ISBN: 978-618-5144-44-9

- Vakxikon.gr 17, 106 80 . 210 3637867info@vakxikon.gr www.vakxikon.gr

2015 Vakxikon.gr &

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THE LAST DAYS OF CARNIVAL(PART 1)

A slimy trail of human stench and joy filled the streets. Unfathomable melancholy hidden underneath painted faces and howling whistles from air that flung out of weary chests. There was music and laughter. A celebration in between the decay of city filth. Of dumpsters with animals within and people dancing to rhythms arcane, beats that resembled syncopated hearts. People cursed and children cried and lovers loved with the passion of sworn enemies. Streets lined with floats, crowds aboard them and on their sides. A slow moving wave through parked cars that had amassed plastic cups and wine stains that trickled down windshields from their tops. Drama queen tears that dripped onto the pavement and joined the puddles of alcohol, urine, dirt and shallow city pools that always run down highway crevices into the grime of the gutter.We danced together amidst the immigrants and the aromas of their delicacies slow burning on makeshift sidewalk stoves. Among the junky ghosts that stood up against the walls of the doorways to the old apartment buildings on either side of the street.Some of them euphoric, some with the shakes, and others cooking to the hum of oblivion dancing in a vein of anticipation.Shopkeepers clapped and cheered and bounced their feet to the beat,the infectious beat of carnival sounds and the arousal of human meat. Mustaches and eyes of old men dripped with desire as women wrapped their legs around the waists of their lovers in plain view. In the open where all could be seen we groped each other over and over. A festival of lights and sounds and olfactory cuisine that filled us with disgust as we kissed and held each other close.

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We held just like everyone else held someone. A stranger. A lover. An enemy. A customer. A dealer. A prisoner. A friend.And if someone was not available a hug could readily be found elsewhere.Some squeezed streetlights, others huddled on steps and spooned with them the way humans and cats do.Tourists marveled at the sights of decay and their dimensions through photographic lenses. A pantheon of relativity digitally recorded and soon to be recalled in the quiet warmth of a foreign suburban home. Where red wine and conversation take the place of bestial sexuality that produces uncontrolled grunts and orgasms and dead skin collections under bloody finger nails.Passerbys stopped and stared in awe at the dust that rose from the ground with each chaotic thump of foot on pavement. Thieves wished for a deformity that would bless them with eight arms and hands to swipe and steal and extricate the riches of the fools that drank and sang and blew their carnival whistles and wore their masks over their worn down faces. We wished that this night would not bring the eventual rise of the sun but an end of days delirium, a midnight massacre of sobs and slaps and barbaric declarations of love.

When we finally escaped the main promenade we made our way through filthy alleyways, little narrow hideaways and dim lit backstreets that bubbled. Our hands clutched one another's as we drifted and took in the scenery. Of priests walking their dogs that defecated on sidewalks.

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Women with skirts lifted and panties dropped urinating in the shadows. Drunkards sleeping in their vomit with a smile clutched around their bottle. Birds that hung on the branches of trees, shocked from the sights and insomniac bats that reveled in the plentitude of chaos. Our eyes overfed with disorientation and excess blinked uncontrollably to keep from drying shut. When we found a grassy hill we decided to lie down on the moist midnight earth and rest. Fully clothed, mid-winter and manacled by the chill, we held each other close, fending off the cold of the ground with our heat.

And thus descended into deep deep sleep.The kind one wishes to never awake from.

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DOWNTOWN DRIVE

Neither first nor last, time has no place in this sentence.

Weekday weariness and a monetary exchange with the silhouette of a sidewalk seller underneath a streetlight.

In this metropolis, even those with shelter dont really have a home.

Uneasiness creeps with the taste of calamity and threatens to soil my conscience. Someone at sometime gave birth to that man, I think. Someone loved him once. Someone wanted only the best for him. There was a time when all of this was true.

When windows go up and engines propel us, we leave misfortune behind.It bothers me to think that such metaphysics have built burrows under my skin.That I am flustered at that sight of death. So near, it tastes like the stale of armpit stench. Like dry vinegar. Like sanitizers. Like stories of success that make my soul shrivel with disgust.

In this metropolis there is a violence of sound so loud that my screams are nothing more than sensual whispers.Warnings of disaster are hearsay at best and mythical expenditures of boredom make pockets appear full.At night when silence makes me feel, the presence of absence gifts me with insomnia.

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If you speak in the dark, you can see what you say. In this stillness of cold, children stories lose all value and we are left with nothing more to mourn than a bone without meat.

What if all our fears are real?What if the city absorbs them?What if it feeds them back to us little by little?

The sidewalk mans tears flow unto the pavement thick like liquid fat. -And what if death never arrives? he whimpers.

Without a countdown there is no time, only the horror of forever.

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