Cafe Mercury

I'm there. Something about saying those words displaces reality. I look around, neutral, without grief or appraisal. I evaluate--I take it all in, let it sink down to the marrow. Where is there? Have I arrived, or have I just realized I've been here all along. 

I've been sitting here for quite sometime, and have waltzed with the idea of leaving here longer. This is a cafe. There are plants all around--luscious foliage, jungle palm fronds and dark, drenched, ferns that fray off into the abysmally adumbral atmosphere. The taupe shades are drawn, but the neon orange light jarringly jabs out from the sides. It's dark, the mood is dark. I lower my sunglasses, a reflective red metal tint, eyes hidden behind mirrors that taunt the desperate onlooker, mirrors that gleam like the avaricious eyes of a voracious hell hound. I sound my odious bark--a light cacophony of cackles that raises the hackles of all those partaking in ignorant bliss around me.

The cafe is dark and green but there's this neon red. This, displacement, from the calm of the hidden. One cannot hide in a red beam of light--they can only pray and abide. There's tufted red box chairs and a red frame around the menu. Red chalk has scratched on the menu's only two options--un cornetto and un cappuccino. Peering around, I perceive this to be true, each patron has either cornetto or cappuccino, not both, not nothing. A sinful morsel or a fevered imbibing, the choice seems to be yours.

The patrons, the patrons are gristled gods, once lavished by tongues, now suppressed, repressed, erased. They do not physically look at you, eyes sunken down into periodicals and old, shoddy books and papers but in their omnipresent jest you can feel their cold gaze piercing through an intimate innocence, some nether regions, your nether world, that infernal, indecent pit in the bottom of your stomach, lump in your throat, pussy's got your tongue, severed spine, ragged nails, a fitful finale, a denouement to an ungodly creature such as yourself, bestowed upon the sovereignty of Pluto. How does it make you feel? Looking at the man behind the ivy, behind that paisley wallpaper, his yellow eyes popping through the facade as he laughs. 

And sure there are others around, other petty, dictatorial gods, creatures of upending flights of fancy. But if they wanted to save you they could have. No. They hide behind their printed gospels, fashion models and architecture and photography--as if the aesthetic appreciation of the world they leave behind will tie them here, will set them free, as if they want to be set free, who wants to be here, who wants to be stuck on Earth, who doesn't want to be a star? But the soles of my feet are coal, still years off from a dapper juvenile rhyme, infinitesimally implanted into our subconscious for generations to come. We are always beseeching. 

There I am; calculating the gravitating, gyration of the crescent shaped room, spending my time debating the satiating of the heathen, obviating a pulsating heart, a placating thing,  always underestimating the nauseating, a frustrating, captivating, titillating, devastating thing, it's intoxicating, it's radiating unobscured, radiation throughout the whole room cafe, under the blinds, over the tables, poured in the red hot hot hot cappuccinos and baked in the over zealous cornetto, unperfecto, oh heavenly body, what of it, what of this, oh here, oh there, oh my psychopathic sycophantic, ubiquitous deprecation, leave my bones here, leave my skin to melt and slap that red red tile, my heretic heart, burn it all here, give me my space.

I can leave. I can leave it all right here, right now, I promise you this. But it's so nice and warm there. So, nice, so comfortable. Leaving is such a foolish thing. I'll stay alone, I'll stay ignored, I'll be forgotten, frog in my throat, the dogs are raining down upon the damned now. Forget me, my love. Forget how I bedeviled you, beset you, plague you with unfathomable, abominable fears. I seared them into your flesh and asked for your reverence.

I once had this notion, baby, this studded notion, that I had lost my way, fallen from paradiso. But I was never there. I was always here. I was always waiting here. I'll still be waiting here. Mercury's in retrograde tonight--think of me, your absent god.