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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wild Gazebo" data-source="post: 2608008" data-attributes="member: 24413">Cracked PavementbyWild Gazebo<a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22530" target="_blank">Image One</a> 366 Emaner Street.  Shifting patterns of French quarter mingled with the rich aroma of fried shrimp and gutter coloured my future.  I can still hear the buzzing echoes of the quiet city street.  The bitter calls of my frustrated Mother tasted of sweet bread upon the wind--but always to that empty hall.  That last scourge of emotional battery before the stovetop warmth and wolf-mother wallpaper.  That lonely chair ensconced in brick amidst the tempered forbearance of our callused hands and bitter regret.  That temple of loss.…Stepping across the spiked tent wires I study my kaleidoscopic horizon:  modern nomads.  Grease splattered, hydraulic motored, grift minded mobile symphony of discarded bacchanals mingle in appropriated busyness--culling the public herd and quenching the thirst of the innocent and bored.  A quivering smirk creeps across my face as I bow below the canvas entrance of my office.   It is just as I left it.  The cot is neatly made with the blankets tightly wound into hospital corners.  My regalia are curtly folded into my battered blue trunk with worn green bronze filigree.  The single oil lamp rests gingerly upon an upended apple-crate placed adjacent to the head of my bed.  Eliot’s Waste Land weighs down my foam pillow:  breeding lilacs out of the dead land.After carefully paralleling my soft leather shoes amidst my other footwear, I calmly take the three steps to the edge of my bed, make a smooth practiced quarter turn and sit.  Smoothing down the folds of my trousers in fixed rapidity I lie back upon the tight structure of the cot.  I stare at the yellow, red, pink, blue, and green facets of my canvas ceiling and pretend I can control the undulating wind that ripples my rainbow world.<a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22531" target="_blank">Image Two</a>…Three, six, six.  It wasn’t just a street number…it was a calling card.  It always felt like a beacon—a grotesque mockery of everything that I didn’t want the world to know.  I could hear them whisper…poor, poor Emannuel.  Why did she always keep that chair there?  I guess it is all she had left of him.It was a good place to grow up nevertheless.  I always had people to play with, not friends, just other children whose mothers held sway over playtime with a lordly wooden spoon.  There was no mockery, or ill will, just quiet perplexity with a dab of uncertainty and a great deal of pity.  Pity from the eyes of a small child:  emotional make-up to paint the void of certainty until time fills the cracks.I didn’t waste my youth with the regrets of what was.  I traveled on as only I knew how.  I learned to appreciate the space between, the vastness of everything and the wonder of nothing.…I clinically examine Sasha as she gracefully steps off of me.  The gentle rippling of her attuned muscles manipulate her frame through the space of my room.  She arcs over like a young willow and redresses in her bright red gown delicately tying it about her waist.  Cradling her head down and to the right, she looks at me as I lie watching her.  No smile, no lust, no look of connection graces the room.  I reach over and douse the lamp watching the smoke dance in the flickering florescent light that escapes from the world as Sasha leaves the tent.  The darkness is my friend.Dawn paints my room like a psychedelic glow-worm.  I reach for the lamp; first to the right and then to the left, touching each side exactly the same way so as not to imbalance my day.  The dawn light is bright through the canvas but not strong enough to read by.  I leaf through my book coaxing memory and desire:  shoring the fragments against my ruins.  Pieces of me become the work and pieces of me stay in my tent.  It is a short read.  I reach down underneath my cot and lift out my diary from the shadowy underbelly of the bed.  Flipping through the hundreds of pages toward the end of my current volume; scores and scores of tick-marks darken the pages.  I carefully draw the pen from the fold on the spine and make a small mark behind the last mark I made.  Everything seems to be in order.…I met Sasha when I was but fifteen--she was much older but she never seemed to age.  I was standing just down the lane.  In front of a red bricked café I was showing some of the block kids how I was able to grow a moustache.  I had just carefully groomed the thin sickly lip fur and was more than a little smug about the possibility of buying some spirits off of old Bill down at the Dime.  Sasha had heard my adolescent boasting and sauntered over.  She brushed past the other children and laid a smouldering caress upon my neck and face--speaking like a temptress and moving like a serpent.  Coiling her finger around my collar she led me down the road.The day became a blur of flirting and adventure.  We stopped at local shops and stole sweets and cigarettes--making no effort at modesty or subtlety.  We stampeded the boulevard like drunken cattle laughing and yelling--ending up choking on bourbon late into the evening.  Sasha has somewhere acquired dark glasses and two fine hats as we were waiting in the sitting room of an upscale burlesque down town.  She took one that looked awkwardly like a matador’s cap and crushed it onto my head while she fished out the two last cigarettes and placed one in each of our mouths.  The two cigarettes burned in unison hanging from the edge of our lips.  It made me wonder how light can only fill the darkness for but a short time.<a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22529" target="_blank">Image Three</a> Lacquered mahogany, silken frills, soft skin, burning liquor, and jasmine became but fragments upon my shore.…Fully dressed in my bright yellow, red, and white mockeries, I skip toward the grandstands through the throng of people.  No thought of happiness or sadness clouds my mood--I skip for the watchers:  the children and the elderly.  Playing the crowd I am able to escape notice and secure attention.  I filter from one gag to another adjusting a small amount of time for a dabbling of theft and a smattering of lounging.  My eyes read the faces of the times and take in the meaning of the rippling motions of the liquid people.  Making my way to the top of the grandstands, the peak of the extravaganza, I take in the wholeness of my world.  The drunken azure sky sparks my vision with a wonder of emptiness, leading to a dun horizon of earthiness, sprinkling to a paved greyness.  Two vehicles stand out amidst the paved greyness.  Two cars smashed in the fore.  Two machines driven forward and disabled by what got in the way.  Two vessels seemingly uninjured in the rear yet still commissioned to stay put—side by side, until they can be dealt with.  Two objects that enrapture my white and grey interest until the cusp of dawn. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22532" target="_blank">Image Four</a>Accumulating my shores of ruin.</blockquote>

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