Alice Sally Ashaka Fier Fear Fire Stone (part 2 the barricades)

Jesse S. Mitchell

part 1 here

2. Ramming speed, absolute realists, ramming speed.
    Fire.
Bring down the barricades.
    Fire.
    Tomorrow is absolutely nothing.  It is all right here
     With you.
     And what is not, can see right through you.
     Fire.
    She picks herself up.  Makes most of her valuable time on this earth, this earth reality, two hands, two feet
    A head, a spine, a mind on top of that,
    Looks back at the low indention of the place where she sat, on the bed, where she had been pretending to
    Be dead.  Waiting.  Breathing heavy.  L’petite mort bourgeois.  But it never came.  And what never happens, never happens.
    Fire.
Wet tinder, smoking point low.  Like in heaven above. Like in hell below.  Violent burning.
I will find the beast.
I will find the beast and
I will slay the beast and
Heart a’racin’ and mind wandering and
Skin drenched, I will.
I will win.
Seppuku?  No, no seppuku.
The branches of the trees outside her window gather in bunches and twig fingered-ended thin stems of clumps of green golden leaves beat godlessly random, no rhythm at all, on the sides of her house.
Bang bang bang.  An endless banging, an endless scratching.  The beating scraping.  
     And say, “I’m bored with the day, Manfred, already, I’m bored with the day today”.
     All conversation like ancient factories in industrial parks in abandoned cities to the jungle
     All left over to vines and strangler figs.
Should I go out into the street and meet the passing crowds, all the barren seeds of small talk
Gasping for water, parched upon my lips?