.......worked all night with exotic dancers in jazz ghettos. picked up trumpets off the street pregnant by every horn in the city. tried to get out of vegas but the evacuation smelled like a toilet. even the retarded ones, illiterate ones, everyone who had ever been thought of in the entire history of time gathered in the desert. drank from the cactus. everyone burned to the ground. only piano and drums remained beyond the ashes. the next day the dog died. they looked for the body. it was in the casino. nobody knew where. nobody cared.
6am in the kitchen, next day. elbows on the table, her head in her palms looking out the window at nothing in particular. bored, she forgot about her sickness. her eyes drifted aimlessly. cigarette ashtray was nasty. her mouth inside her boots. her red hair smelled like irony envy. sleeping beer breath. she woke up coughing.
jasmine from new york on a visit. passed out with pale white dirty sheets barely covered her below the waist. kicked off the blankets during the night. things got sweaty. jasmine wrapped her legs around libra. pulled the sheet against her ankles tied up with a piece of electrical cord she found under the bed. cigarette smoke drifted into the hole of zero where things were everything in a circle and in a god damn'd hurry! naked wearing a collar, a braclet and a leash. a phone hung on a chair next to the bed. picked up the phone. dialed a number waiting for something to happen. eyes back and forth waiting for someone to answer. it was the end.
a las vegas lounge act: cement casket going to vegas where everybody was a whore. where psychotics were not enough anymore. where under age teenage jail bait entertained and did animal noises when they were drunk. where being awake was a deep coma, a space distorted, collapsed. it was the end again. the end of the snake pit.
jasmine stirred in bed swearing. wanted to get up go to the kitchen. she turned, pushed the sheet off the bed onto the floor. grabbed the brass bars at the head of the bed. Pulled herself up screaming: "i want you now! I'M READY NOW!" libra's head weighed 200 pounds. motioned her head towards the door. her head with a toss of her hair.
next thing happens: man opens jasmine's door. walks in. shuts the door. sounds of gagging, strangulation. chocking on something in the space of the what's so and the what is and all the rest of it. the final masterpiece was to die on las vegas blvd south using a monkey, snake, a live eel on the hottest day of circumstances. evacuating las vegas: a retreat unforgiving.
girls on the strip in a bad mocking tongued each others faces. tossed the magick on the table. turned the lights on but the lights didnt work. wooden table deteriorating. they sing a song "i can drink but i cant think...." ....behind the door blond babe was worse than meaningless. so one morning i crawled out of bed. rode hard, straddled on top until she bled the mexican woman next door. woman listening, the way opened. made the woman, "she is crying!" yeah. women cry all the time. you like it? she listens. you scream.
mexican woman with five kids in the back. her house on fire, huddled together on the kitchen floor. frightened children sang religion for the dead. an unspeakable concept. women brushed their eyes with mascara and went to the tomb to look for jesus. the white horse was at the gate but a wooden box separated them from life and death. women wanted it the way it was when they were unknown but not unknowable. they wanted to be buried in vegas. every morning they begged for the kiss of the inquistion. only saw futility. free to smoke and drink but now they smoke and drink no more.
it's all over but the crying.
we waited for libra's body on a slab without a face. she drove into the parking lot. got out of the car in a mini skirt. legs out the door hot christ thighs up to her hips. wet hair against the middle of her back. the collar of her shirt had a few buttons missing. a slender pearl neck, clevage and so much future. we stood in line. kneeled to lick the sores on her feet. we closed our eyes. the secret of an expectation is its unfulfilled mystery. in vegas there is no reality. just ugliness everywhere. mediocrity. cheap paint and block walls. a desert mirage. no jazz. no zennunderground. nothing but sweat.
there's only two kinds of people live in vegas: those who quit and those too desperate to quit.
