CEREAL AFTER SEX

Things to Do In Denver When You’re Hip and Super Fresh

And what I mean by that is…
The mercury red was dripping through the lights of the
downtown bars – it was blood running through
rainbows
and icy chalices clinking with the rhythm of this night
beat,
the smoke curled its fist and whirled on out into the
streets –
we were looking for things to do in Denver
and we were most definitely hip and super fresh.
The sky was dark, wet and gray
the rain was coming down in spittles,
and the cold beacons burst forth from the skyline
towers
and we breathed exponentially as we shook with cold
outside the place
where the band was playing hard and loud
and the women were drugged up tight,
they were all looking for a fight
erotic clashes in unfamiliar bedrooms
searching for the light switch
in some unfamiliar hall…
and we wandered, Soledad the sailor and I,
into the billiards parlor on the corner
where all Christmas shopping
was kicked to the curb
and mean looking men
were grasping sticks and swearing and swilling beer

So we caught two seats at the bar
and were lost in the noise
when something caught our attention
a brooding and bulbous man with wispy hair, atop a head shaped like a golden pear

He was clutching a magnet and a metal clam
reciting poetry all nonsense
something Spanish and insanely divine
about Albuquerque and nutty Nob Hill
and the love he held for well-groomed dolls
and it was a whacked-out scene
and we wondered, Soledad and I,
if we had shot ourselves up
with some mad horror show voodoo
and simply had forgotten…
but it was all real
as the man shed his black leather jacket
and made his way confidently
to the smoky stage, under scattered lights
and stood before a crowd who ignored him,
and so he tapped the mic with a hint of nervous fear
and began to speak…
“and what I mean by that is …”
and it went on and on from there,
like someone had plugged him in a bit too long,
his fiber optic cables all juiced up
and so the incessant talk came on like a flood
about the place he loved
and the games he dug
and the restless nights that drove him to kill…

So Soledad and I just sat there at the bar
sipping our Parrot Bay rums
watching the stitched up 5-minute idol
rant and rave
and his tsunami of words
followed us out the door and down the streets
and we rejuvenated our mission
to find things to do in Denver when you’re hip — and super fresh
Soledad wanted to climb a tower,
I wanted to find an all-night bakery
when from out of a crack in the buildings came a flash,
because we were hip,
we were super fresh
and we had become immaculate icons
of this new human race,
we could no longer afford to walk,
we had to run…

We had hoped to have some orange apples fall from
the sky
but all we met up with were detour signs
it went suddenly backward to Halloween
and we thought Denver was playing a trick on us
but we liked it anyway
so we tripped it to some mad cathedral
on this eerie hill in the middle of town
it was this great spire
of grass and rock and trees and torn down fences
and from this vagrant, fragrant vantage point
we could see a million trillion lights
all bubbling up from the floor of this town
and for a second we didn’t feel lonely
we felt hip and super fresh
as we found things to do in Denver
and then something somewhere
suddenly came with a burst of singing
and it was like some mad hipster
had broken free from his cell
and was bellowing forth
every ache he had ever felt…

So we stayed on that hill
not really talking,
but rather dreaming of what our lives would be like —
tomorrow
and we were afraid of the sorrow that might come
but then we realized we couldn’t worry about that
because somehow, some way,
life works itself out
and whether or not we would be strung up with
diamonds
or drown in the yellow dust
we were here right now in Denver
and damn we were hip and super fresh.

By
Aaron Echoes August
Cologne of the Ghost

I sat in the broken window and looked out onto the burnt grass and the weeds; the sun was gone, the moon was gone, the stars were all gone; a blank, hollow shell of a world and this scratchy ticking in the background behind me and so I strolled across the creaking floorboards and met up with my ghost in the broken mirror hung crooked above an old dresser.

The needle on the record player beside me dug rhythmically into the last grooves of some wobbly, distorted album a century old; dusty glass bottles of old colognes were neatly placed on a cloth on top of the dresser, half empty and oily, I opened them up and smelled them – memories of daddy drown in the deep eye of the now bitter liquid.

A stirring wind rushed in through the broken windows, cutting itself on the jagged edges of glass and howling off through the paper walls in pain; something rattled the pots and pans in the kitchen down below and before I went to the stairs, I looked at myself in the mirror and suddenly I wasn’t there – the linoleum was curling and stained with dust and dead bugs who had come in for some type of shelter from the rain, the weeds outside had grown tall and unruly; an old dirty engine sat in the grass, beat to hell, old and used and rusting away… The breeze belted away and went howling off to the woods to hide and cry, to slither up the trunk of a tree and rocket off to space, to dissipate.

And I stood in the doorway, knowing I could never step outside again, destined to forever look out windows and watch the world lose itself in the waves of time… I cannot leave, I will never leave; I will forever wander this old, broken-down house, try to catch the wind before it so rudely rushes away. I’ll listen to the needle dig into the record for eons, I will smell daddy’s cologne until it completely evaporates, unlike me, I will never evaporate; I will forever be the blind reflection in the mirror, and I will wait painfully without food or sleep or company for heaven’s hand to finally sweep me away.

