We Like Philosophers And Live Like Fools.
by Shane Jesse Christmass
Burton was born in Kentucky. He moved itinerantly before settling in Oakland. Temperatures rise, so does the suicide rate. It is pushing out to 300,000 to 400,000 monthly. Half of that is failed attempts, those that end up hospitalised. Sunken faces. Too louche to be religious.
Hotter than our bones. I enclose you. I’m going to photocopy your face at funerals. This is the result, a radiation of bony fish, crab mains and ballooning ocean, the factors which affect geometry. Reports on the war dead aren’t reported. First Republic Bank shuttering Steinway & Sons Piano Factory. Burton is confused. He falls back into the back into the subway. Fleeing with ravenous eyes and muttering monosyllabic.
Humped all the way from the Hudson River up 42nd Street, past the Actor’s Studio into the bar of the Algonquin Hotel. Ushered and sat into booth for a late lunch of hamburger and hash browns and draught beer. Waiter tears up our order. Ring-modulated voice lies beneath in a wheelchair. The stars come out every third night in Manhattan.
Our arrival @ JFK in the winter of 1017 far out over the death lands. Police siren wailing. The paper strainer making wallpaper again. Fingers spread out limply. Sheets of blank paper. I walk the corridor. Taking spare change from the alms box. The crowd at Times Square, Penn room. The woman looks old. Metallic typefaces on subway entrances. Woman runs forward. Outlandish motion. Fidgets. Twitches. Get me out of here. A bread roll spins on the hotel stairs.
Drawstrings undone on my pyjamas. Willie picks my pyjamas up off the floor. An ambulance crashes out on FDR Drive. Ground coffee in his small moustache. His two legs broken. Body look over my shoulder. Nothing behind me. I have a spare key. I guess I could stay at the hotel. Earl C looks over the original notes from the autopsy. JPMorgan Chase forecloses on 23 mortgages in Morningside Heights.
A middle-aged woman looks at me. She ices her voice. Look at her! She’s up. Running. Peeling off into tide. Into her A rock on the carpet. The corridor. It fills with secretaries. Earl C heads over to the payphone and picks up the receiver. A warm summer afternoon. The meat flesh is mislaid, overlooked.
A widower with his shirt wide open. Buttons pop everywhere. Willie and Burton laugh anyway. Transplants and antibodies set off in cargo holds for Northern Africa.
About the Author:
Shane Jesse Christmass is the author of ‘Acid Shottas’ (The Ledatape Organisation. 2014) andLAN Party Skate Park (Peanut Gallery Press. 2014). He’s a member of the band Mattress Grave, and firmly believes that the future of the word, the novel, will be in synthetic telepathy…
