Cigarettes

Cigarettes

 

Took the old steel donkey down to that awkward yellow market on 5^th ave.

All I wanted was a pack of cigarettes.

 

There was an oversized plaid tragedy screaming moral asteroids at me

from the cursed corner of 3^rd and Purgatory. She had hair like a dumpster fire, skin like a rhino, and the eyes of a starving predator. At her mangled flip-flopped feet were 2 abstract souls singing pornographic nursery rhymes about a short-necked giraffe and a disappearing father-god. My guts spilled all over the front seat, but my soul shrugged it’s rusty anvil and rolled on. Now, I was really jonesing for a puff of anything mildly poisonous; just a teensy taste of death to dull these blinding life lights.

 

On the black bubble-gummed curb in front of the old yellow store, there was what appeared to be the remnants of a man. To my quivering stare, he looked like a helter skelter medley of every puzzle piece that ever went under the fridge. He was begging for salvation, but the best I could offer was fifty cents and a half-eaten bologna sandwich. As I walked away, I could hear his soul hit the asphalt like a raw steak flopping down on a wooden cutting board. I did not turn back around to witness the grim impact. Just knowing was enough to leave a contusion.

 

The ride home was like a slow internal belly hemorrhage. Pain is not an effective enough word to convey the butcher knife agony that wood-peckered my skull and guilt is a butterfly on a leaf when compared to the regret that rushed through me like a violent muddy backwash.

 

When I reached my domestic asylum, I spit a bloody prayer to an unconcerned savior, lit up a shaky cigarette, sucked it down like a drowning man gulping that first breath after surfacing and hid my pulsing head beneath a red couch pillow. I would not be healed enough to open my eyes for at least 12 hours.

 

All I wanted was a pack of cigarettes, but nothing is that uncomplicated in this present global monstrosity. Nothing!    

Reviews

[roarke]

heh, don't get out much do ya? The way you flung the descriptions really set up the scene and environment. This was like Al Pacino on steroids going for the last Hollywood oscar. Or like the Marines at Guadalcanal going over the top... it would take some fiendish hook like nicotine to pull me off my mountain... fortunately I don't smoke... now if it was donuts......

[emmajoy]

Life, black, bloody and far too terrible to produce a poem-story like this. Grief, you've swept the emotions into a pile of wonderment. This is like a punch in the guts then a hug.. and there's tears, lying in puddles, almost too wet to dry. Superb.

[Ken Simm.]

Description cubed. A slasher horror of a write that came out the other end of this grinder beautiful.

[Shmoke-Sifted Heftlande..]

we're obviously soul mates. I've finally accepted this. officially. lol..but don't rip yourself apart too bad, cause you realize when you hang out with the raw meats, they may not have any real desire to connect with you or anyone else in a meaningful way. IDK it's a tricky situation, but I've walked around with these types of people, and there's usually pretty much nothing you can do for them..I realize it's an emotional/spiritual impression and feeling though, and you expressed it amazingly

[eglantine]

wow, this blew me out of my skin. "There was an oversized plaid tragedy screaming moral asteroids at me / from the cursed corner of 3rd and Purgatory. She had hair like a dumpster fire,"

"were 2 abstract souls singing pornographic nursery rhymes about a short-necked giraffe and a disappearing father-god. My guts spilled all over the front seat, but my soul shrugged it’s rusty anvil and rolled on"

"As I walked away, I could hear his soul hit the asphalt like a raw steak flopping down on a wooden cutting board. I did not turn back around to witness the grim impact"

absolutely stunning

[Nobody.]

thanks for checking it out. :) it's a true story. :( I wish it were a happier one. cheers!