popsicle

Oh, how I have a secret. A wonderful riddle, deep inside me, to be exposed as I drift into eternity, to leave a legacy, and what can you say for yourself? My former devotee abandoned my secret and me, allotting you to gawk upon my demise in your travels. I was wonderful, quite, though I lay here melting away, they were once enamored with me more so than you are now. You would like to know my secret, but you’ll leave at the force of traffic, forget me in two steps, though you’ll rattle my riddle in your head beyond the corner and onto the train. There will be others. I fade away slowly. The sun is hot but I am well constructed, and here comes another.
Corpulent lady, in a plaid jumpsuit, horrible straw hat hiding your faded dye job, sunglasses too large, and too old to be a hipster, don’t look upon me in disgust. I only tantalize you with what you can’t have. Diabetes, remember? They said your leg would be amputated. What a wonderful way to drop twenty pounds? Forgive me for my callousness, I only lash out because it’s beginning to hurt. You have no need for my riddle anyway. You don’t smile anymore. You live in a fictitious world, fabricated because life wouldn’t permit you your desires, so you’ve cast off the shackles of reality and carved your own pseudo-reality. I applaud you for your ambition, for your gumption. But how sad are you? Why do you cling? The boys never came running. They were stupid and hollow anyway. They never had taste, and slandered you because you got the better marks. Mother said not to be a lesbian even though you never wanted to be one, and when you tried it, your stomach quivered and your back sweat and you had to flush the repulsion away with strawberry shakes and cheesecake. Then your mother told you not to get fat. So when you joined the gym, you made sure it was a 24-hour gym, that way the boys couldn’t laugh at you. You trained hard and exhausted muscles you never knew existed. There was pride in your reflection. The pounds fell off the scale one by one then ten at a time. There was a figure under the green sweat suit. You could see it, it was magnificent. He must have thought so too. That’s why he followed you home from the gym. That’s why when you ran to your door he forced his way in. That’s why he ripped your green sweat pants off and made his way with you. That’s why he found pleasure in your pleas. That’s why he left you bloody at the doorstep and ran away. He was ashamed for hurting your magnificence. But when he left you he didn’t realize that your magnificence was broken, shattered into slivers, oh what a mess he made. And you were left to clean it up, without his help, and mother told you to move back home. Alas, you retaliated against her words and fled from the scene with scorn for her myopia.
You sit in your chair, circled by them, weeping miserably, sometimes with them, coaching them through. They appreciate you. The tenderness you bring. The insight you attain is encouraging. You’re dear to them, like his children are to him. Cherished undisputedly, as his bride is, the mother of his children, who happens to be fifteen years his minor. How you would love to piss on her candied look, even if she was ignorant of your earned malice. So demure, so absent from your world, it grinds you. She remains in the clutches of those men, that man. She has not had to endure what you and your disciples have lived through. They are your disciples are they not? That’s what you call them. Preaching a newfound way through man’s oblique canard. They need you like his children need him. You help them mend the pieces that never were your own. Wait. Have you confused their pain with yours? Their stories come from their mouths, from the police reports, from your volunteer’s notes. Where are yours from my plaid clad lady? It’s easy to get lost when we try to forget so much, no? I’m revealing more than you ever wanted to allow yourself to know. But carry on; you have a movie to catch. Sanctuary awaits, hide amid the turned eyes and mundane story; huddle away from your own memory banks, deep within the artificial butter and cherry cola. Then scurry home, chin on chest, to your solitude with diet television dinners and languished serial plots and rest assured work comes a few hours away. Only a few hours away, my dear.
Oh, how I would love to reach to her, but my demise is eminent and hers is well, placed grain by grain. Time is all I have. No time, but what a wonderful riddle I have. She wasn’t concerned with figuring it out. It was beneath her. Maybe if she took a moment to ponder, her dam would break and misery would flood. Best thing she didn’t then. Although you will! You there, behind the man with the bullet belt and studded leather vest. Yes, yes, your magazine featured artwork looks better than his faded jailhouse tats. The weak barbwire band with the name “Cindy” doesn’t garner your approval, so push by him, scoff his lack of insight and his Pantera t-shirt. It’s three years late and seven years early of being ironic or retro. Yes, come close. Here. Remember me? You’ll take a moment to mourn for me or stare at the least. You’re curious to my riddle, eh? Nostalgia. You love it, read it; go ahead read with your lips, that’s okay, nobody is looking. Or are they? Of course they are, what am I saying, look at you, so put together, in a good way of course, hot, very, those clothes don’t wear you one bit. Those taunting girls were but of ill mood, flocking in with SoCo breathe via the Lincoln Tunnel. Stupid soro-stitutes, how dare they mock your show! Your drummer was M.I.A. and you had to fill his spot with your neighbor who is minus the soul your songs deserve. They’re oblivious, those rancid cats, it was beyond them, they wanted to shred you because they couldn’t comprehend you and your lyrics. You can’t pour deep into chalices shallow. And pour you do, your heart, your soul, right, your soul too? Pour them right into each molded lyric. “Pavement Jungle Tramp” was written in blood, from your flesh! The wound may have been self-inflicted and no more than a paper cut, but it was blood nonetheless!
And how they dismissed you so aggressively without understanding the intricacies of a live act, of a live show, of an artist on display, only implicated them on their vindictive tendentiousness. Did they realize your sound guy was heavily intoxicated and stepped away for the duration of the set to have oral relations with the bartender in the bathroom? No surprise your guitar sounded limp. Such a frustration with others lack of accountability. But what does it matter? You’ve always said all you need is your guitar and a voice, that’s why you’re working on a solo album. It will be out to the masses as soon as you finish your studio that will be completed when you pay off your credit card debts. Hey, soon. That’s what you tell them. Soon.
There are those who appreciate your efforts nonetheless. The fans. The reason you press on despite the critics and naysayers. Those girls from the pizza parlor, the Goth girls with Hot Topic style, they said you were “relevant” and that you spoke the “truth”. One of the girls said you kind of look like the lead singer of HIM, and you blushed, and asserted “with talent.” They giggled and left you behind in the green florescence with your white pizza and root beer. You gave them a show. You’re a showman. That’s why they the adore you. Did I mention how good you look today? The frays of midnight black hairs that hang premeditated, without revealing so, over your left eye, leaves you the poster child of the arcane. The pinstriped Diesels go well with that altered Boy Scout’s uniform ripped at the sleeves, which still adorn Samaritan badges. Image is all encompassing. It can’t be just about the lyrics and the melody, something needs to tie them together and that’s you. With flare you communicate your soul. Nobody makes it without image; it’s the formidable truth, but you understand the reality. You’re a promoter, a salesman, and if anyone has any doubt they can check out your My Space with 15,000 friends who all say they love your music. Oh and how they love you, so intimately, so fervently, how they would love to attend your funeral. What? Too morbid? Too presumptuous? Okay then maybe they don’t understand you, but she does. That’s why all those long emails. That’s why she wears your t-shirt proudly. She paid cash for it out of her own pocket. And that’s where you’re in such a hurry to be. You’d be there hadn’t you stopped at my riddle. Or maybe my sapid flavors melting onto the pavement reminded you of your adolescence and your first kiss with Tabitha Anne on her back porch at fourteen. Do you foresee another first kiss on this afternoon as well? Not yours silly, you already had yours with Tabitha Anne twelve years ago, I’m speaking of… Oh, never mind, what am I saying, judging by those naughty emails she sent you she’s far beyond the experience of a first kiss. Did I find the line of your rationalization? I agree, you’re not stealing anything from her, she’s given it away countless times, and corruption was on set prior to this afternoon. You’re not taking advantage of something that hasn’t been taken advantage of already. I apologize, I retract, not advantage, use, I meant use.
I don’t mean to be flippant. I’m not one of a higher moral standard. Look upon me; I’m loosing it! Really. Nevertheless, all aside, have you figured out my riddle? Not yet, huh? It’s simple. Think about it, why did the pony cough? Yes, such an insightful question. Why did the pony cough? You’ve given up. You have to go. Perhaps the little one can answer it for you. She might know. Children say the damndest things! Oh, there he goes, I’ve only offended. Coming close to the end one loses all manners. There is no time for decorum. I am almost gone. Then answer begins to burn out of me.
Why did the pony cough? Yes, that is my riddle and the secret will shortly reveal itself from my flesh. It’s so exciting I can barely contain myself. I’m slipping into eternity and who my legacy will be left on I can barely wait to see. It’s coming close, I can see part of the etched answer hitting the open air. There isn’t much left of me. Or you. Where did you come from? Oh, that brutal hollow face, concaved after being shunned for decades, you are carved out of old hickory that was saved from the kindling. Have you stopped for a smile, a moment of joy with what I’m about to bestow upon you? Or are you here to watch me perish, to take pleasure in my inescapable outcome? Well, if you have come to watch me compromise my fatality sir, you have come all too late for I have accepted my end. There is no show of that nature here I assure you. Or are you here in envy, wishing it were you deteriorating at an expeditious pace, instead of lost in your limbo, falling apart one cell at a time. The stagnation is insoluble and you feel it clutching your bones. But I can see your bones through your translucent wax paper thin skin. The meat insulating your bone has not been nourished in quite sometime, it’s obvious to me, and to the others, why you have fallen into such a state of decline. Wait, you didn’t choose this? Oh, you say that now, but what of those restless nights on your single mattress, stained with soiled un-pressed sheets, months unwashed, with the lingering aroma of cigarette butts in coffee cans and self released fluids, what do you say then? What do you say in your insomniac realization of your stale existence?
