The evening air rustled under rolling dark clouds above, smothering my starlit map. i fought against another cool biting breeze with my collar hiked to my chin. Reddened fingertips stung as they clamped the canvas folds tight, linked like lockets. Before me, my breath hung like a phantom, murmuring in and out of existence, a lost lover's hopeless call. Between the discordant clips of my heels against the cobblestone, i heard his wail.
Hurt whispered on the wind, wrenched from the callused heart of that screeching siren, and my steps, my stride froze. My toe twitched as my heel hung, the discomfort of the elements fell to the insatiable whims of my curiosity. Another corner, another crossing, my thighs tense to the colds. My internal whine quieted as calls began to deafen. There were no words to the warbles. No lyrics to decorate the unjust scales. i followed the stanzas graffiting the winding sidewalk, and pranced along the pavement. Until i saw him.
Upright and stark, silhouetted within the golden balled hue from a streetlamp, the hounded spectre stood. Shoulders back, his long thin hair coiled, its silver ringlets matching the flashing bejewelled metal promises bound, and sparkling around his knuckles, as his furious wrist tore a ratty bow across filthy strings, carving into his battered violin. With his hand the banished banshee sung his scars, exiled to the wet Parisian sidewalks, unaware of my gaze.
Held within the shadow of a corner i watched him like a doe. Afraid to startle such an intimate dance. His torso vibrated, and body contorted, swaying like giant rhythmic waves in the middle of a storming sea. A waltzing nomad following an unknown metronome like the lost cling to a compass. Brutal and beautiful. An anointed elk shedding its antlers, drowning under the weight of its bloody crown. His twisted hair whipped and flogged as his body swayed within his tarnished trousers, and stained suit jacket. Under the unbuttoned top of his collar, a blizzard of hair from his chest corkscrewed and caught the locks of his long drowning beard. Millimetres apart his eyelashes fluttered, the damned lost to a trance, as his hands narrated his bastarding biography to the unbothered avenues.
Entombed within empty streets no sudden sound startled. The occasional passing taxis never caused a flinch or falter. Not the rattle of engines, or the snarl of their tires against the soaked roads. Pulled from my corner, i came closer to the caller. His fist a fury above the worn curves of the wood. Cracked and warped the violin matched the threading, deteriorating musician. Yet the mourning remained magnetic, singing an ache my heart knew but too well. A shared friend, a latch unlocked, a link.
On the far side of the road a few other passers paused. The late night travellers craned, circling a look. Their appearance startled, and brought me back to my bluing body, my fingers crooked within the cold. Quickly, i held them against my lips, and stoked the fire from my breath over their pangs, while i danced from numbed foot to foot.
My movements mirrored the wailing wraith as he shuffled in his broken dress shoes. Dancing as his bow bounced and daggered up. An antenna for belonging, pulsating poetry heavenwards. His whiskey wet lips whispered the cadence to his fingers as they danced across the sharp cutting nylon strings. Their cavernous imprints flashed as his fingertips popped and skipped across the surface. Dirt and filth painted beneath his nails, peeling skin rolled back from their corners. Peppercorns sat wedged above his chipped purple, wine stained fangs, as the ghoul gnashed his jaw, gritting against the gripping drags of entirety. He whirled his head, and whipped his hair, possessed by the passion of the chords.
A dozen bottles sat on his breath, their staling vintage perfume pungent in the dank the night air.
The wailing drunkard's intoxicating ballads stirred my stumble, and i sought refuge planted safe upon a damp bench. From my theatre i fished a crumbled packet of cigarettes, and tossed a few spare sticks into the player's open case among the scattered shrapnel, broken bits of dollars, nickels, pennies and dimes, promises of change to come.
Sulphur tickled my whiskers as i conjured a flame, pulled cleansing smoke across my palette, and eased into my seat. Other lost souls accumulated around me, and we shared the weighty burden of existing, covered together under the quilt of cold. From my shaking hands i watched the ember sit below my nose as i dragged, and wondered why its coals could never do to warm me.
As i smoked the playing rose to an alarming fever. The drunk's tapping feet took control, contorting, and throwing his body now a puppet to the sounds. The bottoms of his broken shoes swatted like castanets. Scattered drops of rain dotted his forehead amongst his beading sweat. His spastic shoulders threw the cold from his sunken cyan blue exposed skin, as he danced upwards upon a firehydrant, and balanced on the inches of its crevices. A flap from his peeling soles exposed a sock as holey as his spirit.
The world swung around him. Death rattles exorcised from the violin's f holes richoted across the apartment windows above. Annoyed dreamers ran to the glass, the crash of their sills opening in a furious hast beat to the tune like an orchestrated percussionist. Complaints died behind their teeth, smothered beneath the pouring beauty before they could gain traction. The neighbours leaned outwards against their railings, their shoulders hunched for the inches closer. Transfixed, like me, infused in the moment. The miserable street a stage for a shared song, a snarl from a whimper.
The violin bow flayed as drops splintered from the teeming clouds above, sprinkling down, down, down. The promise of rain came to a crescendo, keeping pace with the tempo while minutes slid to hours, until it poured unnoticed by the hypnotized. The drunkard slashed his bow like a sabre, like a saviour. Fighting the dead and darkness of night. Soul bare, battling back, his voice becoming ours.
No matter if the wrench stumbled, nor how the mange's legs buckled and bowed, he swung, and stabbed with vigour, with abandon. Tearing the transcendent unnoticed around us and holding it skyward for all to see. The audience leaned a little further, championing the tortured poet as his scales climbed to the heavens and lay battle to the darkest clouds.
Without warning the inky abyss punctured, and translucent colours poured. Shades of vermillion rippled, illuminating the curves of the carpeting cloudy ceiling. Dawn answered his song, warmth came to cradle us all.
Thanks for reading.
-Mr. Write