Gone Lawn
a journal of literature
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Gone Lawn 20
Winter, 2016

Featured painting, Queen of Vision by Dean Reynolds.

New Works

James Gabriel

Downtown Eve with Shakes and Smiles


On the underbus everyone clutches totes and carriers in the fear of pickers, snatchers and the like. They are as they be and this obvious is the way of the hap in the metropolis. All of the we, moving straight laced with sadly few shakes and smiles. Baggers and railers, underlings and elite all gathered. This the way things be hap. Smarties and dummies all mix on the underbus, we the ninety-niners. Darks, and lights, yellows and mudders, o'course most hap be mudders in these days. Few pure bodies still be. Those be mostly elite's, governors, percenters and the like.
At the station, the underbus purges and I take to vacation above, to avenues and boulevards of the towners metropolis.
The gathering is near. The beats infect my drum long before my sight can declare them. The crowd has gathered to the conversation of titillation. A grand instrumentation of modern Middle Eastern liquid vibrations throwing blue and red velvet waves over attendees. Just as the underbus, all creeds stand, though the atmosphere contains less restraint and more ease. In land there be hap very many shakes and smiles. Also too, the heshe's and shehe's all sashay move to the beats for the welcoming yelp is sounded to all. The drum vibration brings with it the tip tap to blend and all begin to shuffle and jive.
Applause snaps and crackles through the silence and the attendees shashay and tip tap. On the dais a raving siren steps forward, draped in black with highlighted tresses. The siren begins a sonorous purge, which opens into a familial echo. It be an open beginning to the next set with both baggers and railers gawking and breaking wine and bread. My eyes wander the crowd of electric liquidity hunting for a familial face of a she that may, or may not, lend acknowledgement to my site. This tantric she I have known as the books dictate and tell tales of.
We be a two that end the eve as an entwined singularity when the witching hour comes to be. Savage knights in white satin, we duel in the four poster arena with chalice and blade. Slaying each other as we engage, predator and prey on the plains of the lion king. Both of we win and both of we lose dying together, feeding on our teeth, drenched in glands and heavy breath.
I wander, looking to taste, hunting to engage. The air spun with a cloak of Technicolor strobes from a side vision spilling over an ocean of baggers and railers. A wave of noggins bobbing to a driving force. Everything exotic in its wonderment. The language acknowledges barriers between all he and she's and the like, but the sonorous tempo of bebop and the sirens wail transcends all dimensions for the formation of a more connected sashay leading to an orgy of shakes and smiles.
If I allow, the tones and beats will possess and I may be taken myself away. I may abandon this self for another unknown dimension opened in this verse. This gathering could reach into the towner's dark night. The scraping skyline above with the tallest builts all lit like a fluorescent business playland of money shakers and percenters.
My hunt arrives complete and I stand without fruit. Perhaps the awesome sight of me has driven her to fear or perhaps my she has made the choice of another he. I walk the gathering empty of heart and cold hearth until all concludes. The snap crackle and pop of cheered agreement with the shake and smile orgy I vacation back with the baggers and railers to the underbus.
The experience has caused awakened sensations to have been dug through my sight. There has been a grand intercourse with so many who peered their sight on such a spectacle. I open my parchment and quill and allow my hands to drive a story into creation and beneath the metropolis I begin to sketch my phrase-photograph.
On the underbus a shaved noggin of a dark he sights me like I am ex-gangpunchy. He is drowning taken and possessed by the creatures drink. He hangs in a slack sleeveless grey weave coat, swaying in the movement of the underbus. He sights me, his eyes float, two lost ships in a white sea, swallowed by a black hole slowly dimming into the night. His lamps recede and relaxation takes me.
The light hiccups on the underbus to dictate our speed. Distance blinks through the electric breaks. We slide through the metropolis's gullet, the city breaths with us, as it swallows. The concrete veins pull and purge the nights and days into infinity. We are blood. We are oxygen. We are nourishment. I am wondering on my end.



James Gabriel is a writer living in Los Angeles.