fiction
things just didn’t turn out like we thought
This thing occurs in society circles,
where somebody says he’s crazy,
then everybody turns their back:
it’s known she’s loose, he’s lazy.
He wears the hot red scarlet M
unwanted but assumed
She cleans her hands ten thousand times
its far too late; she’s doomed.
Michael:
He’s an online troll, I heard he’s got
like fifteen fake accounts
He’ll steal your money & haggle you
for any small amount.
I heard he borrowed the gallery van,
to move, for just one night
he took his girl & cut for Vegas-
blacked out and got in a fight
Ruby:
She’s vogue, she’s lithe, she’s rarefied,
a glittering abyss
she’s on, she’s now, she’s painted over
every bruise & kiss
I heard she’s anorexic
and eats just once a day
she kissed her boss & quit her job
now she’s living on his pay
Sun-bathers in the golden pool
of the good of the common will,
basking in the lush potential
of the transient’s brand of cool.
Homeless, in satin chinoiseries,
glampiric in their use of Yes please.
bleach-headed dandies, blissful among
the stank-weed & the bees.
With angel pizza zeal, pearled plastic
& potent as a limbless fish,
she’s deep-throating a cherry popsicle
he’s living an idiot’s wish.
chillness.
woof woof. you still got dirty feet?
what is with these freaky fish balls?
you’re never up.
a toke sounds nice.
and fry bread-
She hides the wine behind Mica’s books;
he pushes her face away.
wash your feet, he says with a look;
she sleeps in the yard like a stray
Living the high life beyond their means,
rail-thin & pale-
suffocating, on “the bathos of human existence
and the scant air it leaves for us to inhale”
The stupa of the party cupid was lush
with spotted eggs, bull’s horns, and grains-
where gossiping hipsters gather to chatter
Donatellesque in their chains
Ruby and Michael went out one night
and never went back home.
Now they ride the bus all day
tell Nikki they’ve gone away.
Everybody wanted them each to know
how little they were worth
everybody wanted them each to know
they were a stain upon this Earth.
Outcasts now, even to each other,
even as he latches her bra.
She folds a twenty and then another
into the pocket of his chamois.
She dodged his kisses but clutched for his hand
didn’t know who to believe.
The man in front of her wasn’t the man
being painted by the scene.
It’s cold tonight in Highland Park
the stars are gonna shiver
Michael withdraws, as he watches her walk
smoke curling around his fingers.
Ruby was living on peanuts and coke,
chilled down to the bone
Michael stopped talking but to bum a smoke,
& called back east for a loan.