Down by Dull
Cabell McLean
Originally appeared in Heroin Addict #5, 1983, M. Houston, editor; and read at St. Mark’s Fire Benefit 1983.
Young tough from the past runs out and with slow finger’s ambiguous movement asks if I want to? Then down and in off the street in a smell of stagnant water up the old brick alley a puff of dying breath under the door his last easy gesture coming in a flash of milk white light. Rank musty parchment smell of wollen flowers might have been mixed up in my mind under the brown fog of a winter’s dawn we thought you might have been lost the words seemed to stand out loud as a swelling organ note fulsome and resonant in the violet air
A blush of blue on grey slate cliffs,
it sings to you no hiding place.
When at last I reached the top of the rope a climax of excitement would pass through me to be up amongst the rafters for there you feel free after so much pulling and straining with my arms heavy with the fragrance of grey flannel trousers the blue veins standing out softly a hint of violet in the air just beyond damask paper curtains. Snow plums on the manicured lawn red leather furniture and tarnished sliver laced parchment lampshades and your shadow at evening rising to meet you. The food counter in a fur coat in late winter I remember each separate hair glistening and alive as if the animal had just been skinned. The translucent jam made from white cherries and a tray of tea in the warmth of the fireplace as I lay there watching the mauve glow on the ceiling and hating the still stifling silence. “I was neither living nor dead and I knew nothing.” Outside I saw crests of rooves sticking up through the snow like the bones of a rotting fish covered with salt. Speckled brown quail egg warmed on the oven lawn chairs were left out in the gardens and down by the dull canal the snow covered grandstands looked like an empty box of chocolates still trimmed with frilly papers. Whispering little youth ran out from the past lurking in old cottage by the river now covered in mint and ivy.
A naked aggressive last breath glided noiselessly
as soft rhythmic waves of grey flannel sickness passed over me.
Glass in the darkening grass hurry up please it’s time the feel of steel stairs beneath me and a vague touching my side hoping to feel ribs as silky water music came to me as a spidery tinkle filtered through a thousand cobwebs or the sound of some mermaid blowing on her comb in her cave beneath the sea. A white arm the muscles tight and knotted and tiny hands pushing on my numb and shattered shoulder hoping to feel bone.
I began to float away through a great cloud of agony.
In the stillness of late morning he softly wept over me.
Tiniest tingling feeling of water touching my ribs disappeared in the cool thin air and emerald stink of the floating docks and cinnamon winds of Mexico across the water salmon pink velvet grey flannel trousers the imitation classical ruins looked like a golf course over distant mountains un beaucoup passionment now beautifully missing the clouds of time going backwards it seemed once again a happy place. But I was grieved over vague uneasy feeling of universal damage and loss faded water color feeling the fragrance of someone’s hair laced with cinnamon and patchouli a desert winds racing coldly up the legs of my new grey flannel trousers sprays of early apple across damask paper curtain the sun shone through and made stars tingle in my eyes. Though dirty armchair damage had faded and the windows were closed a climax of excitement over took me and water music came up to me among the rafters the reek of opium unmistakable in the cold floating corruptly on the room’s velvet curtains a door opening with a gust of time wind tingling sweet ache in my legs as I dangle from the ceiling beams in the raw wet summer to stand upon the brown steel bridge watching two trains running down the line of track, bright little points glittering in the purple night spiced dust in red hairs by the dark water a thrill of pleasure and of pain kicking legs to fight free twisting painfully locked in bubble escaping from shapeless mouths everywhere contracting in golden green spasms in the yellow mud the colors squirm through his body arched like water weed stretching up to grasp my excited legs glittering semen fingers around my ankle dragging me down with a horrible writhing anxious sort of love as I tried to cry out, “Fear death by water! Fear death!” The icy water on my sweating frantic body making the curious thrill of terror the shining hazel jelly in lumps by the water fear death by pleausure fear death.
He found a bare tree, and he climbed up
into the branches, tied the rope, and then jumped.
They found him the next day, and the whole tree was hung with Judas flowers in red and yellow. Judas had red hair, you know. Here’s a picture of Judas hanging like a fish from the judas tree with the red hair and red flowers all around. This is how a hanged man looks: his head lolls to one side, shudder of pain and regret, the legs kick spasmodically, and a silver light pops in his eyes.