Seppuku Soliloquy

He watched the fireworks in his eyelids
while rubbing out the lashes onto his
t-shirt, grinding the balls inside
their respective sockets.

The patchouli punk a
few feet beyond - only
known by its incense - trailed
into already burnt dry nostrils,
curling hairs back to
the mucous wall in fear.

The chair on which he
sprawled eagle-spread and slumped –
as tattered and antiquated as the whiskey rocks
glass sloshing haphazardly
at his lap, licking liquor all
over his denimed crotch
and the four-forty stainless sitting
silently on his thigh.

The jags, he noticed
through clenched jowls, lent
themselves a kind
of unborn cruelty, running
fingers, counting the teeth
before finding the hilt,
scared but resolute
in his interior observations.

As the background vinyl
reached its climax,
the muttered monologue
was sudden;
surprised even
himself as
his tongue
lolled out the list of
absurdities, finally
grasping with
a whisky-wet right
hand and
and
and
and
and
andand
andandand



The record skipped.


A verse of strings,
approximately eight and a half
bars of eerie dissonance,
stood repeating the action at task.

And he stuttered,
once,

and again,

and now unsure of himself,
he let go.

It ricocheted off
his potbelly and stabbed
him instead in the foot.

The resultant scream was final.

And finality smiled.

Seppuku Soliloquy by Michael W. Hyde is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.