Flummoxed morning after

Confusion reigns supreme today here at chez Du MausceMone. Don’t know where I am or what these tiny blue bruises are. I woke up sobbing into my pillow, naked and running my hands over my boyhood scars, birthmarks, bony shell and…

I remember

The nape of the neck, my lips to hers, fire in our blood…

Shit. What is this indent in my skull? The bone feels tender. Semi-permeable membranes of tissue and is that cold sweat? The window-box filled with cold white emptiness. Whose room am I in? Where am I? Her voice, like a candy-string necklace…

I remember

Speeding yellow cab like bursting solar flare through the city,
lurching toward
each hand, blips of wet electricity and peeling clothes from skin
As the greenlights stream past

While she makes breakfast or showers (or whatever she is doing) in the other room I hop up and collect myself, one article at a time. Socks. Jeans. Belt. Hair (in mirror? Fine.) Mask.

“Hi! I’m Deacon,” said the drunk shaking my left hand.
A drink occupied his right, “Are you with…”

“Yes. We came together.”

“Just the two of you?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your name?”

“D’Masqued Man.”

“What?”

“Da. Masked. Man.”

“Violin?”

I lean in close and tell him again.
He smiles drunkenly, still not hearing me.
“We have a table. Come! Sit down!
She’ll come ‘round to get you drinks. What do you want.”

“Whiskey and a whiskey,” I say,
pinching my fingers to indicate I’d like a small
and a large.

Rush out the front door and tumble through the fuzzy hallway to the elevator, make my way out into the sooty daylight, an ugly brocade of clouds and pelting spits of fine rain. The streets glitter and thaw. Feeling like I’m falling faster than ever, I ignore the ringing phone in my jacket pocket. Did I bring my billfold? Yes. Redemption. A business card in my wallet that says 'Deacon'. Ce n'était pas là avant. Then it all floods…

I remember

The whiskey but not much else.
Your continuous swoon
The vodka shots. Deacon looking at you, you winking at me.
The back ally vampires and before:

I remember

before
when I strode to your door
with flowers. found you on the floor
on the phone with sardine-breathed paramour

toying with the forces that bind me to you
(binding, unbinding )
like a ship battering against the dock, eager to set sail
'll probably drown

“Well she’s French.” I say into the phone. It rang again so I answered it this time, rubbing my sleep pangs from my eyes unsuccessfully. “But not really. She just wishes she was.”

“I’m confused,” comes the voice on the under end of the line.

“You and me both.”

No idea

Where I am? Where I am going? If I had a destination I could be lost. But I’m aimless and beginingless and therefore confused. And bleeding, shit. Is it possible to feel corroded kidneys? Communicate with your organs, like a bioluminous fiber optic exam of this mornings sperm count. A few missing. Why do my ribs feel like shards of chicken bone? And just where the hell am I?

“Just pick a direction,” says the voice.
“I would,” I say, shivering in the onslaught of the hollow vials of rain, “but, I think, I waited too long for that to matter.” Thinking coldly how if you’re not always going up, you’re probably inertly going down.

Tout a été figuré dehors, excepté la façon vivre
-Jean-Paul Sartre