Not To Touch The Earth (An Excerpt)

She took the used, rolled up 20 dollar bill as it was passed on and hoisted it up her left nostril. She lowered her head down to the back of the porcelain toilet and huffed in a line of that powdery stuff up her nose. She'd been married for 5 years now but this was no time to be worrying about that. They were held up in a stall in the men's washroom... Both of them. She met him not 30 minutes earlier and here they were together in this bathroom stall at a little bar called The Flamingo. The bar was located in a small, under populated town in mid Ontario and was only ever busy on Thursday's and Saturday's. Much like The Flamingo the town was petty. It's shortage of places to go and things to do made the people who lived there very restless and at times quite stir crazy. So every Thursday and Saturday night they would pile into the bars in droves like hysterical children leaving their morals behind at home. She inhaled another line, this time up the right nostril in order to keep a balanced numbness as the man slid his hand up her silky black shirt and pried his fingertips at her breast. She leaned back and tilted her neck in order to look at the ceiling as the rush of the drug powered its way from her head down to her fingertips. He kissed and bit at her neck. The faint sound of the house DJ playing Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" leaked it's way in from the other room. She felt free in there, beside the toilet in the men's room with this man she hardly knew. She didn't have to focus on the 2 children she had at home or what it would be like to have to raise them alone. How one day she may have to explain to them both that Daddy wasn't coming home. This escaped her.  She took the man by the hand and dragged him back out to the dance floor where she closed her eyes and moved her body to the loud bass booming inside of her ears. This was her night out. Her time.

She had arrived there with her husband (who was also the father of her children) and a few friends whom of which cared only about themselves just as much as she did, so much so that she may as well had just arrived alone. After an hour of feeling ignored and watching the woman he bared two of the most influential things in his life with throw herself at the mercy of drooling men he decided to leave and go back home to safety. A place where his sanity could not be tampered with, questioned, or tested. She watched him storm out of the front door through the incoming crowds of people with a staggering sense of domestic freedom. The drugs, the booze, the dancing, the sex, all craving's she refused to let wallow and stir.

She pushed back the freshly dyed blond bangs out of her face while her eyes picked up on all of  the smiles and glares of men with scruffy facial hair and up-kept bodies. Some dressed very well and others... well, they wore muscle shirts and tight revealing v-necks as if to broadcast the idea that they clearly spent and spend countless hours in a gym, lifting weights, doing squats, and primitively grunting it out to look the way they do. It brought her a fantastical notion of pride knowing she could have any man in the room. She bounced from stud to stud. They bought her drinks. They grabbed her ass. They whispered sickly erotic exploits into her ears on the dance floor. This turned her on. It got her off.

As the lights went on at The Flamingo for last call she knew she would have to choose, but which one of these cavemen would be lucky enough to degrade her tonight?

"You're coming back to my after party, right?" One of the carbon copy men asked as he took her by the hand and walked her towards the door.

"You have any blow?" She asked trying to secure one of her vices for the remainder of the evening..

"Yeah. Yeah. Of course!" he replied

And so she went. Hopped into a yellow, vacant cab and in the back seat got fondled all the way to the mystery man's house in between inconspicuous key bumps of cocaine and laughter.

He lived in an impressively large villa by the river and by the time they arrived there were already a bunch of his friends drinking in the living room. After introducing herself, grabbing a beer, and doing a couple lines with these guys the savagery started to begin. Not only did the man she go home with start fooling around with her, so did a few of his friends. They went upstairs to a bedroom and slowly started to take off articles of her clothing. She was kissing one of them as another sucked on her breast. The shy one watched as he did a few lines before pulling down her pants and licking her inner thigh. She moaned in triumph. This was who she was. The life of the party. She took all three of them as everyone downstairs drank beer laughing at the sound of her heavy "Oohs and Aah's."

Her husband was sound asleep in bed at home. Their children were in the next room snoring peacefully. Most people who attended the festivities at The Flamingo were also at home trying to get some rest before doing it all again the next following Thursday. The men downstairs had fallen asleep on couches and scattered pillows and blankets on the hardwood floors. She however... Moaned deep into the morning, drunk and fervently high on cocaine. She had one cock in her mouth, one in her pussy, and one in her hand. A warrior woman in a silently sedated world...