By
Aaron Echoes August
The Rorschach Puppets Come to Dinner

Sometimes life is like a Rorschach test and a bomb
all mixed together
and whatever shape one sees
suddenly changes motion
fluidly escaping the grasp of the eye
What may seem set in stone,
is suddenly morphed by disaster or love…

And on this night tonight, how I wish for a winter scene; a frozen sky, the iced over trunks of trees solidly resting in a bitter chill, a still lake covered in the powdery skin of snow… But then again, this place is a hot plate, a coil wrapped tight and injected with the fury of the sun, the fury of me, the calm of me, the widespread panic of me.

Lying on a wet couch in a goldfish bowl. The world is breathing outside the glass. A lamp with a red shade speaks softly in the language of light as I tell my darkest secrets to a tube and a box. Dear Wishes, you had a penchant for family and happiness, existence pounded oblivious — how I miss the sweaty mistakes of the rocky lair, out there on the cusp of the mountain air. But I am in another world called future tense dive board, encased in this jar with nothing but a pen and a bow and arrow. My blue bruised heart dropped onto the wooden floor, the sun of dusk shaking the leaves on the tree — I’d go hunting, but there is nothing left to kill. Flip on the radio, the BBC flickers through a darkened hall, orange chrysanthemums float down from the attic — a wedding jaunt Halloween, to the bedroom and the screams… For now, I fear the ache of the end of days.

Splash some blood on the screen for me
and I will tell you what it means to me
a wreck or a wedding
a chalice or a paper cup
a diaper or a doggy bag
both filled with the leftovers of life
and the indecisions left stagnant
and the decisions leaving me wondering
wondering why
split-second mishaps
leave me empty and dry.

I feel trapped on a fine line that runs from north to south, a scissor slit ripping east to west, a collection of yellow lines and yellow lights that at the end of the night leave me in a place not unlike La Brea. A million, billion voices and I can’t seem to tap into one, always stumbling to play the trumpet when I have merely a stick; a stick to beat on a wall or beat on a stone or beat on the boiling sky spilling over me, soundless silence and perilous moans in the night brought forth by yet another puzzling dream. Down in Jungleland? Top drawer of the nightstand. Sweet wish upon a lover’s lips spread wide with a smile in sleep. And who and where am I? The bubbling neon strip of gold-flake Oz, or blackout city of the underworld? This desert den of constriction, can never find any conviction, can never find proper diction, only friction beneath the blurting of a red glass DINER sign.

Will we ever sip rum and coffee from chipped Swiss cups?
Will we ever be able to shout out “Magnificent!”?
Will the sirens rip through the sky once more???

There’s a madman in Missouri
with a doll head and a gun
driving toward the razor’s edge
licking the blade clean with wide eyes
There’s a rock star dangling from a ceiling
spinning like a paper pinata on pot
a Rorschach test for the OMI
There’s a girl sweating in a Texas garden
wiping away the sweat with a small hand,
nursing her wounds with 100% cotton
stamping out the blood of rejection.

And there’s a manic man behind a typewriter
his heart in his hands
sweating away in this disillusioned reality fantasy
dreaming of hijacks on islands
and saying “bless you” when they let him go
a green Irish doll tapping out code
with a toe tip and a lover’s bone
so one begins to realize
that all of this life, his and hers,
is nothing but one giant, spinning Rorschach test
and we all see, just what we want to see.

By
Aaron Echoes August
Carnival Visions for the Unforgiven

His eyes stained this town
on a sunny autumn day
like leaves dropping from his eyes
crunchy, veiny tears that smelled of winter bliss
and so,
he took a taxi to the world’s greatest fair,
and as the visions of this town
bounced before his wet eyes
the wicked witch kiss
of life’s black door
swung open and hit him with cold flesh
and he decided to clean up his life
so he rolled down the windows and tossed out
all the needles and all the armor around his heart
and then closed the cold of this day off forever
and watched the headlights of the cab
dance all over the gravel parking lot at the fair
and when he got out he heard the faint happy screams
of all the riders in the night
hanging on to electric arms bedazzled —
the smell of hot dogs and funnel cakes stuck to the sky
the happy laughter of all the beings in love
whiplashed through the air and the funhouse —
was everyone a ghost?
as they stared through him,
walked through him like a doorway
smiled at the reflection in his own eyes
giggling girls swiping wands loaded with whispers
across their unadult visions
and old content men
grasping the shoulders of their worn-out wives
and still they smiled to be together
they had each other to go home with
and the ghost had but a dim lightbulb glow left in his
memory…
where was his daughter in this clamoring pool of life?
why wasn’t she clutching his fingers and laughing
a little girl loving so completely
and he rubbed his bones through the digits on his
hand
and they were raw and void of feeling
as he stepped into the house of mirrors
merely to turn away from his grotesque reflection
as a little boy pushed him into the glass
to make him disappear gallantly
like a horse trick tucked away in dust
and he squeezed himself into a tiny cage with a rabbit
a big, white rabbit with a charm around its neck
and he said to the rabbit
make all my dreams come true
and the ghost was on the midway
kissing the love of his life.

