Month: May 2025

• Hotel Hectic

  

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  I sat on the corner of Hectic Street and Blasphemy Lane, waiting, swamped in the neon gasses of Hotel Hectic and purely beyond, and checking my watch every two minutes and wondering if your train has arrived or if you just said “fuck it, love is a waste of my taste.” And I evaporate near the rails so pounding against the land. And everyone gets off to greet another being, to jump into someone else’s arms, and I watch all this while sitting alone on a bench drinking a whiskey sour from a big whistle… And you decided not to come, decided I was not worth the effort or the pulse or this place on Planet Love Me Tender, and I smoked a cigarette with head bowed and soul cracked, all around the background full of cheers and laughs and I could even hear the kisses… Until the day dropped away, and I stayed, reckless and abandoned, once again, to fuck a world left unseen by the real.

  And it was broken bar time once again, and “maybe that is the reason for it all,” some mad chick all fucking drunk said to me, belting me in smoky, neon midnight glow rope, you starless wonder, you beautiful, cracked lyric staining the wall of everlasting grace, in some downtown place, where the beggars and the whores ache for decapitation, in starlit clock towers, your heartbeats wasted away, losing it, trembling it, wishing for it… To be nothing but a quiet shore, for fucking once, I wish they would leave me alone to just think… To just enjoy my raspberry drink until the fire gets too high and the body finally rejects the abuse and puts you on tubes in some Manchester hospital in Angleterre, where the walls and the sounds are all too damn sterile, and in the middle of lonely night, you have nowhere to turn but inside out and upside down, reaching for a marmalade viceroy that isn’t there, because they took it away from you, replaced it with their medical voodoo, and you look back on your life, way far fucking back, and you have to close your eyes, because it just isn’t there anymore, and you know no one cares, they are all out there, with destinations in their heads and they write letters to the deads, but think nothing of you now… Crashing.

  Flatline faux pas. The lighter flicks flame in cold winter dark. I am still here all you wombats. You all didn’t kill me yet.

  

  By

  Aaron Echoes August

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  My new book is now available for purchase: The Apocalypse Pipe. Available in both e-book and print editions! Thanks for reading and supporting independent writers.

• The Caspian Tea House

  

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  I was in an Azerbaijan tea house at the shore of the Caspian Sea. The house was soft in texture and made of orange wood and white curtains. I went to a large window facing the slow, curved road and looked out. The water was the deepest green blue, like the woman’s glasses at the optical store back in the States merely a moment ago. I looked down at a dais made of the same, orange-colored wood and there sat an open book against its lip, a guide, old silky paper like in an expensive Bible, but it wasn’t the Bible, just a book, maybe with names, and I walked right through the window and across the road because I wanted to get closer to the water.

  I looked down at the shoes I was wearing… Dress shoes in the sand that had blown onto the walkway. I thought that was strange. The shoes were made of the same orange wood as the house and dais. It was sunny out with a slight breeze tossing about in the air. The water was high and left only a narrow pathway of sand along the beach on which to walk. The light voices came through the dream there. Odd people came streaming in, gawking and pointing at how astounding the water was. Tourists. I just wanted to be alone. I wanted to be alone to just stand there and look at the water and to do nothing else ever again but love her.

  

  By

  Aaron Echoes August