The Voice

Just another night out on the railroad
running behind trains
Believing, sincerely that you'd never have to follow them back again
There's a tangy, copper tongued taste of surprise
every time your eyes shoot down to your feet
and you keep telling yourself that somehow you haven't yet tripped once
on any of the stiff, rooted, wooden ties, leading their way from the tips of your toes
to the faint and perplexing reaches of god knows where...
But it's somewhere
and the reflection of that dream
keeps your legs running
and the sweat pouring
and you know that she's out there
Just minutes away from the very untouched, sanguine pathway
that the calloused hands of hope levelled out the first time
you both said hello
and when the goodbye came
You thanked the sky for not crashing down on your head like bad luck
You cursed the velocity of time for giving up
You held your soul up by its throat, told it where to go, and hit the open road
and I'll be damned if there wasn't a certain amount of respect in doing that

Just another night out on the highway
chasing cars, and trucks, and tail lights
Smelling the fiery, searing rubber of all the wheels on the asphalt
The scent of victory over the pretence of distance
Drinking down memories like gasoline
Pushing, pushing you further toward the enchantment of a better day
You marvelled over the thousands of miniature, bright, bulb like, stars up in space
and rapped off some compassionate prose about how she is present
in the same universal positioning that you are,
Yet also the same spot that none of us really quite understand anyway
and even though you've been running around with empty, untouched hands
The sound of her voice through the telephone makes all of the flowers in the world stand up
and the purpose of gunning it out alone, at least for a little while,
worth it in the long run
So you keep chasing that thing down
Doing everything you can to make good time
and all the cars on the road know you by name now
and you gotta know that... That's alright

You've gotta dream, dream, dream while sitting on the clock,
or hounding trains, or rushing cars
and, without exception, squeeze the delectable juices of experience into your cup
and drink it on down to the soft linings of your heart
which should be located right below everything that tore you up in the past
and in turn made you weary of the unforeseeable future,
(Somewhere just behind your left lung, if I'm not mistaken)
But it's not of any concern now
Just try, try, try not to prick your finger while you're smashing the moon on that long drive back home
and her voice should be there when all the flowers begin to start dying again
or when the colour on the walls take to bleeding
When the music burns you out
When the muscles start to burn
When the dreams overflow
When the words are no good
When your bike won't unlock
When bulldog's leap up
When ceramic tile's are for sleep
When you'd rather not sleep
When every breath you take grabs for air
Her voice should be there...

The Fear

She said she was afraid of losing her dad
He said he was afraid of losing her...

The guy who lived next door
Woke up every morning at 6 am
Got in his car, buckled in, just to make sure he got a coffee before work
Did the same routine everyday and worked at a boring office job
He was afraid of spiders

His mother
Well, she was afraid of commitment but she's long since passed now

This beautiful girl I met at a party one night back in the city
She took me outside to have a cigarette and we talked for a while
She told me she was weighed down and absolutely terrified of failure
and then she kissed me

My old friend Dominic was afraid of clowns
He was an asshole

When we were children my brother used to cover his eyes with a pillow
anytime I put on a horror movie
He'd scream at me to "Turn it off! Turn it off!"
and then he'd just end up watching it anyway
But he still covered his eyes
Whenever he felt a real sense of fear coming on
His face would be buried deep in that pillow

I saw a bum on the street just outside of the mission in downtown Ottawa last year
He was skinny, and withered, and bruised, and he had track marks in his arms,
and a bunch of tattoo's that had faded and appeared as though they were becoming the texture of charred, burnt leather
He was crying
I think it was because he was afraid to die
I'm sure it was probably coming soon
Or
Maybe he was hungry
Or
Maybe he just needed some smack

There's these guys in bars
They brag about how tough they are
They go out with their friends
Their carbon copy friends, who also brag about how tough they are
They gel their hair and dye their hair
and they slam back shots and look for fights
This is how they stay tough
It's how they get by
These guys,
They are afraid that their penis' are too small

This bomb went off yesterday in Boston
A big fiery thing
It was detonated near the finish line of a big marathon run
The explosion killed three people and is said to have wounded 170 others
I saw all of these pictures of people with their body parts askew
and their limbs blown off
and blood like graffiti on the streets of Boston
The bomb scared everyone through television sets and computers
and through radio's and cell phones
It may as well have gone off right in our living rooms
Primed by media detonators
Scary

Ergophobia is the fear of work or functioning
Ombrophobia is the fear of rain
Papaphobia is fear of the pope
Chronophobia is the fear of time and of time moving forward...
It seems we're all a little chronophobic these days

The Prime Minister, Man
He must be afraid of everyone
and rock stars are afraid of losing crowds
and doctors are afraid of losing patients
and lawyers are afraid of losing money
and children are afraid of the boogeyman

What scares me most is that everyone around me is so goddamn afraid of so many things
That they don't realise the fear is of themselves
and of each other
Progression scares them and so does death
and communication
and I feel as though I'll never be able to have a normal conversation again
Without scaring the shit out of somebody...