The Music Always Stops

"Take care of all of your memories, said Nick

For you cannot relive them" - Bob Dylan

~

Scarlet skies fill my eyes with wonder, hope, and absolute horror

Waking in a sweat, checking my watch,

chasing my demons

Tossing, turning, the memories never remain... they never remain the same

Greying, greying to black, black then nothing, no pigment, no contrast

My demons are... redacted... until they surface... cerise pinked flesh

Nibbled

~

I...

Remember a car... or maybe a van, perhaps an ice-cream van, playing Greensleeves.

Then a cry for help from the depths of... Wolverhampton or maybe Didcot.

Did Didcot come to mind because—quick laugh?

I can only remember the details.

Scant details

like scant pieces of underwear on a cheap motel room floor. Next to opened and used bottles of tequila and Tanqueray

The strong scent of aftershave and some potent Gucci knockoff. The sweat lines the... everything and dried blood. Dried blood is there.

~

I'm sure there was disco music playing, like Chic.

Le Freak.

Then bottles crack, the earth shakes, the room turns magnetic with electric or electric with magnetic.

Shock shock shockwave. Bright light blinds. All.

The screams and shouts climb the dryrot-infested walls and peeling wallpaper.

Forgetting half as much as what our, what my...

Than I remember.

~

Did cot

~

Memories are like waves, or bitter punctured wounds, seeping with oil, cacao-nibs, and the kind of perfume you only get in Milan.

Memories are like torn threads that never quite tie and bind to something new.

Like Mexicola Rock n Rolla on a Saturday night that never quite finishes

Distilling into Sunday and filtered through to Monday.

~

But in my mind, I remember everything

or

at least

the important details

in fragments, when sometimes the fragments become

blood stains on the blood, semen and vomit-stained nicotine-flavoured carpets of the rusty motel at the backend of nowhere.

~

One heartbeat

Glasgow last night

Two weathered leather ties that bind

freak out,

C’est

Paris in August

Three, have you heard

Barcelona tomorrow

Four about the new, new dance craze

New York lover

Five times on the door, knock knock

knock knock knock

~

Then the music stops.

~

as it always does

and the pain enters

the chamber

I pray

for awakening

a summoning

but nothing—

but lies.

*

Author's Notes: Experimental entry for This Is How I Remember It Challenge as part of the SWS. Nothing autobiographical about this piece.

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