Haiku-o-rama: 08.2009

As The Man sipped his coffee in his Grey Tenement Apartment he heard the door open behind him. The Whore walked in and dropped herself down onto the extended hide-a-bed. With one corner of the bed supported by an empty plastic milk crate it threatened to collapse under her tiny frame as the long-shot springs squealed in protest.

“Take it easy,” The Man grumbled, placing his now empty mug on the counter that jut unceremoniously from the wall beside him. Their dwelling is a shared room, 12 feet by 10 furnished by only the hide-a-bed, and 2 more inverted milk crates. One supports a nearly antique television scavenged from behind their building, the other serving as a makeshift coffee table, littered with liquor bottles, drug residue and discarded food packaging. A sink with only a cold water tap is filled with cracked dishware and a multitude of stains, rust blood vomit oil nicotine wash down its inside like a rainbow of failure and entropy. The Man and The Whore are not lovers and to call them friends would be a gross misuse of the term. They are closer to symbiotes, in mutual reliance upon each other for survival. They fuck on occasion but neither gets much out of it.

The Whore turned on the television, ignoring The Man.

Lee Marvin's zombified corpse played poker with Charles Bronson's while Clint Eastwood groaned and creaked like an old staircase. Eastwood looked worse off than either of the other players but neither of them mentioned that he wasn't dead yet. Clint refused to ante up.

The Men drank raw crude oil from chipped highball glasses and smoked cigars packed with black powder with abandon. Marvin spat a gristly gob of blackened tar into a spittoon and a drizzle of high octane gasoline trickled down his chin from wind chapped and whiskey stained lips from whence it had been processed. Eastwood drew his Colt and shot the Zombie Lee Marvin whose gasoline filled filled mouth exploded, bone shrapnel piercing the eyes of Bronsan who continued to bet silently. As the fire spread Chuck grabbed onto Clint's face with his partially destroyed mouth and tore his cheek off. Eastwood still refuse to ante up.

3 nude white women ground their bodies against a Black Man sitting in a park wearing an Armani suit. He was spitting rhymes about the genocides in East Europe while all around him men and women in military garb appeared to blow themselves up. The blood and viscera rained down on The Black Man, bespeckling the ivory skin of The White Women and filling the bejeweld Pimp Cup that sat erect upon the picnic blanket that served as the centrepoint of this Dejeuner.

Sham-what?

“I'm off to work, I'll be back around 6,” grumbled the Man swinging the rickety door closed behind him. He walked down the hall stepping over drunks and inhaling noxious smells of urine, paint thinner and the residue of burnt crack cocaine.
“Dill pickle chips and burnt plastic,” he thought to himself, His stomach grumbled, empty but for 6 cups of coffee.
He greeted the manager on his way out but was unheard behind 3 inches of lexan that separated the managers office from the main lobby.
Exiting onto the street The Man was greeted by the sun poking up above the tenemant housing across the street and he averted his eyes from its accusing stare. He spat a widget of phlegm onto the cracked pavement disturbing an oily puddle of filth, turned to his right and headed to work.

It was 9am.

Chapter 2

Two Men walk towards each other on the street, they are dressed in identical Brooks Brothers suits in Charcoal Grey and share the same smooth features, fresh shaven and close cut, well trimmed hair.

Smell of Hugo Boss and Testosterone

They are neither brothers nor clones yet they might as well be. They nod simultaneously to each other as they pass, each feeling the weight of the large knife that is sheathed within the uncreased depths of their suit jackets. This scene repeats itself all across The City as everywhere the 454 small-block engine of The City Economy roars to life.

The first Man enters into a glass building where an army of Men in identical Blue Coveralls scrub and shine and buff and rinse off the graffiti that has accumulated over the past evening, but by the time they encircle the building they must begin anew for paint and marker and acid have already sprung up in a cancer like malignancy of names and tags and slogans. Cause and effect. Clean and deface. These Men are lucky. They will always be employed as long as there is a system of have and have-not, affected and disaffected. Asocial, anti-social, deviant, miscreant, Youth versus Everyone Else.

The second Man entered a brick building, walking through the lobby he saw a man in a Beige Brooks Brother's suit. Knives out. They fought quietly to the death in the middle of the lobby. No one noticed until a Secretary in a Black Pencil Skirt slipped in the congealing puddle of blood and fell ballerina-delicate landing on a firm gym-sculpted ass. At this point she was helped up by Five (5) Men dressed in Charcoal Grey who then set upon the corpse in Beige tearing it apart growling and screeching like baboons. The Secretary tore off her Black Pencil Skirt and High Collared Blouse and joined the Men who proceeded to fuck and bite and tear at her and each other violating and penetrating. Ripping and rendering until all that was left was a semensalivabloodshiturine soaked mess. The mess was cleaned up soon after by a team of Blue Coverall clad Men. They whistled while they worked.

It was 8am.

8.25.2009

Chapter 1

An Urbane tale in 24 parts

Picture in your head if you will... No, you must. A city. The City. Viewed from afar. Viewed from space. Viewed from Space like you're Buzz-Fucking-Aldrin falling headlong towards it. You sped uncontrollably downwards each blink a snapshot of the pavement 700 feet closer to your teary drunken bloodshot eyes. You saw an island, and a coastline, and a dense urban grouping of buildings. Buildings cloistered together like high school students smoking beside the English Wing tight with excitement and rebellion. Your final sight was a weather-beaten tenement, - old, grey and coming up fast. 6 stories you passed before, exploding onto the street, your melon flesh splashing, worthy of Uncle Bob's bellyflops into the pool over summer vacation. Back when there was Summer vacation

Back when there was Summer.

PAN UP to the 5th floor, a grimy pollution and bird shit stained window obfuscates the movement of a figure inside.

CLOSE UP: of a Mans hand, It is hairy and pitted, Browned by the sun. A Workman's hand.. It's gnarled fingers hold a French Press of tar black coffee whose plunger has just been thrust downward.

The Man begins to pour the coffee into a chipped white mug stained with the specks of past drips of java, The dishwasher abraded text on it reads “Insert witty comment regarding coffee here.” As the hot beverage cascades into the mug it makes a sound akin to pissing into a shallow pot and this causes The Man's bladder to contract ever so slightly.

The Man sighed. He knew he had a long day ahead of him and the sun was only just cracking at the horizon, thin trickles of light dancing through the open window illuminating the small single room apartment in which he resides.

Smells like piss and fresh dew.

Across the street a trio of hookers shy away from the coming day, their night just ending as a low rumble of commuter cars begins to fill the air like the uneasy groans of a drunk's stomach as she rolls out of bed. The neon lights that filled the street begin to wink out as the morning light drowns them in golden swaths. One of the whores lights a cigarette, bringing it to chapped lips that look like 20 miles of bloodstained asphalt. Chipped and rugged they have seen to(o) much traffic in to short a period of time. She bids farewell to her compatriots and crosses the still still street, entering her apartment block and climbing the Five (5) flights of stairs to the room she shares with The Man.

It is 7am.