19 April, 2009

bathroom graffiti

I might try to bury it in the back yard--it's starting to rot--maggot infested, the putrid aroma of death perfumes the vicinity--his hands are covered in crimson, mine are searching. Like a wandering hobo I steal--I steal from the trash and I steal from what's not yet trash. There was something about the crimson hands that lured me into his theft, the theft of him. Lacking purpose maybe, this man died for a reason. Most of the body a mushy pile of decaying flesh from the vehicle(s)--everything destroyed, except for the crimson hand still intact.

Still discernable, however, are the tattoo on his back and the scar on his chest. His eyes gaze upward, as if in search of something in the heavens or, perhaps, in fear of something up there.

My hands slowly explore my jacket--I take a small pocket knife out of my pocket and into his chest I inscribe (he does not bleed):

i do not know who i am
i do not know where i went
i do know that you know that i am dead
but i had a purpose.

The spade shovel has dried mud on it as I thrust it into the ground--eventually digging to five and a half feet with a width of two and three-quarters. The crevice between my thumb and index finger has begun to blister--by the time I am finished, the fluid from my blister has dried down the shovel handle. I prop him up against the pile of extracted dirt and rest to admire my work, and my art. I look up at the sky--the setting sun on the cusp of the horizon paints the sky-canvas an array of soft hues of red, orange and indigo while the moon, a faint crescent, suggests that night is waiting behind the curtain, waiting for the sun's set to be over.

His neck snaps upon impact as I kick him into his hole--his gaze, still, purposefully fixed skyward.


(2007, from Algoma Ink 2008 with edits)

2 comments:

  1. this is very good! dark... but it grabs me... seems like old sam in some ways too don't you think?

    would love to see more of your work...

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  2. p.s. Thought you'd like these lines from James Joyce too... on the theme of bathroom graffiti

    It broke from him like a wail of despair from a hell of
    sufferers and died in a wail of furious entreaty, a cry for an
    iniquitous abandonment, a cry which was but the echo of an obscene
    scrawl which he had read on the oozing wall of a urinal.

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