By
Aaron Echoes August

Independent writer and photographer.

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Italian Mexican Food

After 37 beers and a carton of Strikes, down there below those swirling, curling lights of the Piccadilly-like carnival on the inlaid pier, I gotten a sudden hankering for a bit of the ol’ south of the border chow — but there I was stuck in a sea of neon beach shops and surfer boutiques — head throbbing like mad and steaming ’cause I had to wait for the maintenance man to come fix my tub in my sixth floor room of the South Seas Lodge — that ghetto, oceanfront property with the metal doors with rusting scratchings of so-and-so loves so-and-so — and my room number was written on the door with a black marker, others were simply slips of paper with the room number scribbled upon it and then neatly stuck to the door with masking tape — high quality joint, yeah, but the view from the room was worth the 49.99 — those slamming waves crashing into the beach right below my balcony — after 37 beers and a carton of Strikes, it all looked pretty good through my grinning fog.

But there I was at dusk, wobbling down the steaming street that stretched on for miles in either direction, hotels, motels and bungalows all lined up, bumping each other shoulder to shoulder and I thought about how we have come to commercialize even nature, and how three-hundred years ago or so, those waves were still out there slapping at the shore, still rolling like white thunder, rolling and dropping their white and foamy fists against the land, pounding it hard like a drunk spring break boy does to some weekend Snow Off White, probably in the very same bed in which I slept upon, the one with the parrots and toucan’s brightly decorating the bedspread alongside the stains of lust and claw marks of a troubled head.

And I was stumbling along, the streets filled with people in skimpy clothes laughing and falling all over each other; the young, the old, everyone connected in their far-from-home fears and I felt like the only solitary being rushing along the waves of this pulse and so ducked into a beach shop for some sandals and found some ones made in China and they hurt my feet because they were too small, so I kicked them off when I walked the beach and watched them roll back out to sea, back home to China where a 9 is probably more like a 4 to us — because they are made by the small children — and I had asked the clerkie where a good place to eat was and he recommended a Mexican place that he liked to frequent, I said thanks and wandered out the door trying to remember the directions he gave me at the same time trying to not get run over by a car… but then again, I could be on Mars.

I saw it after stopping to piss in some gas station, and there it was, across the busiest street in the place and I thought I’d never get across, but I darted when the headlights died down and made it to the joint. I was the only one solo, of course, but I got a nice heaping of chips and salsa, ordered a couple of beers, and watched some Survivor, Fear Factor rip-off where Kens and Barbies were playing stupid games and it really meant the world to them, like it REALLY was important, not just another heap of trash entertainment to babysit our collective lazy and enslaved American minds.

I ordered the No. 11; a taco, burrito, and enchilada, but when the waiter brought it out, it was like I was eating Manicotti, or Rigatoni with some spicy beef inside. The sauce was tomatoey, not like the red sauce or the green sauce I got back in the Land of Enchanto, no, as if I stepped into an upscale Taco Bell in Florence, Italy. But I was hungry and I ate it and it was decent and I slammed my beer and stuffed my face and I was fat and full when I paid my bill — wandered out back onto the street, hypnotized by the guiding lights of cars and booming shops selling surfboards and kief, and there it was in all its glory, a Krispy Kreme donut shop, and even as full as I was I went inside that heaven of baked goods and ordered up a six pack of gut-clogging sin — so I was making my way back to the South Seas Lodge, made my way past the carnival, the Ferris wheel was so high and lit up like an acid trip, I saw the people just dangling there in the night like branches of a Christmas tree, they were all weighed down with the heavy lights of the amusement park. I stood and waited for someone to jump – like the unloved Thanksgiving at Wendy’s.

I walked along slow now, weighed down with the Italian Mexican food in my gut and a box of Krispy Kreme donuts. I made it across the main thoroughfare, the traffic was dying down a bit, it was getting late — found a little boardwalk that led to the beach, the tide was a bit higher now and the waves seemed to be grabbing at my ankles a bit more forcefully now, and when my heavy limbs made it to the sand, I almost collapsed, the beach was sparse with people, when at the height of day it was crawling with all sorts — I stumbled along, my eyes now stinging from all the spotlights beaming down on me from the right, the waves kept crashing to my left, and it was getting hard to walk in the sand, but in time I made it back to the South Seas Lodge, took the elevator to the sixth floor, it groaned as it slowly carved its way through the shaft, the stairs were in disrepair, and I thought if there was a fire, I’d surely burn or die from the jump — but it didn’t burn and I made it back to my room, threw my stuff down on the bed and went straight to the balcony to watch the waves, all lit up from the hotel floodlights, crash into the shore, so perpetual, unlike the heart that someday soon shall cease to trouble her.