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.

Far Cry & Fugue

When he opened his eyes, a squat man with a beard & pale green eyes was standing in front of him. The people passing can't hear you, he said. All the cars. The horns. The trains coming in & out. If they could hear you, I'm sure they would listen. Maybe give you a little more money. You were playing the blues, weren't you? The world is too loud for the blues. The passion's lost in the noise. I don't care if they can hear me, he said, as long as I have enough to buy a few beers after I'm done. Maybe they will hear the words later when they step into a quieter place. He set the guitar in its case & snapped it shut. Please save your money, the man said. Let me buy you a beer. They drank at a table outside a bar. The man pointed to the park across the street. On those trees, he said, you can see fingernails etched in the wood. Communists. Jews. Russians. Germans. Anarchists. Each has left the same grip of death. It seems each corner of this city is haunted by murderers & the murdered. How can you have music on the same corner where a boy had his throat slit, where an old lady was raped with a Kalashnikov? You know you're the first musician I've seen playing on these streets since the last time I was here. The people here are too weary to let their daily rituals get shaken up. They only hear their own second-guessing. He told him that he disagrees. Death lures musicians from their hovels. The soul of Orpheus' lyre. Requiems. The cloaked violinist one step behind the pallbearers trudging up to the pit. He asked him if he was a musician & the man told him that he's a traveling church organist. I started playing all over Russia & Eastern Europe, he said, once the Soviets let me leave Estonia. I haven't gone back too much since my son died & my wife stopped speaking & got put in the asylum. She knew he was going to die & she was always the consoling one. But when he died, she said that her love died too & wouldn't speak to anyone. I saw her last winter. She was watching game shows in her robe & her toenails hadn't been cut in years.