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something didn't happen

i didn't understand the perfectly square yellow windows that refused to be my eyes, or the advertisements like pale nightmares, or the cellphones like electronic cockroaches glaring tinnily at me, or that girl over there with the gorgeous dreadlocks thick as photographs of pythons, why isn't she slamming me up against the rattling wall, kissing me, or the passengers clinging one-handed to silver hooks that have completed themselves to become loops, or my physiognomy arched by warped windows inside the subway. we're inside it, the bowels of machinery under the city, and no one's celebrating this. an elderly man with huge golden jewelry jutting from his knuckles and neck like very logical claws, like mineral extensions of his spirit, sits across from me, and i think maybe i could share my desire to celebrate with him, but he is staring at a soggy newspaper plastered to the floor by what looks like mayonnaise, waiting for something bright to cross it's uselessly colored pages, and his eyebrows are getting larger and heavier by the second. the brows of all the passengers are jutting out, in fact, and soon they will begin to leave neanderthal shadows on the off-color floor. also, i have noticed that nobody in this subway car is naked, even though it is warm and the air is tantalizingly greasy, and the lack of nudity makes me uncomfortable. shadows cling to my skin and my own brow is darkening my eyes, jutting like an action-movie cliff and if i'm going to join them as a Neanderthal. i might as well work on my cave-drawing skills, so i grab the hand of the well-dressed woman next to me, which wears a small, carefully jagged diamond, and i scratch my palm on it as finally she satisfies one of my desires by gasping. i get a good base of fresh, lusty blood on the interior of the window, wondering what it looks like from the outside as we enter sweet, totally corrupted daylight, daylight bouncing off the waists of unfriendly but beautiful skyscrapers and bouncing back to us through my blood-smeared window, because man created this window and i am man so it is mine. i fingerpaint it, but nearly nobody stares, until i reverently ask the beautiful dreadlocked girl for some of her menstrual blood, and she sends flecks of ice from her eyes to mine, which makes me pant like an overheated dog and begin to cry. i love her instantly. there's not much blood, and the stately woman with the diamond ring has moved away, is crouched in the tiny triangular tin-foil bathroom retching, now there's a beautiful picture of an apple with a tv antennae for a stem and the reflection of the dreadlocked beauty's face developing here, the painting thinning as i near it's outer edges looking no longer for blood but simply carving paths through the dust, which there is plenty of. this wordless noise is perfection.


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