Metal Monday Mornings

Good friends, I have failed. Shameful missteps have haunted my footsteps of late, and I acknowledge that my stumblings are entirely my fault. I have failed, and I will do so again. Inevitably. It angers me. To be so doomed, to be so pathetic. What can I do, but wait for more sin to envelop me? What can I do? I wonder and beat my brow, willing myself to change, or at least to escape. Is this it? Is this it?
Hold. But hold indeed, what is that?

It is the bass drum!

It is nothing. A low, pumping, pulsating, beat, nothing more than a stretched out wave of frequency. But hold, dear body, how dare you shift likewise! You enjoy the beat? I can't but help it, tho it contrasts harshly with my strong desire to roll around in self-pity. How dare I jig at such a time, I was enjoying my most melancholic moroseness!

But what of it? There's a God, right? What must he think? His child, so flawed, slopping around in sin and temptation, and what must he think? If anything or anyone can pull me out of this most melancholic mire, it most definitively is the great being who thought the whole darn universe into existence! Pull me out, slap me upside the face with common sense, and shout into my ignorant ears, "HEY! Wake up! What are doing there, slouching meekly, when you are still alive? You are alive, aren't you? Your body still functions, and here you are, in the middle of creation, selfishly thinking only of yourself?"

Forget my losses and my shortcomings, they are in the past! Yes they happened, and yes I am sorry for them, but what is to stop me from living still? Learn from your mistakes they say, get back on the horse they say, and so I shall! Enough sadness, I will confront the future both with defiance and with pep, and will  boogie into the future with the bass drum of the present cheering me on.

By Jove and by Gaffrey, if anything can change, it is me!

The Coffee Shop Man 2

The coffee was hot. Good. If it’s not painful to drink, I drink it too fast. The jazz was interrupted by some garbled French babble before flowing back into some slow swing music.

My target didn’t look up when I sat down. Whatever. His pouting was almost laughable. “You shouldn’t have moved your hat. You know how hard it is to miss your beady little eyes,”

He grunted. I continued. “Seriously though, I thought you left this town. What happened? Vengeance not a strong enough motivator anymore?”

He grunted again. It was a distinctly cordial grunt. I sipped my coffee and burned my tongue. Somehow he sighed without moving his chest. “Mik,” he grated, “I don’t wanna talk. Go ‘way.”

I didn’t move. He looked at his mug like he just realized he was holding it. “I dunno why I came here. They don’t even serve booze.”

“Hey, focus,” I couldn’t figure out how he could be so apathetic. “What happened to Logan? You had the train ticket and everything. Why are you still here?”

“Hey, I’m not still here. I’m long gone.” He slumped forward and flopped his forearms on the table. “Point is, I came back. Been back for three days.”

Usually it’s easy for me to keep my voice steady, but for some reason it started getting all shrill on me. “So you were there for what, a few hours? Didn’t you find them?”

Naturally

There’s sweet, icy piano music a-slidin’

It’s natural

Sweet background music

But the piano ain’t where I’m lookin’

Cuz she’s a-standin’ there

Existin’

S’all

Just standin’ round, natural-like

But elusive, y’know? So… elusive

Got that dark brown hair, an that way she moves… even when she’s not…

A special, so original smile

An I steal a glance at that smile, an that hair, an those moves

An brother, I just don’t know

Can’t make no sense out of myself

I’m just confused

But she…

She’s still there

A-standin’ around, all natural-like

An she’s just out of reach

Too… damn… elusive

An brother, I’m pretty sure it’s my fault

The Coffee Shop Man 1

I saw him from across the coffee shop. It was kind of a dumpy coffee shop. One of those out of the way hovels where prissy hipsters come to brood and commune. It smelled like coffee; an attractive, but distinctly bitter smell. Similar to the man who just walked in. He was balding, but his rock of a chin more than made up for this trivial shortcoming. It was one of those chins that allowed male movie stars to star in romantic roles well into their fifties, simply because of the chin-painted illusion that they haven’t lost any of the masculinity from their decades old prime.

I tried to make out what he ordered. The stupid staff in this joint takes really takes their sweet time in making drinks, and by the time they were done I had forgotten that I ever cared about what his drink was at all. Thanking his server, he swept his stiff leather coat in a slight, dangerous swirl and strolled out the way he came in. Smooth jazz began to play over the tinny speakers in the ceiling.

I watched the man stroll back to his ride from my window seat. A black Escalade, of all things. Any doubt that his shades cast about his identity was quickly brushed away after one caught a glimpse of his car. Subtle indeed.

Finishing my drink, I waved away a nearby degenerate who felt that it was his duty to tell me all about how he spent his irrelevant weekend, and was about to drop my glass cup on the counter and leave, when the guy in the corner raised the hat off his face.

I hesitated. Not good. My mind quickly churned out the potential results to my walking away, not reacting, and not giving in to my curiosity prodding at my brain. Thankfully, my mind has a habit of churning fast. I turned my awkward delay into an order for a refill. The cashier passed my used glass back to his coworker, his eyebrow arching at my insistence not to use a clean cup. You say it’s weird, I say it saves me $0.05 on my drink.