Prose
A Moment of Clarityby RC Edrington A 5th of Johnny Walker Red shatters on the black and white tiled bathroom floor. 3 a.m. begins to slide between my fingers like a partial birth abortion splashing down the leg of an antique, porcelain tub.
This is not the romantic piece you wanted me to write. Nor am I the glorified, drunk poet singing odes to my own debauchery...and Juliet...well, let's just say Juliet would be better off spread eagle like a whored corpse in a slippery pool of her own blood and vomit instead of waltzing the anorexic junkie doze on my unmade, piss stained sheets with a black leather, silver studded biker belt cocked like a tourniquet around her pale, bruised arm and a 1/2 gauge diabetic syringe hanging like a limp cock from her sunken vein.
"We're so pretty, oh so pretty...pretty vacant".
And the camera fades, the way cameras always fade in some cheap art-house movie where mechanical angels are employed to make up for the cut-rate acting supplied by the directors girlfriend and boyfriend (who do swallow)...and mom and dad arrive at the local mini-mall photo-mat to collect the summer family trip photos of Disneyland only to find the film has been mistakenly mixed up by the bored college girl who spends her break time chewing her fingernails and scrolling an ode to suicide for each pimple that rapes her surgically altered nose...and mom and dad flip through the photos like fresh playing cards to discover the 40 year old cliché of bald executive sporting the latest bondage gear while his german shepherd, "Killer", licks pork chop gravy off his sad middle-aged cock.
But back to your drunken hero slash poetry god, because we all know this is what you voyeurs came to see. Call me Romeo. Watch closely as I spew forth the bile of my ripped, rotted guts into the sour mix of half chewed carne asada and Johnny Walker Red to stain the black and white checked bathroom floor...now graced by the ghost of Bukowski himself who pisses into the cockroached corner while blood throbs and spits from my fingers as I fondle and grope the remains of a shattered Johnny Walker bottle searching for a metaphor for my own self-destruction...and...
and like the 5 year old child, I assure you I once was, that can only know the danger of fire (the way Adam knew Eve) by placing his virgin palms into momma's wood stove until they blister to the bone...my head slams to a thud against the rusted toilet bowl demonstrating the reason 4 out of 5 dentists prefer porcelain for caps and crowns.
Juliet has about 4 more hours of China White to swim her veins like an escaped Palomino stroking through the knee high grass of a Kansas plain, so there will be no rescue of your drunken hero as my own blood coagulates around my face and arms...my eyes drowning into a soft creamy blackness...then suddenly the spotlight shifts as I hear the crowd scream and cheer laughter as a dwarf stuffed like a sausage into a silk, red and white harlequin jump-suit begins to slowly dry hump the bearded lady on the dust and straw carnival floor...
and at some moment, before the siren of an ambulance ripped through my skull exploding like some long forgotten land mine on a blood drenched playground...and the carnival lights began to slowly fade as if they were never there...I was able to carve these lines with a dull razor blade into my tattooed scarred forearm...knowing dearest readers...you only read my poetry or prose for the same reason you slow down and stare when passing a car crash...
©2003 RC Edrington
Published in: The Hold 11/03 and Babel Magazine 12/03