![](https://pseudoliterary.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/IMG_5116-1-1024x1365.jpeg)
mercury-pool estuary marshes, a thousand flooded bunkers. the dawn-raid sky from apocalypse now. a bend in the mekong delta, black silhouette treeline, fading to grey, then orange.
the sky is a wall-paint colour-strip, for interior designers with a pumpkin spice latte fetish. one horizontal stripe of every possible shade between black blood, blood red, fallen leaf orange brown, tangerine, nectarine, clementine and satsuma, each in every stage of maturity, young, freshly picked (or whatever the citrus-fruit equivalent of ‘scrumped’ is), ripe, mature, over-ripe, going off, mouldy, and ‘ew, what the fuck? how long has this been here?’.
and that’s just one moment, a photograph. i sit there watching the sunset afterglow, basking in it and breathing it in like an after-sex cigarette.
what is it about smoking that goes with sex? after sex i mean. i get the obvious freudian thing, the symbolism. it’s not exactly subtle, or subliminal.
wet lipstick lips wrap around tighten to an o ignite, inhale
there’s surely more to it. shame that anti-cigarette campaigns have so squarely planted that bad seed, that germ, telling me how dried up and disgusting the inside is, the ashtray kiss that follows, furry tongue scraping, rasping like a cat’s, and the hungry, blackened, cancerous lungs under those perfect refinery breasts.
i’ve never actually smoked cigarettes after sex, at least not in the traditional, missionary position moviestyle way i.e. lying back on the pillow, butt-nakedly, blowing hot smoke at the ceiling.
spliffs, sure. but they’ve never been those post-coital roll-over-and-fumble-for affairs. bedside ashtray etcetera. more like get dressed and go back to what i was doing. i blame porn for teaching me that sex is just one of those evening wind-down activities, like yoga or coming up with clues for my dirty cryptic crosswords.
willy, us detective, hardboiled type (4)
p.s. why is it that nobody in the movies ever goes to the toilet after sex? nobody in the movies gropes around for the toilet roll. where’s the cleanup operation? where’s the wet patch, people? where’s the fucking realism?
2019.09
golden virginia hand rolling tobacco, 50g insects on my SKIN FUCK!!!