The Orchid Club
Martini glasses, social classes, hysterical masses, cigarette vapor, confetti paper, champagne spills, Benjamin bills, gamble thrills, black ties, white lies, shady eyes-- the cities most famous mixed with the cities most wanted, all housed in the infamous Orchid Club. The year was 1952, and New York City was at the height of social hysteria. The mafia had more influence over the city than Satan had over sinners. Prostitutes, policemen, politicians, priests. The suits were darker, the dresses were whiter, and Old Fitzgerald Bourbon was cheaper. The times couldn't be better.
Worry, in all of its painful actuality
The want
the lust
the fracturing desire
to take our hands
our will
and place our fingers on
the unmovable rock of time
breaking our knuckles to move it an inch forward
to bend it with our sheer power to our advantage
but
the crippling reality
that our fingers are centimeters
away from the rock
and we are unable to reach any farther
but our minds push us to reach
to swing and stretch
to no avail
till our minds collapse
and our fingers turn to stone
and our eyes start to bleed.
Definition of Consciousness
The blinding lust for truth and morality, with wiggle room for our desperate wickedness of self preservation and self service. The sine qua non of our consciousness is the option to manifest within ourselves a reality or existence; which satisfies our craving for idolization of the self or the idolization of the false reality itself.
A Delectable Dinner.
"Attention everyone?"
The rustling and soft conversations fell to a discomforting silence. A flat pool of blood waiting for something to bring forth a ripple.
"Our first course."
Three servants dressed in white emerged like fish from the kitchen. Each one placing an ivory plate in front of each guest, thirteen in all.
"What we are eating tonight is a symbol of our victory. A celebration. Tonight we dine on Mr. Larkson, the chief leader of the rebels opposing us. The dish is lung in a red wine sauce with wild mushrooms. You will find the dish absolutely sinful".
The Comfort of a Frightening Truth.
My hands outstretched, and my eyes squinting towards the horizon, and in this instant I realize the mortality of Time and how I can never get any seconds back. And although this empirical truth is frightening and unsettling, I am wrapped up in the comforting truth that every instant I spent with you, although transient, is stuck in the stone of which our decisions are transposed which will remain with us for all of eternity.
Horizons Flaw.
See the expanse. The hard pale dirt stretching out for miles. The yellow grass blanketing it like an itchy Navajo rug. And Johnathan Drivers stood tall like a cactus against the white sky. Carver Daniels lay boot level to Drivers with a bullet firmly lodged in his shoulder. Daniels felt the blood rising in his throat, he breathed slowly, sucking in dust and the calmness of impending death. He squinted at Daniels, taking pity on his sad carcass. Drivers reached into his pocket, and bent down. He placed a dark black-purple hawk feather on the inside of Daniels vest.
He unpinned the fading bronze sheriff badge that stuck to the front of Daniels like a lepers boil. He made quiet eye contact with Daniels and stared expressionless into his soul. Drivers stuck out his hand and closed his eyes as he felt this unfit sheriff exhale his last onto his callused palm.
The ghostly sun reached out to Daniels. It’s bright tendrils carrying his body up to the sky. The Great Wide Beyond had taken him up with the other souls of the west. This was a good time to die.
Drivers stood up and he glanced down at the space where Daniels body had just been.
Drivers began walking West, twelve sheriff badges pinging in his coat pocket. And in the great quiet of the desert, his boots imprinting the dirt, gunfire rang in the distance.
He was on his way to to Remington, to collect and find the last sheriff of the mythical Wild West. To bring this desert into the new era.