cup of coffee #1

We agree to pay our keep to fulfill our cup with disconnected joy. That’s what we hear; that’s what our parents tell us, and that’s the way it is. Your happiness is not publicly funded. It is privatized just like your bills, your debts, and responsibilities.

cup of coffee #2

We’re all awake.

cup of coffee #3

We are all looking for someone to worship.

cup of coffee #4

When you die, experience is all that matters and if you’re lucky, you’ll be famous before your tombstone crumbles.

By Carlos Detres

I spent one night earlier this week, drinking sangria and playing with my mind, inventing characters who are part me and part other people and all imagination. I gave them a setting, a scenario – “a guy and his lesbian friend walk into a strip club…” Then I let them roll around in the filth of my mind. When it’s done, I can’t decide a name for the piece nor am I really sure what it’s about – it’s just a scene. The man, he’s in love with the girl but the girl, who loves women but also loves him can’t follow through because he has a dick and she doesn’t want any of that.

I think of a friend who said that she once fell in love with a girl but considered herself straight. “You love who you love,” she said. She was with her girlfriend for a while and I admired that but this doesn’t come across in the story I wrote. The girl still says no but kisses him anyway because she loves him. I gave my poor character this wall because I know what it’s like but the wall also means something else. It means that we often don’t feel desperate enough to be truly free men and women.

These characters, who will go nameless, they’re free with themselves. They drink, they smoke, they do drugs, are promiscuous. they’re like the raging gremlins from the movie who destroy a sleepy little conservative town. I get the message. The gremlins are depraved and without conscience. I guess being an outsider inevitably comes with limitations – society will never accept you until you adhere to their rules regardless how inane those rules can be. It’s a social contract.

My imaginary boy and girl stand on opposite sides of the same issue. The dregs that they are can never conform to society just as their love can never be consummated. No one will ever see how special this story is to me and many will not get past the drugs and debauchery to understand the eventual colliosn that will occur between two people with real emotions…well, the characters aren’t really real.

The story sits on my desk and there is no place to sell it. Maybe Penthouse but it’s not pornographic enough. Not really pornographic at all. There’s only one home and that’s the Whiskey Dregs. How it will pay is the deep question but there is satisfaction in knowing that there is a home no matter how small the profit it may procure. The chance to push something I believe in with my own hands pays me plenty. It should anyway. Unfortunately, the landlord doesn’t accept passion as payment.

It’s easy to see that I’m playing God but really all I want to do is express a moment. If God really does exist, and I don’t know because I’ve never seen him, then maybe we’re an expression of his own creation. He’s published a whole universe with all of us in it, praying for a happy ending. Juxtapose my snuff story and what does that say about me? What does it say about God?

A writer said to me once – “Creative people need to do their own shit, and go where they need to go, regardless of market trends. It’s okay to be alone in your quest sometimes..”

I don’t understand

My crazy cousin clothed in black

Seated slouched on my black couch

Making me laugh then weep

Because ¯for being so cheap

I have messed up my feet¯

He’s a poet and legend

Who flew to Manhattan

When bread prices soared

Was redirected to Vietnam

Where he died/cause they lied

¯and so, and so¯

Returned New York City

Reported to work early

Whenever he felt sick

Eulogized Nuyorican mindset

With absurd sardonic wit

Always composed genius

When not distracted

By a nice ass with big tits

I don’t understand

How this magical man

Grew seven stories on stage

Shook sleeping souls

With whimsical words

Arranged like a symphony

This unforgettable man

Who demanded we

Never trust the memory

I don’t understand

He called me the future

How can I advance

His timeless past?

I don’t understand

I don’t understand

I do understand

Everyday is a day

We miss this man

we lost touch with the world. One, two, three lovers in a room and I wasn’t counting sheep. I counted flies. Wasn’t looking for sleep. Light leaked through the drawn curtains – closed it real tight but some of the sun still shone through.

Tara and Ambrosia – the squirming flesh on the bed – they were consuming each other. It looked so fierce what they were doing. It didn’t resemble love. It looked like hurt. It looked like violence. Tara was beating the insides of Ambrosia with her fist while lapping the most intimate region of her mouth.

I pulled a seat close to the bed, sat down, opened another bottle of beer, drank it, wiped my mouth and exhaled but I could barely hear my breathing from all the racket they made.

Tara, the blonde, moistened Ambrosia’s stomach where the ridge of the muscles began and then she went up to her sternum.

Three times one is always three. Three divided by one is always three.

When I looked at Ambrosia to see her tremble beneathTara, she turned her face and pulled the blanket over her chest until a ghost materialized underneath – Tara’s head. The ghost seemed to glide down her torso leaving streaks of blonde hair where ectoplasm should be.

Then I imagined maggots. I saw them but they weren’t there. They chewed through the rot while squirming into each other – naked, segmented bodies, tiny black eyes, white runny skin, struggling to get all of their food. Consuming each other, growing longer and bigger and drowning in the vat of decay. This is why doctors use maggots to treat necrotic wounds. The little machines don’t know how to stop.

Ambrosia raised and then parted her thighs to give the ghost access as it glided in between and disappeared in the place that made Ambrosia’s head tilt back. It sounded like agony the way she grunted. I once heard that women become animals when they give birth. Something clicks and the woman you impregnated is no longer your wife. She becomes a beast. Tara seemed to call out to Ambrosia’s womb where no child would answer. I waited.

And the maggots, they grow wings, change shapes and become something different. They mean to fly but what they do is eat and lay eggs in the guts of rot where the smell beckons nausea. The long tube extends from their head and into meals. It’s called a proboscis and they use it to masticate and then eat. Flies, hundreds of them rapidly lap the food, eat, suck, digest for a month and then perish into the unknown. Sometimes they pass into oblivion while eating – ironic, I thought.

The room smelled of sweat and intimacy – a heavy sexual aroma permeated. It became warm and humid. Ambrosia removed the blanket from her chest as Tara peaked up, wiped her mouth and looked at me. I undressed and joined them.

Ambrosia kissed me on the cheek and said, “Don’t break her. She’s my number one.” I laid down and Tara kissed me. I could taste Ambrosia still on her lips and feel strands of runny orgasm twisting in her mouth. Ambrosia moved to the other side of the bed, her legs parallel to my arms, and her feet up to my waist.

“I want all of you,” Tara said. Electricity vibrated from her skin and I knew she felt authority. She climbed on top of me, rotated to face Ambrosia and then began to ride. The muscles of her back strained as she jerked up and down. She whimpered and then bent forward toward my feet and into Ambrosia. The fly’s face appeared to me as her ass lifted and dropped – two large eyes staring at me, lifting and dropping. The fly’s face ate and sucked while using my member as its proboscis.

I could feel us, like machines, like animals – an instinct to consume each other – amalgamating, unifying, breaking the silence of an early morning. All control relinquished and the power was in primacy and submission at once. Then our proboscis spat, spat, spat inside of her until there was nothing but the heaving of our lungs.