Red light district at the Boundary Peak Motel

You said to meet you in motel room seven,
but the door’s already open and
red light pours from its weak wood frame.

I wonder what you’ve prepared for me,
perhaps neon lights in the color of love?
Would you stack chocolate boxes in corners,
illuminate mirrors of our tantric sex? I think
once you said you would show me how
they fuck on television, with the lights and the mirrors and the
artificial bits –
But, no,
you aren’t neon colored when I look in your face so

maybe you’ve already slit your wrists and let
blood pool on the floor where the motel maid found you,
searched your pockets for money,
and called the god-damned police with their bright, bright lights that
reflect off the red and emit an
eerie glowing rouge –
tint to a blushing night.

Or is it that you have
prepared some portal to the underworld? Deep cavern where the fires are not fires,
but rather fake glowing coals from the fake glowing fireplace
that your fake glowing mother bought because you cant afford a house with a real one and
she wouldn’t want you to burn your delicate fingertips
on the true thing anyways!

I near that dull, beaten number and
it’s people that I’ve never met on those crisp cold beds,
with their black lights and strobe lights and neon red signs singing,
screaming come in, come in! and you’ll never be in! and
their whores gyrate uselessly, sweaty hips like mounds of
poorly tanned desert and sticky hair already
mussed, fuck-ready, fuck-worthy and fucked.
They don’t hear my head snake round the corner,
nor can they feel the pumping of my heart,
blood as red as their heat but, now,

I am sure one of their sluts with the blue streak that
runs from earlobe to breast hears my mind clink, clank,
whir and then snap into place and
Oh!
You must have said room eleven, for I often don’t listen right and
already down the hall I can feel your scent being uttered
by hot waves of wet air but,
before I leave, she looks, blue streaked mound of desert whore and,
with her eyes like pools of lye –
she knows me.

Outgoing dialing prohibited

A bible simmers silent on the nightstand by the telephone
where the light dances on lean wall by murky mirror and
love laughs at muddy moments like this
with his twisted smile,
shrieks profound profanity at my buzzed brain
while my heart tangles,
twists, like his smirk, and through his
sideways teeth there comes a mumbled
memory.
I tumble, roll ridiculously into bed,
though the bible hums me quiet hymns,
that two-toned, taunting telephone
mocks my aching fucking face and
without reason, rhyme or firsthand rendering I
laugh languidly an air-sucking silly laugh about
god-gives-a-fuck which foul intrepid memory of my
useless youthful insolence. You can
call me, cringe at my violently crackled voice but,
ring, ring, ring till that red button lights like a lantern and
the judgment of Judas will not be mine.

If you're reached this point by accident, I suggest panic

Laura shifted, seated neatly in a sticky seat, its attached desk pregnant with a mound of multi-colored gum wads turned dust-grey by time. A swastika tattoo had carved itself persistently on the shoulder where she rested her arm. She feared touching its sharp indentations as though it could spread up her elbow and into her deep wide chest.

There are wholes in the sky, proclaimed the crayon mess below her, where her son had scribbled in dots of yellow amongst the black of a night sky. Though his portrait of night had escaped the light pollution of the city.

She hardly stopped to wonder whether he meant holes or wholes. But it didn't matter anyways, because there's a bible on his bedside table and he knows, he knows, he knows. There's nothing spelling can teach him about what's in the sky.

Her heart thumped a beat like a nightclub floor, and beside her the woman in green delved into her neon orange purse for a pen, and the smell of cheap lotion and breath mints consumed her brain.

Memory is like a bathtub, murmured the twisting, turning wheels in her mind, but only God controls the spout and the drain.

The scent tumbled blindly from the faucet of her mind, boiling her tub of memory.
Dolls - their eyes like searchlights and their lips like the stain of pomegranate juice on white linen - lined the walls, up high where small hands could not wander – the gods of nick knacks and toys.
Useless dolls, pointless dolls, breathless dolls, heartless dolls. Unreachable. Unbearable. Girls so young could not touch such priceless lovely dolls, her mother said. Laura’s fingers were harsh then, still are, and too blunt to touch the faces of the gods.

The ladder beneath her beat her feet while she stepped, slamming its hard polished surface against the arches as she marched to the rhythm of her racing heart.

A second left on the countdown and mother rushed in to diffuse the ticking bomb of her daughter, eyes wide on her face like an unblinking fish. One swipe of a small blunt hand grazing the smooth satin gown of a god and -

Later, her mother opened her purse of cheap lotion and breath mints, the smell of regret, pulled out those crisp pieces of paper with soft angry hands and ripped up the two theatre tickets for that night's ballet. The rift between woman and girl had been widened and Laura wept for a lost night with mother, for the fleeting innocence of satin gowns and the cold hard pieces of porcelain that father swept into a big black pan and threw out with old banana peels.

The bathwater cooled, Laura curled out of herself and lay down flat on her back in the lukewarm tub of memory and breathed out. Sometimes, she thought, it's so nice to breathe out.

She could hear the smooth sound of a neon green purse being zipped closed beside her, and outside the holes of the sky shrieked their hatred to the faces of the streetlamps.

"About your son," began the teacher, kneeling down like a teacher with her voice like a teacher and soft hands like a teacher. Laura bit her tongue.