Three Rail Corner

Der Alte Mann sat before him slouched over the chessboard. Other old bloated men lined the torn leather booth like a pile of sacks straight back to the flashing slot machines. The lust for game leaving them all depleted, not even roused from the cushions by the girl who was spinning on her toes beside the abandoned pool table, her toothless smile under the green lamplight. She shuffled dizzily to the bar & slammed her hand down. Mensch. He could've captured the queen with his rook, but he let the chance pass & lost the match. Der Alte Mann lifted up his head & grumbled. Stray hairs of his beard clung to his collar. He didn't know if he was boasting about his victory or insulting him for his shameful play. The girl came over to him, grabbed his hand & spun him around on the slender dancefloor to the siren of an untouched slot machine. You sing me a song, cowboy, she said, rum on her breath, take me somewhere & sing me a song. He wrapped his arm around her & let her dip back. She reeled upward & he slung the case over his shoulder & spun her over to the door. Der Alte Mann chuckled & slapped his thighs. They walked & came to a chainlink fence bowed & bordering the trainyard. Is this your secret place, she asked. Not anymore, he said, lifting her up until she pulled herself over & fell without a shred of grace onto a dry patch of weeds. Across a chalk path gullied & cracked, kicking up dust that reeked of diesel. The bridge across the field posing as a horizon, its steel gleam bisecting two realms of darkness, the faint red glow of the city through a fortress of trees & the cloudswept sky. A platform overlooking a golf range: the balls beyond brightly hovering like wayward stars. A train coursed above. Her dead gaze on his hands as he weaved his way to the last verse of a song until he stumbled over the words & hummed & went silent.

the time has come soon forgotten

He didn't choose this world, this catatonic city floating across divergent waters, walled in by a forested hinterland made smooth by northern winds. It was chosen for him. He arrived under an impulse he could hardly call his own. Awoken one rainy night in the city of the risen dead, enamoured with its own ruinous legacy, transfixed by the mischievous spirit of history, reenacting its memories like some washed-up vaudevillian inextricably bound to one role & playing it until the final scene. Streets deserted beneath the charged air that follows a hush. White buildings, iron rails & stone facades. Awoken & soon pacing beneath the tracks over Schönhauser Allee, settling into an anonymous destiny, forgotten in a world that would sooner be buried in ash than forget its past. Unable to fully remember the first days here when he was drunk, wandering around the main train station, escalators bridging each level, the lights flooding across the floors. Rising & descending into damned netherworlds. There was a show set up for him in Hamburg by the tranny ex-girlfriend of a German keyboardist he met in Seattle at a Melvins concert. That night arriving at a warehouse emptied of a crowd, only a man & woman in the corner passed out together, a short kid with patches of bleached hair stacking up cases of empty beer bottles onto a grocery cart, a projection screen hanging from a wall with a home video taken during a bright afternoon of a boy beating a dog with a stick. His laughter & the dog's whimpers faintly heard through the wind flapping against the microphone. He set his guitar in the dirt & leaned against a column & listened to the wings in the rafters & saw feathers sifting across the blue screen before the rain began drumming on the roof.

Crooner's Litany

On a quiet windless path buried in Tiergarten. As if the birds had dispersed once he clanged & hollered. First pass thru the fever before emerging from the spell. Every day, it's a gettin' closer. A drunk untangled himself from the bushes, trying to slide his cock back in his pants, tilted forward to listen before stumbling thru the woods, anchoring himself to each trunk he crossed before pushing off again. Every day, it's a gettin' faster. Tossed his head but the sweat still stung. Blind & slashing at the strings. Letting each word trail away, its ending lost in anticipation for some word in return. Surely. It will come my way. Every day seems a little longer. The time spent waiting for love rushes forward or slips back & the voice which intones those words clings helplessly to its shifting pulse. He crawled through some brush & came out upon a bright clearing & laid down to grumble a prayer from childhood broken by a hush after each amen where he feverishly stabbed the strings. Choose the world to follow. This world is chosen for you. Mister, please listen to me, I will choose the world where the gates shimmer white & the grass is green. Sunday drives through the rain. Stiff bodies up front but for Father's hands sliding across the wheel. He sang until his voice grew faint & his breath burned & then he sat the guitar aside. He could hear others beyond the trees. Language as indecipherable as the birds'. Rain every Sunday, his father would say, can't remember the last dry one. Must've been before the Lexus, then Mother interrupted him as if he was jinxing all the Sundays to come. His father knew it upset her, but he would say it anyways just to get her worked up which was well worth the pain of listening to her gossip.

Chamber

I don't believe that he's unaware of it, she said. You can't exact vengeance without being aware of it. He sees the pain in my eyes, the pain he wants to give me & leave me with. Staring at him like a blankeyed doll. Naked until he's shamed into dressing me. He was convinced he could destroy me from the beginning. He only needed time, a little persistence & the rest would be downhill. Don't worry he always says. He can't tell me not to worry: it's only gonna make me worry even more. Our bodies on the bed so visible to the world, to those passing by in the street, to whoever the fuck is up there watching us wear each other down. You must hear us at night from inside your little cellar here, Stefan's captive wild child, bumbling American. Sometimes you meet someone who might remind you of yourself, he said to her, reaching outside to stub out the cigarette on the wall of the building, someone who either makes you feel so at ease with yourself, ready to abandon all the panic inside, or someone who completely repulses you, reminds you of all that you despise about yourself, a mirror image of your own inner horror. He reached over for his guitar & started to tune it down. You gotta get outta of here, she said, there's too much sickness in this apartment. She left & he watched her cross the street, a tear in her pantie hose the length of her calf, bulging purse slung over her shoulder, shielding her eyes as she stepped from beneath the trees.

