistress.
It's cold where he is, so cold, and she doesn't love him,
not really.
He knows that know.
He marvels at the city:
From above, it's one big circuit, people carrying the
lightning in their hearts and giving it to friends,
to lovers, to family, to complete strangers, but never to him.
He's cold, and he's alone, and he watches it from above, and in his head he can hear her laughter,
as cold as he is.
The city grows brighter, and as the circuit rushes towards him, for a moment he understands
what it is to be part of something.
**************************************
With the noise and the darkness and the smoky confusion, the club could easily be mistaken for hell by the untrained eye.
He was leant against the closed-up bar, wondering why he was there in the first place – The music was okay, but it was
too small and he was hemmed in by the thronging mass of people undulating with the beat.
You things things things of the flesh do it slow
Down avenues fuck me lust my eyes
Sickened by the heaving, throbbing crowd trapped in their Dionysian revelry he pushed his way through, scalded by
the warmth of their bodies and longing for the liquid embrace of the cool, dark night, the streetlights glowing in their halos of rain.
As he neared the doors, he turned for one last glimpse back at the dancers, their bodies congealing into a single entity of sweat and stink
and soul and motion
So pure
So rare
To witness such an earthly goddess
She was making her way through the pit towards him, her half-open eyes locked directly on his own downcast orbs, a creature of
pure sound and beauty, parting the unthinking crowd simply by her majesty, twisting this way and that as though she had a baseline for a pulse.
I'd sell
My soul
My self-esteem a dollar at a time
One chance
One kiss
One taste of you my magdalena
She came closer and closer, and as she was within a distance for him to touch he opened his mouth to ask her
the thousand tiny questions that seem so important in that tiny slice of life when you see the person that makes your heart beat again.
And she was past him, and she was into the street, and she was lost.
Still I don't have any money money money
My body suffers after the flesh
*********************************
*-cli-cli-cli-*
Metal slides on metal, the cylinder spins.
He played most nights, and he hadn’t lost yet.
But there’s a first time for everything, right?
He found it pleasant to let it all slip from his fingers, let the nimble hands of fate take responsibility for him.
“Father, take this burden from me…”
And in a way, he had.
It was his revolver, after all.
He lovingly caressed the sandalwood butt, tracing his fingers over the inscription.
“…Why hast thou forsaken me?”
He slammed his fist into the table.
“Why did you die?
Didn’t you know I needed you?”
A soldier’s life was always at risk, he knew that as well as anyone else, and he knew that someone had to
sacrifice themselves for the cause, but why did it have to be HIS father?
*-cli-cli-CLICK-*
Metal scrapes on metal, the cylinder stops.
On the table was a book, something militaristic by Heinlein.
“To place his body between his beloved home and war’s devastation…
What of home would rather have the devastation than lose the body?
Does that… Does that make me a bad person?”
He snapped his wrist in a way practised in front of the TV for hours, slipping the cylinder into the firing position.
“There are enough bad people in the world…”
He placed the gun to his lips.
“Bang…”
He hadn’t lost yet.
But there’s a first time for everything.
Right?
****************************************
He walked the streets, looking for a place to stay.
No room. No room. No room.
The garish neon signs seemed to close in around him, the clashing colours throwing
sickening highlights onto his face.
For the first time, he missed being back in the country.
The dull, stolid, countryside where he spent his youth.
He tried not to think back, tried to put no weight on his past, but it was hard.
So very hard.
The smoke was everywhere.
Sweet lady, the SMOKE!
Used to nothing worse than the occasional burning cowpat (or burning cow, depending on how drunk the Kents got,)
the all-encompassing smoke filled his lungs, making his eyes water so as to leave him blind.
If this city were a woman, he thought, it’d be past-its-prime whore, sucking the money from the
pockets of the millions who walked its streets in exchange for… for what?
What did the city give back?
It was only his first day, and already he hated it, the demon city.
Finally, he abandoned his attempt to find lodgings and simply walked out of the city, a terrible pain in his heart.
He wasn’t looking forward to the morning, to having to return and admit his failure.
He sat for a while on a hill, and wept into his hands.
His eyes full of tears, he took another look at the hated city, sprawled before him in the ebon of night.
And he took another look.
And another.
Stretched out for miles in front of him was a starscape in miniature, a sparkling cosmos
and red and yellow and the hundred other colours of the neon rainbow, twinkling in the bosom of the plain.
He understood, then the fact of it, the thing his parents had
failed to see when they decided to raise him in “The midst of nature’s beauty”:
Beauty is where you look for it.
********************************
The girl stood on the cliff.
He brought her here.
He loved her once (He never loved her. No-one ever loved her. She was unloved.),
and she loved him still, and so they stood, the girl and the cliff.
The girl stood on the cliff.
The moon loked on, the ivory light glistening through her tears, bathing her in harsh cold reality.
It shined on, uncaring, and so they stood, the girl and the cliff and the moon.
The girl stood on the cliff.
The sea boiled below her, the waves washing over the rocks like a tongue licking over its
fanged maw, roaring and crashing.
It whispered its sibilant song to her, and so they stood, the girl and the cliff and the moon and the sea.
The girl stood on the cliff.
The angel stood behind her, his invisible wings a comforting shield.
He had always been with her, guarding and guiding, and his hot breath prickled against her ear.
Its face was his face, and so they stood, the girl and the cliff and the moon and the sea and the angel.
The angel stood on the cliff, bathed in the moonlight and the sea spray.
Then, the cliff stood alone.