Welcome to actual hell. I can see here the truck, pulling up a new thumping, clacking blue body to exorcise into its open back. The crush of tin and glass plays on a steel cage. Sometimes at night. Sometimes at day. Sometimes at dusk but never in that perfect golden moment between twilight and the beginning of a new life.
One can smell the liquid just enough to cause a spinning, weak nausea. The fog of cream mixes in my throat, a lactic drizzle. One can taste the future-fire of cremation in the fatty air.
Vultures circle over my tongue, under the roof of my mouth in the darkness. In the forest of my taste buds they spot a man, already dead. And they pick and pick at his fingers first, pulling the nails from the flesh. Then they move to the cargo shorts, pulling from each thigh-pocket a newer pack of gum.
I can feel the 9-volt tongue jolt of their razor beaks digging in between the papillae to find more morsels of belonging. They move now to a molar, rotted by one cigarette after the other. One gives up. The others die from poisoning.
I can hear the gate at night. But no steel behemoth.
It’s always someone in a white suit and a white tie wearing black glasses and nothing on the bottom. What I mean to say is that his naked dick is hanging out. Thank god I’m high up or I’d be able to see it in more detail. I’m not afraid of being gay or whatever. I’m just saying I don’t want to see his wiener.
He looks up at my fourth-story window and nods, gesturing with the contractor’s bag full of god knows. Always does it. Never stops. A hand pushes out of the top of the draw string sphincter. It raises a thumb. I raise one back.
I know what he means. I tend to agree.