19 oct: invisible but mockingly apparent, its there and i am aware of it. an undeniable scent, although it is delicate and the fresh air smokescreen breezes, slipstreaming through the cracks between the glass and the windowpane edges and it almost obscures the insulting odor, here if im not careful ill lose the scent, if i dont keep track of trackmark accidents in the oxygen im grasping for from the air. a stain of sulfur and burnt skin. first degree chapstick lips. touch to tender fingertips. the sideeffect coefficients of mating habits. it stinks of a lie. an undiscovered rotting body of promise. last night i sat at a bar next to a man calling himself abraham, talking about that morning and the self appearance routines and good looking morning rituals and how the deodorant stick had felt like beef tongue sliding down my armpit. he was morbidly appreciating my descriptions. he told me about toronto this place where he watched a girl too severely convince him to appear here and he knew that because of her, this was really happening. there were weapons on the table. sidearms, specialty drinks made sloppy. johnny walker was half a man, cut open, ambushed and assassinated by amateur solutions of water. little puddles of bad technique were left like a crime scene on the scene on the bar. i was encouraged to think this was evidence of some cruelty. abraham didnt think the plot would get any better. my one sip autopsy and it was clear, the cause of death had obviously been dared to publicize its apparent relevance to our absent sedation. my senses were willing witnesses, pointing fingers at bad mixtures in the honey hue mess in our glasses. but, its just another bartender murder. a dismissed honest request for the greed of anesthesia. refused silent treatment. we would not be permitted the rehabilitation from but then again maybe through that ninety proof resolution, eyes bright and blunted senses. with my painkiller denied, i was awake during that amputation of the bottom drop at the finish line of the empty cup. the day still remembered, i was still susceptible to the strain under my thumbs from typing all day. i told abraham, he was to my left, i spoke from the right side of my lips that we were stuck in a formaldehyde confusion and he said that this was a poorly disguised morgue. he gave the bartender a look from under his hair which hung in his face like willow branches too weak to hold themselves up from the roots on his pinkburnt workingmans scalp. a look that accessorized the tone of his voice well enough, and yet he confirmed that the man was a murderer and a saint. it was a miracle we didnt prove it by taking his life. and he smiled and said that it was all right. hes just giving us to stay here longer. spend more money. dont leave until the very end of the night. he said, the only time to leave is when youve been pushed out the door. then you can stumble home knowing very well that you did everything you cared to do right then and there. you couldnt be considered a quitter. regardless of the fact that you were made to put and end to your attempts.

now, abraham, im telling you about him because hes the reason why i smell the pain rising from the burnt tip of my thumb as im writing this to you. he pushed himself from the edge of the bar with his palms just then and reached into his blackmagic coat pocket and got out some instruments for a smoke. with dull eyes he closed off shyly and that was the end of our inside jokes and never in any other words, the end to our conversation. but i watched him pose post our interaction with a cigarette in his mouth, calven klein model of the month, and twist a match back around to the scratch and sniff strip on the front of the book of prayers. a backstab from his thumbnail, ignition, an armageddon opened up the world that had existed on the head of that match. novelty tricks. ive seen it before, you know. i know you have too. those symbolic gestures of a well practiced social veteran. affectations of acrobatic retro attract. shrug your shoulders, style to the walk, the way you hold your face. the sharpening of their eyes. and then the choreography of physical manner. its the personality in the flesh. im no good at the good ones. like lighting matches with a stagepresence. smoking your cigarette with grace that makes snapshots worth keeping. that sort of stuff.

but i found myself here, anyway, today, during the dayafter from last night that had bled itself dry just so it would be brittle enough to break and blow over when seven am came. here i am sitting down to set a letter down that was comfortable enough to let you eventually relate through and over (in?). and eventually on back to me. and meanwhile, before i started pushing apart the keys, i balanced the filter end of a smoke between the vice grip of my jawline and struck a match, imitation remark, mimicry almost, like abraham had done the night beforehand, in the manner that he had demonstrated so well under the suntan light of the barroom that had died along with the other johnny walker red victims. but my finger slipped and my clumsy approach came close to emergency calls while the sulfur became stitched by the combustible collision of chemical and raw material into the veins of my prints.

and now as my skin watercolors the still of the air, a van gough masterpiece only sensed with sinus pressure, im writing out this coincidence instead of a hello to you. and im telling you, i guess (cause my reasons for everything are always so after the fact) to let you in on that im very bad at party tricks and the magic that other social alchemists must have been good at using to connect. im only good at pushing past the edges, off the ledges, good at getting people falling into something. a fine mess of you and me. you into that? if not then you dont need to say so. ill get the picture.

you dig?

you smiled under your breath i think the last time i talked to you. cooled me down. quick surrender goodbyes early exits.

i think im interested in getting out of here, letting go of stir crazy and forgetting about some of the giveupgirls that sing songs reminding everyone about what a let down we all are for one another sometimes, time and time again.
5:09 am

09 oct: i love her sometimes when theyre not looking. it probably wouldnt matter to either of them even if they caught me. i know they know when im slipping thoughts past the deceptions, cascading millions of fragmented mental touches down onto her body frequencies and the conspiracy of noise that listens in eavesdroping famous names. later when theyve left me alone ill pick up all those imaginary pieces that fell to the floor once they had touched her skin. little tiny fingerprints im here collecting them into he palm of one of my hands, holding artifacts, each with a unique impression of a part of her. ill piece them together and restore her with the vibrations that her skin gave the air. id listen in closely hoping for the hummingbird tone concealed almost among the drone of atmospheres activity. sounds from those brief images, our duplication. and id know that when i heard that hollow wine bottle howl, audioreaction from afterimages made real time in a time past due1the possibilities, it would be the moment that the image would entropy, concede to natures sense of holy, and she would fall apart right in front of me and purfume the air with the intangibility of my fake love affair with his gypsy beauty.

radio cairo plays songs only for her when shes up there. and that is the only time shes ever there with me.



she wears her hair different for me.

time unknown