Copenhagen Noir - Bo Tao Michaelis [31]
For all this time. That I have dreamed about, for all this time. But come along before the yellow fog arrives to turn your thoughts to things that aren’t going to work, to what you can’t do, what you may not do, like eyes in drafty windowsills, scanning the street with disgust and fear. Love is strong and you’re so sweet, and some day, babe, we got to meet, just anywhere out in the park, out on the street and in the dark.
Where shall we eat, you and I? Alone. Together. At Pastis? They already took the trash out.
I lick your lips and mine at the thought.
First thing in the morning, last thing before I go to sleep.
Leaves go, leaves come.
Wind rises. Summer’s over.
So follow me now, share a bottle of wine. With me and make my heart boil.
Look at me.
Across the rickety table.
Warm for a September evening, don’t you think?
But why not simply smash your face in? Trailer trash for an evening, no problem. Red necks, white trash, black & blue girls, I’m all that.
I toss the paper in the trash can, wipe my mouth, good dog!, and tremble when you jump in through my stomach and we become one flesh, one concentrated killing machine, bad company in every possible way. We cross the road blindly, walk up the steps, and I open the door with these luminous black eyes I always get when someone crosses me, and there it is: laughter, loneliness, and sex and sex and sex, fucked all night and sucked all night and taste that pussy till it taste just right, look at me, I’m finished, I’m totalled, Look at me! I’m in tatters, and well suited for the absolute armpit of the city, the final cockroach left alive in the debris, and I notice that I sway while I search the place for you, and fumble in my pocket for my scrap of metal.
Almost no women, almost only men, but then again: there’s pussy at the bottom of every single beer glass, it’s just a matter of getting down in there. The poets sit over in the corner, shitting words without wiping their mouths afterward. I know them, some of them step on stage once in a while to speak words, as they call it, and they don’t know it’s just chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter ’bout shmat, shmat, shmat. The rest are old and dying, dried-up organisms, rustling folds of skin and toofull beards, and there you are, walking past the kidney-shaped table, here it comes, here it comes, here it comes, here it comes, here comes my nineteenth nervous breakdown, my body stiffens, and only my hand has the good grace to close around the sharp edge of the ragged metal in my pocket.
You see me, you smile, my mouth falls open: confusion. You approach me. Smiling, sparkling eyes. What? Is it the sight of my elegantly wasted face that makes you so happy? And then you say it: Beautiful Delilah, sweet as apple pie, always gets a second look from fellas passin’ by … The better don’t allow me fool around with you, you are so tantalizing you just can’t be true, and you put your arm around me and kiss me, and you have no gut, no runny eyes, why? Was my memory that hazy? It really was very dark, black as night, black as coal, very dark in my head, and maybe I had visions or hallucinations, heard ghosts, I really imagined that you said I looked like Keith Richards, and I know I do, but honestly, I’m just a girl, and you shouldn’t say things like that. But all right then, come on, come, let us go out and watch the evening stretch out under the sky like an ethereal creature longing for light; let us go then, through half-empty streets, still cringing from ringing sounds and echoes of the day. Raise your glass to the good and the evil, let’s drink to the salt of the earth.
A FINE BOY
BY HELLE HELLE
Vanløse
Every evening after work I wanted that French hot dog so damn badly. I took the last metro train home; the grill was wedged in under the viaduct. Until