Posh, come off it, I only chide you for hopes of a rebuttal. Has the inferno been smothered? Think back to your youth, not too far (we don’t want to rekindle the memories of your absent mother and ailing father, those misfortunes were NOT of your control) and remember how the folks begrudged you for your passion. Yes, you haven’t brought that up in some time. They said you were over zealous in your ambitions. Your Aunt Marla was one to try to keep you grounded in your desires, but even her suppression proved futile. You couldn’t contain yourself, so how could they? You left them, with their family business, with their acres of land, with your ailing father, all for something you couldn’t explain. And when you arrived here forty years ago the streets were not safe, and the people were not fashionable, and the only artists you knew were your former homeroom teacher and his wife, who lived in the town over from where you were raised and who you would spend time with reading Dickenson and Auden and Wordsworth and smoking grass. They died so long ago, not long ago as your father, though we shall not discuss that further.
You had one suitcase and a couple hundred, to which you ran into the nearest Pawn Shop and purchased an Underwood Universal just like Faulkner had used, and lugged it two blocks to your rented room above the tile wholesaler. There were so many ideas then, you could type for hours, undisturbed by life, free to let your soul flutter about the room until it tired its wings, although they would never tire, not then. You had years to ponder and experiment and drift with the currents, capturing each crucial second onto paper and masquerading it as your own creation. But those times ran by like a colt unbridled and the purest moments, the moments you tried to harness for yourself were intangible in your coherent states. So you had to pawn that wonderful typewriter and turn to paper and pencil, although it didn’t have the same inspiration as the click of the keys. The irritation of lead upon pad was not to the affect of the thundering pounce of finger upon letter. It only made sense to pawn those items as well and you took a vacation from it all and got a job behind the bar. A drink for them, a nip for you, a shot for them, then you go two— a yes wasn’t that your rhyme? The talent pissed out, you often proclaimed. You would regale them with stories of the country, melancholy always was the end, but they would be splitting at the seams until that point. Then one of those ungrateful barflies said you should write it down, “write it down”, he said, "you should be a writer", “a natural genius” he called you, as if there were any other kind, and you saw red. What an ignorant provocation, so you grabbed the bottle of Beam you had been serving and cracked it along his face because he was speaking reason.
You were institutionalized for your stance against reason. And when you were released because the state had to cut funding in order to give its workers a raise you were back on the street a free man. Oh how you would get it together, you got a job as a dishwasher, hard work, thankless work, but your soul was clean as the dishes. In your room after work you would let it out of its cage, and it would hop along the floor, too timid to fly in its age, picking at the crumbs by your feet then back into its home for a nap. Then your aunt called you and told you that she was sick (see how I didn’t mention your father again, woops!) and she asked if you could come home for a while, and that she didn’t care about the years of separation. She would even send the bus ticket. Come home she pleaded. You contemplated it I know. You even began packing, you decided on going. What stopped you? I see. When you opened the cage before leaving for the bus station, to give one last play, perhaps one lucky flight there was nothing. It lay motionless on the cage floor among piles of feces for which you never bothered cleaning, they were mountains high you know, and there it lay stretched in rigor mortis. Then there was nothing, and you sat in your room to the incessant ringing of the telephone, ignoring the sound until it became as natural to you as the curling wall paper. It ceased after a couple months. It only took a few months.
And now your phone never rings. Though do you really want that inconvenience? Why am I asking you? Why am I asking you what you want, your indifference frightens me. I’m sinking into eternity and am wasting my time with you! Leave me please, sir, I do not wish you to be the first and perhaps last to see my secret. My secret is for someone who can feel. You’ve only come to my final moments to wish it were you. I will not allow you to waste me! Please, I implore you to carry on with your suffering elsewhere! My body is numb. There is no more pain. Wait, what are you doing? You’re… You’re grinning. You see it! My secret is upon you. Say it! Say it, damn you!
“Because he was a little horse. Why did the pony cough? Because he was a little horse.”
Yes, you get it? You’re laughing, oh my God you’re laughing. Because he was a little horse, yes! Such a wonderful riddle, complex in its subtlety, I’ve held that secret for too long. I feel free, ah the bliss! Are you crying? Why are you crying? I’ve shared my secret with you, you felt it, I saw you feel it, why the regression? Your tears are for me, sir? Your hollow eyes flood the deep cracks along your leather cheeks. They dykes of flesh are submerged in your tidal waves. Your streams are for me? No, they are for you, my friend; those tears are for you. Please. You’ve let me witness you in return for me. Yes pick me up and place me in your pocket. I will accept my eternal rest there. Do not be concerned. I trust your judgment. You will find me of better use dead than alive. Good sir, thank you, thank you so very much, my secret is yours now, it is for you to share as you find fit. I bid you the best possible outcome. That’s all I wanted for any of them. Adieu kind man, adieu, may the days move quicker in the direction you choose.