Sleeping Outside the Box

The balcony is too high. But I can jump it. I can get to the other side. If only the rain would abstain from taking my feet from the ground as they glide out and up from my landing zone. I know this is what will happen, wet metal, pooling up, no choice. Go now.
…

That’s the fall, long, steady, hard. My shoes hit the metal edge of the building across the alley and, surprisingly, the soles kick out some foamy stabilizer, pushing past the pool of water, adhering to the metallic surface and finally pulling me off the edge, onto the rooftop. My torso jeers forward from the momentum and I nearly taste the floor.

The rain is thick enough to almost mask me up here. The city lights are below this level. Only the moonlight, sparkling off the raindrops reveals my location as I patter across the deck. This building is huge. I don’t know how many stories. Hopefully nobody in the way as I run down the stairs.

The stairway smells like wet paint and bleach. The Janitors have already made their rounds. It appears I’ll be able to safely traverse this passage…

Three and a half flights down, a door swings open, almost laying me out with a thwack as I run into it. There’s this night fellow, swinging a flashlight, looking at me with a discombobulation turning into a sour grimace. This isn’t good. Instinctively, my body reacts. His flashlight flies though the air, bouncing out of his broken hand. I catch it as I run past, down the stairs, hearing the siren of whistles along the way.

This isn’t over. I run faster.

I want music that breathes–not just pumps and jams but takes in the air and exhales in a waltz. Speak to me in french, Portuguese, Russian. Drum in a dead language. They don’t hear you anyway. It’s all just noise to the self obsessed, photographing themselves and tuning out to the tweet noise, awaiting only replies. The news says there’s nothing new but I can hear the “bump, ba dump ba dump” of the accordion, breathing a dance into the air.

The cafe is dark, connected, sulfur smelling under the guise of the peppermint oil that lights the lamp. Someone throws a beer bottle on stage, thumping into the leg of a twelve year old who is reinventing music as a living organism. He doesn’t stop–he doesn’t even look up, entranced in the moment. This kid is God.

“Hey, play Freebird!” This from the peanut gallery minus a beer.

The kid plays on, a pattern of breath inside the beat that just sings.

“Deaf boy!” The man starts again, but by this time I’m right behind him. He hears the sweetest melody of his life in the last seconds before he hits the table, unconscious, breathing. Still breathing. He’s finally in tune.

The music continues. The darkness lightens. The ether turns milky, borealis, a ghostly succubus, luring in wayward coffee drinkers and beer connoisseurs.

We hear the siren’s call. This savant messenger speaks well. He carries the tune and we tune in, leaving our egos by the side.

All I see is a metallic shimmer, blue, green, swipes of sudden chaos into view.

The cruisers are smashing down the mainway, ricocheting off the walls with malice and gusto. Benny doesn’t care if he scratches the paint; it’s new but everything is these days. He can roll another out the maker box in half a breath.

The other cats apparently aren’t so wealthy as Benny. They curse and rant in hi-def subliminal microwave, neon vector raves pulsing from the decks of their cars, flashes of red and black, blipping abuse at the other motorcraves. One in particular, this jocky puck who sports a flyboy mohawk and a thread leather seatback throttles it forward next to Benny, giving him the bird with his telehand. Benny is thrown for a sec by the florescent intrusion. The projection threatens the sky with epileptic seizures. Cars screech and skitter around the blaze of light.

Benny sucks it up; he’s taken the piss before from ingrate halflings who haven’t been on the track longer than the day. This punkbag doesn’t have the verbal skills to make Benny flinch. And with that, a kiss-off glance and a for-real finger in the air, Benny rips the box a new one. There’s something to be said for the finesse of a seasoned motorcrave, but you have to be there to witness it for yourself.

The causeway is clear now; the light is gone. Motorcraves are in a new city by now. I’ve got a headache.

I’ve started writing 10 minutes a day on http://writeforten.com/users/antic

Here’s day 1:

Full of hope and something bittersweet. This is the dream of a new reality. Sometimes I think I see someone sweet; it’s never a known quantity. This feeling will pass. Who needs it anyway. A feeling of broken ambition and it’s all it takes to go down.

Back in the bar she sits sipping sapphire gin, looking up from the glass only to flirt with the bartender. He’s too old for her, or so thinks the boy on the other side of the counter. He’s been a bar-back for 3 days but that’s long enough to know the type that sits alone, drinking like a fish and pining for the older gents. She could do better, he thinks. She could do him.

There’s this place back east. It’s a festival that goes on all year. Sometimes I dream about it, full of people running around all the time, splashing each other with their drinks, joyously, celebrating whatever it is they wish, without fears or regrets. I don’t remember the name, hope it’s the same.

Wet washed and wiped out, drowning in peptides. I can feel this fuzzy fissure in my scalp, running down my neck. It’s like it’s been engineered to tickle my melancholy. I can’t remember the last time I had this emotion. It’s like swimming in the ocean at 10, or maybe I was 8. I stayed up late, ran out to the edge, found a fish that was swimming on sand, gasping for breath. I could tell it was in a bad place. There’s no disgrace in gasping for breath when there isn’t anything to breath. At least he’s trying. At least his heart is in it. Pull through little tyke. Suck it up, there’s water right there. Just a nudge, a flick, a wet kiss.

I’m feeling more alone than ever now.