a drifter’s drafts adrift

The world does not really exist, except for where the smoke streams in the air and runs like the hair on the head of a corpse of a woman, drowned in a river.

This sky is really not a sky, but a blanket of shade that’s covering eternal flames that are great — so great and fierce they pierce the sky where stars are torched — and every morning, the whole thing catches fire.

After the sun is fully submerged in the vast blue ocean, the moon climbs up, a cold-hearted bitch that doesn’t give a toss — a fuck, really, about the dying child molester, dying alone in his room.
Or the mother, hysterical, in tears, with her hair pulled off her scalp except for where it appears in tufts, caked with blood.
Or the little children whose angelic voices have grown hoarse from crying of thirst and hunger and pain, whose hymns have become dirges and moans, unheard, unattended.

The moon remains in its position, coldly peering down at its domain
Enjoying the show, darling?

**********

Cracking eggs: almost a parable.

An old poor man once complained to God. He said he is losing himself in bits and pieces with every passing day. Indeed, his skin was falling off, dried patches of dead skin. His teeth have fallen off his gums, except for two molars. He could barely afford the rags to cover himself. What he asked God was simpe: food.

The next day, the man cracks an egg and mixes it with a fork in a glass. He drinks it, not noticing for one second how God gives up one life for another.

Here she parks her spotlessly clean Japanese car on the street across the house. She gets out of the car now, posh with a fierce pair of eyes, a piercing look that’s kind and tender: a paradox. With each click she clicks with her high heels on the floor, she looks around her — at no one in particular, apologetically. She pushes her way through the large room thronged with women and girls her age, all dressed in black, all wearing a sad look that they were taught to wear by parents — generation from generation, this face, this masque was passed from grandmother to mother to daughter to granddaughter, with no particular explanation of the reasons standing behind the ritual. It’s a masque they had to put on annually on a certain period of time. An annual masquerade — parade … call it what you will.

As soon as she sits the lights are hushed. Words echo in the air, a dirge, a diabolical hymn, a terrifying electricity fills the air gradually, gradually gaining momentum until it becomes so strong. Jolting. Staggering. Astounding. That’s when the words start failing to float in the air. They fall on the floor, heavy metallic objects. They thickly clink and clank. They bang on the walls of her head, immobilising her every thought. She becomes a living cluster of dumb numbness. Motionless except for occasional rigid jerks of dread and fright that creep into the air she breathes, the air that fills the room where she sits.

Next to her, an old woman pats her on the back. Well done.