
Image by Justas Marcinkevicius
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Phantasmagoria
by Michael Schmidt
Yipping in the humming neon-night air of a conglomerated peoplescape built with dead artists and sweet-wine drinking mothers under the old reflected and heavy light of the moon, in the name of the moon.
A black-leopard Chariot striving and sweating and beautiful, they would have made it if Bacchus hadn’t been crying over spilt grapes and milk and honey.
We looked up and we saw God break and we broke him and it felt good and it kept us warm for a little while.
Broad-shouldered beautiful Aryan women struggling with their W’s and strangling rest while pounding the frosted ground for answers in green.
An already-dead poet labored over his last words in the back of a café smoking his first and only cigarette, they could have saved us.
I remember you against the window shuddering and what was that behind you?
Broken down cabins and unreal blinding Carné fireworks that could only be seen in murky lake-water reflections. A cold lake with no end or bottom (It hath no bottom!) forever twisting and then twisting more to destinations unfathomable. Like moths to a flame we peered over the deck and looked in.
Christ died with you and I— when the glitter finally settled we jumped in the lake and when we came up for air I saw how hollow your cheeks had become. It struck me and I slipped on your words before you could catch me.
Mein Vater, Mein Phantom, Mein Youth, where are you now? Where are you? Where? Instincts can’t help us. I’m underwater. The clouds gathered and cried “Wolf!” but we don’t fear wolves only starry-eyed jackals and the Ivory children of Angels or what we thought were Angels.
The homeless have finally died and are twitching and rattling.
I can feel you behind me.
Something incomprehensible like time, and nothing, and life from nothing, we are the treat-hungry, beaten medicated lap dogs of drunken forgers of galaxy.
“Tangerines are tangible” she whispered to me in an accent I had never heard and I took a bite or else.
We were snow-blind before we had made it to the top, but what we saw was so much worse.
We looked and we looked and we found it, and like so many before us it wasn’t what we were looking for.
She ran down the street grinning blood with hands full of rabbits. “Who killed the rabbits! The rabbits!”
Nothing, something.
And then I woke up, as if from a dream.
I can feel you behind me.
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You can find out more about Michael and his writing from his website:
http://glitteringafterthoughts.wordpress.com/
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MIchael’s 2nd FreeSpace Slot will be on Thursday 21st November
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If you are interested in FreeSpace, don’t hesitate to get in contact via a reply box, or the form on our ‘What’s On’ Page or via @ArtiPeep
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Tags: artipeeps, creative writing, FreeSpace, Justas Marcinkevicius, Michael Schmidt, Photography, Prose, Short Fiction, short stories, writing, writing and photography collaboration