From the fella on Church Street no insults nor slurs, just a smile as he pockets the change. "Also" he asks then, "You wouldn't have a cigarette at all?"
Shake of the head from your man there. "That's one thing I won't have about me nor ever will is a cigarette."
"No bother." Calling after as the gentleman walks off. "Need to be stoppin' anyway. Sure they've banned it in the pubs, the gets! What next, I say to that? Ban us from pishin' the very pish out our kidneys? Will they be at that? I wouldn't put it past them! Rogues and whores, them boys! Nanny State! Political correctness gone mad, that's what our Stanley calls it!"
Grinding and rumbling and crunching to my left. School-bus, screeching brakes and tissss of the doors. Two lads step out onto the street, emo fringes tickling the bridges of their noses, black growing out at the sides. "Is she riding?" one's asking the other, school-bag slung careless over a shoulder, shirt collar all skewed to that side.
"No. Fuck the ride she'll give. A month, and not so much as a dry wank. Tell you, I'm this close to skidaddling and tryin' the luck with wee Forrest there. Wild woman for the cock, Joe says. Like a starvin' youngster scrabblin' for a Yorkie, by all accounts."
Christ.
Brushing the fag-ash off the trousers, closing the notebook, rising to my feet, fidgeting for the iPod headphones dangling out the neck of my t-shirt.
Up Linenhall Street then with Cassadaga in the ear-holes, headed for the park, passing four, five boarded-over storefronts and a poster advertising a car boot sale at the Church Of God and women walking two abreast with matching wains a-gaggle in matching prams.
Singing with surest conviction - Conor Oberst;
"Everything, it must belong somewhere - I know that now, that's why I'm staying here…"
And wound around his words, my own from three nights past; "I must belong somewhere, everything does… but it's not here." Crying and rubbing the nose with my sleeve, snotters blinding me and she crying also but saying "I understand…" and reaching to touch my arm. "It's okay…"
Aw balls - Lad I propositioned one time back in High School steps out the bookies next the traffic lights. Spying him I duck into the post office, passing the red bin I was shoved into one merry mid-October eve when the taxi driver refused to take me home on account of the boke still wet on my trousers. "Just had these fuckin' seats cleaned!" he was shouting, they told me the next day. "Fuck the pukin' hoor like that I'm taking anywhere!"
Article comments
1 - Mat Brewster
Geezum duke, whenever I've had the break up all I do is sit in the dark room and mope with the sad songs. Here you go and write a marvelous, beautiful thing.
When you going to London?
2 - DukeDeMondo
thank you very much Sir Brewster. i was consciously avoidin sayin too much about certain things for the effect readin said things might have on certain readers (certain reads who saw this before it was published and who could have told me not to let anyone see and didn't and thank you to them also) so there was a border i couldn't cross, meanin it couldn't get excessively bogged down in self obsession to the point of removin all else. still managed to get pretty far up my arse, mind you, which is fair goin.
as to London - september. this time last year i was sayin the same thing, and part of why i didn't go then was to do with stuff to which THIS all relates. sometimes a fella might think "would it've been better to skiddadle then and save all involved this carry-on?" But no. as beautiful a year as e'er a man has spent in the company of a lass, i'd dare say.
god almighty, Sir Brewster, apologies for that excessive reply to a quite simple question...
3 - Aaron Fleming
A beautiful, poetic lament to those dark moments, those horrid instance that forever lurk in the shadows, ready to spring outward just when the joyous and wonderous state of bouyancy has been settled into, then suddenly it's ripped away with cruel lack of emotion...a kick to the gut is as inadequate an analogy as almost any articulation, but you've captured it with the most sublime eloquence. Perfect.
And commiserations with the whole horror, a terrible event it all is, for everyone involved.
4 - DukeDeMondo
sir fleming, thank you no end. bloody hell, that was altogether a beautiful thing for to think and to write and to read.
5 - Mat Brewster
Ah, but think of the glorious reunion between your fine self and Sir Fleming! The two of you in the same city again will surely unfold the mysteries of life, or at least my pernicious pancreas.
6 - Greg Smyth
Ach, how I've missed your bittersweet ramblings Sir Duke. It's only a pity what personal hell you've got to go through to churn out such sparkling prose.
7 - "Blind Dog" Fearon
Ah sir, what a piece o' literature never afore has been seen by the likes o' men. Your writing be a match for the likes o' the big men, the kerouacs, ferlinghettis, ginsbergs, hemmingways, whitmans...etc etc. you'll go far my lad, that you will...you will go far.
8 - DukeDeMondo
Sir Brewster - Myself and Sir Fleming are to be sharing a set of walls and roof, as it happens. the festivals of depravity and wonder and sittin about that will ensue... they will surely drive both of us to dementia afore year's out, God willing.
Sir Smyth - thank you very much. i think it totally accurate to prepose that, in so far as i can tell judging on what i've done during times of great distress and what i've done during times of grandest cheer - cliched as it may be - i think i need to be as miserable as is humanly possible not only to do anythin that i might consider halfways decent (not neccesarily talkin about this here, either) - but to do anythin at all. i mentioned this to you of a time and you, quite rightly, told me i was talkin nonsense. at the time i was, for i had nothin really to back up such claims. judgin on the ammount of stuff i've done the past two weeks in terms of the workrate regardin various ongoing enterprises, it's all to clear to me that the more insufferable i am to be around, the more stuff i get done that's worth the time it took to do. again, not neccesarily talkin about this particular screed, just a general observation that seems relevant given your words what you put on the screen there.
"Blind Dog" - i dunno what to say to that, sir, other than thank you. jesus oh. thank you.
9 - Jon Sobel
Oy vey, that's a mighty fine piece of prose you got there. Ach. Oy. It hurts. I need a bicarb, it's so bitter. A bicarb, I say. Ach. Oy.