The realities so close to home, but far from reality. – Beau
The Story of the South African man’s paradise. His girlfriend’s happily ever after and their children’s future.
“It’s the silence in the air that we seem to miss, all in the name of the commotion in the day, that revs up the noise to a wake. Dust and smoke thrusts across with the wind and we breathe in heavy suffocating air but only tasted by those with fragile lungs. We walk with broken legs and hold with twisted hands a reality far from the sand beneath the toes. We watch the young litter the streets, many a population growing like a storm in the distance; counting down on an endless time, we stare at those close to us with wide eyes as the starships transports them to another universe. Or is it us which are transported and them who remain behind?” Speaks the shadow of a man that once upon a time, stood tall in the eyes of others.
A collection of poison, drank by a man with impaired vision, rests on a chipped wooden table – covered by a plastic cloth, sewn by wounds of time. His eyes lazily gaze around the room, his throat a burn of his own reality. A woman barely clothed dances on his lap to a song common to all; those that find themselves in that place, a song that frequents their ears and yet they remain out of tune with it; she is a ghost to the lyrics, her mind constantly reciting the words over and over and over as she continues to sway her hips to the rhythm.
His stiff hands press on her lower back kneading her flesh and the layers that time has put on her once smooth chocolate buttered skin. Which finally caught up to the number of winnings around her pageant crown. But barely enough to call her queen. Her life lived for validation, but her soul starved of it. And so her legs drape his body, her hands caress a neck that once held itself together but now spills beneath his chin. Both are there and both are not.
He looks at the tall glass resting on the table, his eyes shift slowly from the broad on his lap to the bottle taunting his pride; a self-conscious depiction of what a great man he used to be, whose now world was turned to a raw translation of ego. A soul drowning itself in hot liquids that grip against the chest each time it flows from the bottle bitterly down the oeasophogus and trapping itself where the kidney’s were a symbol of good health.
A proud man drowns his sorrows to the left, a woman draws her legs apart to the right. Her friends gossip with loud conviction, ready for the latest news. The air is thick with age and regret, a sense of longing lingers, like defeaning silence in the wind. The crazy ones dance merrily to a song no one hears, their feet tap against the cold sticky floor aroused by spilt pride of brawls and fights. Broken bottles and cups lay invisible, scattered and forgotten.
Time is still, in a place where no one lives, it stands at 12 o’clock to the curious mind and those that bother a glance. The seconds remain still, freezing the moments in their place. They remember the past like it were a day ago; the old man slurs his history to a crowd of those willing to listen, they pack in the corner their eyes weary of the lives lost, sweat and hot thick musty air watches the broken fan and flickering lights. The windows that let in a glimpse of light the only clock hanging on the walls frayed by years of drunk shoulders leaning against them with broken hearts and tormented spirits.
A haunting picture of the man that once lay in the corner a heap while days passed before eyes could presume his still body an image of death. The air is dense and time sees no man moving, with paralyzed and broken legs the zombies roam their graveyards like apparations of future’s past. Wanders the eyes of those willing to see, walking out of those that could and resting of those tired, their tavern a place of worship week in and week out.
They live in harmony with their sins and repent to the bottle when god is futile and they sing songs of praise when the jukebox plays soft tunes on a Monday night. The thrash of staggering and stumbling about. They are family, a unity when wives, husbands and children forgotten. They are a chain with a common purpose and bound to a place known as home and eternity. Oblivion is the mantra, a sing to the songs playing in the background, they are the forgotten souls that once in a flash of time roamed the earth. They sit in the building barricaded by thick locks and boards, a memory to the outside world where a daughter stands staring into the legacy a father left behind.
Disclaimer: All images on the blog were short by yours truly. For the sole purpose of drawing this picture.
BEAU’S VIEWS 