Hidden Games

Did you hear him leave? I fell asleep & when I woke he was gone. My mom would say that you can't trust a man who moves around too quietly. He wants his presence to pass unnoticed because he's up to the devil's work. The morning's almost over, isn't it? She leaned against the door way, heels dangling from her thumbs. Make-up from the day before caked around the corners of her eyes. She knew the morning was done, but it was as if she couldn't accept it on her own. She needed him to acknowledge it with her. Help carry the weight of an already wasted day. I don't wanna go to the gallery, she said. Every day the director tries a different tactic to get me in bed. I don't even know what he's doing until after he saunters off. Like he's slowly wearing me down, one subtle gesture at a time until I become too weak to resist him. Both he & I know that it's a matter of time. She went into the bathroom & brushed her teeth. He boiled some water for coffee & rolled a cigarette while she rushed around the apartment gathering up all the things she had left over there in the last few weeks. She put them in a bag & stood beyond the door of the kitchen. I don't wanna play games, she said, I don't care who wins or loses, who's destroyed & who's ready to strike again after it's all over. You're making Stefan out to be more clever than he actually is, he said. As if he's taking a tally of all the women he's thrown away after he's done with them. He doesn't even know what he's doing. He met some bartender in Seattle when he was traveling around the States playing tennis tournaments. They kept in contact for the next few years, visiting each other as much as they could. But he couldn't believe she was that perfect & he got curious & started fishing around & found out she had been fucking all the guys she worked with & some of the regulars too. Of course after he discovered this, he fell in love with her even more, told her that he couldn't live without her. She said she would stop & things were good until she started fucking around again this time right under his nose & he kinda lost it & broke off contact with her. Every girl since then has been American. It may sound stupid, but I don't think he's even aware of it. They fall for him, he keeps them around awhile, then gets rid of them, trying to smother the pain left over.

Come morning, rotten morning...

After he came again, he wiped off my back with the same towel. I rolled over & was lying directly beneath the hole. There was still that same blind spot in the ceiling where any eye could easily perch & watch us sprawled out below, Stefan struggling for some kinda way to be free of me. I wish he knew it's not just about the climax: who watches a movie just for the ending? Of course, a bad ending can ruin anything. But there's no reason to start it just to see it come to an end. He told me to stop looking at the hole. No one's watching us through it, he said. Two girls live up there. Haven't you heard them walking around late at night in their heels, listening to their shitty pop, getting primed for an after-party somewhere? Hoping they don't come back tonight. Betting their souls on it. But they're German girls, he said, they'll come home tonight. They come every night & forget to take off their heels, clacking around up there, laughing about all the old timers who tried to put their tongues down their throats. They're not as bad as American girls: the one place they sleep at the least is their own. I told him to shut the fuck up & he said okay but only if you admit that you're all whores over there. The true sluts among the women of this world. I rolled on top of him & grabbed him by the balls. No one ever mentions what we do to men once we've used them up, I said. Once they're no good to us. What do you do, he asked. That same portrait smile on his lips. We destroy them & move on to a better one. But one day, he said, you'll be too old & ugly to do that & you'll be the one who's passed up for someone better. My grip got tighter as his smile disappeared, the disbelief that I would hurt him fading from his face & then I felt something cold on my back. He grabbed my arms & pinned me to the bed. Flakes of the ceiling had scattered all over us, turning to dust as we rolled around in the sheets.

Agitated Postures

He finally came all over the sheets & scampered off to the bathroom to get a towel. I rolled over & put my head in the pillow. He came back & dabbed up his cum. I had some of it on my stomach. Normally I would've wiped it off, but I didn't care this time. He asked me if I was asleep & I rolled back over & told him I had to lie on my back to fall asleep, but that I couldn't stop obsessing about the hole in the ceiling. Don't think about it, he said. He sat up from the cold sheets & put his lips to the small of my back & dragged them up & down my spine. I laughed a little & asked him if anyone could see through it. Even though the room was almost totally filled up with sunlight, it was still dark. Anyone, anything could be on the other side of it. He told me that he tried to fill it up, but that the plaster wouldn't hold & kept splattering on the floor. He got up & rolled out his vertical mirror next to the bed. He straddled my back & pulled my hair until I got up on my hands & knees & stared into the mirror. He was fumbling around my ass cheeks as if he were trying to chisel out some entryway for himself, whispering don't worry over & over again into my ear. His warm & stiff fingers. I crawled passed the mirror. You don't want to look, he asked. Now he had the reflection all to himself & he quickly found his way inside. I glanced back over my shoulder & saw his eyes dancing over the image of his body, over the sweat that shone on his chest, the muscles that clenched one after the other, his portrait smile, my ass wriggling beneath his grip.