The Hell He Travels (3)

3

George and Nancy had a friend named John who loved to sleep,
though he was not afflicted with narcolepsy. Drinking instead.
Our antihero drank to stay awake. Hence the hell he traveled.
Let us call him Flowers. Faux Faust sounds too literary, forced.
Once he had lived by water passing by a willow that only wept.
He worked there nights and days. He could not sleep for weeping.

John crossed the border with Flowers and they walked the town
before finding the bar where the lovely woman waited at the bar
quoting her price, making conversation while Flowers praised
her beauty offering to write her a poem if she would let him love
without paying, but No, she said, I have my children to support.
Two men came in, quickly corralled her and climbed the stairs.

The rented car crawled past the vigilant eyes of border guards.
John slept sprawled on the back seat. Flowers increased speed.
That night John would sleep on George and Nancy’s frayed couch.
Flowers went off to encounter the girl named Joy, too young to be
a woman though she had been the Old Lady of the biker Fuck Up.
Flowers shared with her his dinner in the town’s best restaurant.

Together or alone, hell is a place that need not answer to its name.
Together is better than alone, but it is invariably hell all the same.
So say the wise men where women live only to pleasure and to be
pleasured. A wild man can’t stay home. He wanders all the streets
where the wild men with their wild women all become more crazy
once closing time arrives. Here Flowers unrolls his bed and sleeps.

In the park not far from the wild zoo he dreams where dew braids
sparkling grass, the pond’s watery eyes mirroring the moon’s face.
He is full of love between his legs. He finds a woman who is willing
to lie with him without payment. He grows happy to hear chorusing
under him and see the magical change in her face, her serene eyes,
and climb to his feet and help her to hers and stroll down to the sea.

(to be resumed)

(6 December 2012)

copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander