Empty drank Coke can

Everything.
Can't have less.
Don't have less.
Still empty.
Beat connection vibrates from little speakers as I take out my contact lens and stare at myself in the mirror. Without the aid of correction. My image appears through the haze of optical blindness. Me.
Everything for something.
Something-less.
I go to the kitchen. Throw away a brick.
An empty coke can is crushed in my trash bin.
Consumed, already.

echoing images

Mirrages shifting on the dark river in the night.
Reflections.
Cityscape.
Escape.
We're standing on the edge of the black river; it's glimmering.
We have drinks, both of us, and she keeps smiling.
A plane flies low overhead and she tells me she's afraid of flying.
I stare as another follows it almost immediately, the huge headlight on its nose borrowing a way through the dark, its strobe reflecting on the water, its engines echoinging in the night.
It passes overhead, disappears behind the curtain of a night time cityscape, escaped, but for the echoing after thought.
"Over the Rockies, going to California, our plane started to shake," she tells me, still smiling. "I was afraid."
"It can get scary." I drink.
"When was the last time you were in California," She asks and I'm surprised..
What an odd thing to ask, from a girl like her, I mean, a stranger.
I was born in California, she doesn't know. I stare at her. The air is cold, colder by the river.
"It's been a while." I say.
"Where are you from?" She asks.
I sigh, think. I don't know, how to answer I mean, so I drink harder, finish and toss the can off the ledge, to the edge of the shoreline below. Another plane flies in low.
"It's not here," I say.
Subconsciously there is a piano playing in my mind, a soundtrack to the situation, mysterious, random keys tapped in random order.
"You shouldn't be out here alone." She says.
My friends have left. I turn to the curtain of the cityscape behind me, bright, beautiful, draping the dark in light, reaching high. Another plane slips through the drapes. My friends have long gone behind them too, readying for the next act.
We follow in their footsteps, walk back together, her and I, and make it to the hotel. It's still cold as it was by the river, though we're three blocks away. The broken piano is still playing, added now with a trumpet that blares as I stare up at the 18 floors of the hotel in front of me. We find that the front door is locked. I am wondering why the hell the doors to the lobby of an 18 floor hotel are locked. A custodian lets us in, grins at me as she walks ahead and to the elevators. I figure out what he is thinking later.
A ding sounds, not from the piano in my head. The sound echos. The elevator doors open. It's a glass elevator. The doors close. We speed upwards. I watch through the glass as the world races by. I thimk its funny that this is all real. The doors open and we are on another floor. We find the room, 18something or another on the top floor. People are inside, all smiling. It's warm. I'm warming up. Earlier, before we walked in, we could hear the murmers of their conversation, but the words were unclear.
"There he is," A beat starts, drums. Trumpet and piano. My world is spinning. "Have some more," he says. I've never met him in my life, but he knows who I am.
"It was funny," Another one says. "We've been watching people in the glass elevators. One guy got in after another got out. The one before him had hit all the elevator buttons and we just watched as he stopped from one floor to the other. Then he got pissed and got out."
They laugh.
My soundtrack turns their laughs into a beat and it makes sense to me.
I go to the bathroom, look at myself in the mirror. I see that there is a red mark streaking on my cheek and touch it but realize that I am touching the face in the mirror, not my skin.
I walk out. Everyone is laughing. I see the river from the 18th floor window view of the room, reflecting the city.
Reflections and echos in my memory.
After thought images.
"Is this real? Is this it?" He asks me holding up a piece of paper with my name in black printed on it.

The Man I Am

An electric sound fills my ears as I walk through the door. A heavy bass is making the walls tremble.
A thick throng of people are moving within, dancing, dressed up in short skirts and khakis, holding glasses up so the contents don't spill, shouting so they can be heard.
Drums and more electricity.
I walk through the mob, trying to push my way through. The lights are dim and neon. White pupils of women wearing less than little in the sweat of the place stare as I brush past, interested.
Screams and laughter and banter and a couple is sucking each other's face as I find a door to the next room, squeeze past and through.
More crowds, more beats, more lights, more electricity. Drums pounding harder, like a lustful heart. I scan the room.
Across the distance a voice and two peering eyes.
"Chris Miles!" And she's holding a drink. I walk over, people bouncing off me, laughing, the smell of sweat everywhere.
"Come here, come here," and she wraps an arm around me, tight under the influence. "Its just one of those nights."
"I know."
"Crazy. You look nice."
"I know."
And I as she looks at me my thoughts drift and I think of the last time I didn't look good, or try to at least. I'm grinning and caught up in my own narcism as she begins talking again and as she does her eyes gaze at me like she wants something, a sign of the influence.
She drinks, still looking at me, and her chest is in full view of everyone and I'm starring and no one really notices because they're starring too, even the girls and that puts an interesting scenario through my mind and I'm thinking.
"Give up the cockiness, I want you to meet someone, do you want a drink?"
And she pulls my arm and we dodge through the crowd - a lot of crowd - and a short fat girl is making the same run we are, trying to get through the crowd, and we're following her, and people are bouncing off her size and she just darts through like some juggernaut of a running-back, and another girl that doesn't see her coming starts to sip her drink but is suddenly knocked from behind by the sheer force of the fat girl's momentum and she's thrown to the ground, her drink splashing everywhere.
"Fuck you fat girl," I hear.
The fat girl does not hear and bounces in front of us and is bouncing through until we, myself and the girl pulling my arm, hit the dimly lit wall where a group of people are sitting, each with a glass half full.
"Great fun!" She says.
And they all look at me and I'm introduced and they all stare at me and smile with looks of "I've heard of you before!" And I stand there, happy that I am loved.
One girl that is staring at me and leaning on the wall has a flower in her hair.
"That's cute," I say.
And she takes it from her hair and puts it in my coat pocket and I fell loved and continue to fell so as the other girl comes back with a drink and they ask me how I've been.
"Good," and tell them a story of how I was drinking with the president of the alumi association a few nights ago. "He loved me, intro duced me to his wife, bought us all drinks."
And they're intranced with me until my friend comes along and I notice that he's dressed better than I am and has a more expensive drink and all of a sudden he is swarmed in hugs and awe and I am forgotten.
I am pissed.

I Want To Talk

I want a cigarette.
Maybe its the devil in me, or the idea that it'll take the edge off things.
I hit the CALL button on my phone again. A red sign pops up, signal busy. Another try and the same thing.
I just want to talk. Can't get through. So I just want to throw something. The devil under my surface trying to break through.
I need a cigarette. Maybe more. A smoking partner, too.
I want to talk.
A life coach would be good.
We'd talk about the strong defense that life is presenting against me. X's and O's.
He'd ask if I was ready. "Hell," I'd say, "Tougher times have enveloped me."
"Maybe a trick play," he would say.
"Fake out the world."
"Exactly. Show them something they've never seen before."
That's what I need. Pull and upset, I'm the kind who could.
And we'd talk about perseverance, a good word in times of fear. Noun- steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.
All behind a cigarette, of course. Maybe a beer. To calm that devil in me.
This town can have that effect on people. Everyone here has got something to run from.
Me? Myself.
"I don't know what to do," I say to myself out loud as the BUSY sign pops up again.
The future has that effect on people. Confusion. These days I feel lost and incomplete. And the defensive line of life is rushing down on me. It's the warning sign. I'm in the envelope, covered, protected- for now anyways- but the protection is crumbling and my eyes are scanning, searching, for an escape route. X's and O's, life's as simple as that.
And this is the finale, the big play. My bones are shaking, sinking. Escape route. Hail Mary.
I wish I knew how to blow smoke rings. Good conversation starter.
I want to talk. To anyone who will listen. And listen good, not ignore, because nothings really don't make any sense for me anymore. Hail Mary.
I dial again and it rings.
The other end picks up and I want to talk but don't know what to say.

recovery beat

Downtown in the inner city I lean on a building and smile as she walks up to me.
The good kind of walk.
I'm smiling. I'm taking a break.
"How's life?" She asks.
The air is cool now and there is a wind that seems to have picked up stronger from the river behind us and its colder because all I have is a collared shirt, no coat.
"On pause," I say. "Lets go."
"Where?"
"Any where."
I smile, I've been here before, this life. Life on pause, that's the good life.
I need recovery.
The city lights sparkle on the black water of the river and I look to one of the bridges.
"We can't cross it now," She tells me. "Not in these heels." She looks down.
I look down, take her in with my eyes, smile.
"Buena." I say.
The skyscrapers of the cityscape shine in brilliance, beacons on what's on the other side of the river.
"I don't know if I've ever been over there before," I say.
"We can't go now. Not in these heels."
And I look to my right.
A band plays from the club around the corner, stringing strings and tapping a soft melody. Soft and happy. Then their beat picks up. We head there, to the club, arm in arm. Life on pause for the night, for a lot of people.
The club has an electric red sign, with some colorful symbols around it, and it reads "Good Times." The bridges over the river get darker as we get closer to the light and the symbols get brighter and hurt my eyes to look at, so I look ahead.
We see through the club window. There's dancing. Smiling. Soft lights, to make the atmosphere comfortable. A man hands another a drink. They hold their glasses up and toast.
"To the good life."
The music picks up as we walk through the doors.
More electric, no longer soft. Faster.
The sound is carried across the river, past the bridge and to the other side.
"Couldn't figure it out, and that ain't right, found in the colorful drought, in the middle of the cool night, too little of a sight to see." The band sings.

The middle of Nowhere

I think the death hit her hard.
But why not, how not? Death hits anyone hard. But the impact on her seems to be unimaginable, unthinkable in my mind. The sheer pain from it all is something that I just can't fathom.
Somehow she's made it through.
Don't know how.
I have nightmares, we all do, about the past. But hers... a cold wet night, in the middle of no where, walking away from the still-warm wrecked car, just a scratch down her leg, a bit shaken up, but walking out alone. Her boyfriend is still in the car, cold in the passenger seat, gone.
The sheer weight of the fact that it was all because of her. Unimaginable. What darkness she must have felt.
Days later:
I remember her starring blankly at the ground during the memorial, not in touch with the world, starring at Nowhere, in the middle of it. Nothing. What was happening behind those beautiful brown eyes that were dry with shock?
Months later:
Two pass, exactly. Walking, a cold gray day she surfaces again. I hadn't seen or heard from her, no one had.
"How are you?" I say, like nothings happened, with a smile on my face, like nothing's changed.
"Well."
And she stares at me, her brown eyes dark.
"I just got back from China," She says.
"China?"
"The middle of Nowhere," She wants to say.
"I've heard of it," I'd say.
"To think," She would say. "To think and wander."
How far she must have wandered, wondering. The guilt following her, preying on her.
"I just got back from China," She says.
And we say our goodbyes and walk away.
But how hard it must be.
Her heaven is to get lost in the middle of Nowhere.
Nowhere is a hard place to find. I'll say I know.
But how hard it must be, to think that Nowhere is not far and you'll get to it someday.
And no she's running again.
"To Africa," She says. "Got to get away."
"Had to happen," I want to say.
"No it didn't."