Prelude to Hello
by
darkstar
Author's Notes: alrighty, this is my very first attempt at fan fic of any sort, so I am chewing more than a few fingernails in first-post nervousness. it came out as poetry, as most of my ideas do, although i might work on something longer if i don't screw this up too bad. ::makes nervous baby-wolvie whimper and scurries back to her corner::
To these aging truckers and their painted women,
dreams are those beautiful treasures
they sold for a drink long ago.
They carry the beer and the cigar smoke
into their brains as they sleep.
To me, dreams are demons that lurk in the dark
waiting to slash at my soul,
ripping through shreds of memory
and I carry the scars behind my eyes,
if I dare attempt sleep.
Yet if I did dream and if it was beautiful
I believe it would feel like this--
a sudden scent of innocence
beneath the stench of whiskey and lost faith.
It intoxicates my blood.
I sense a fragility amid the corrupt;
smell their desire to break her down,
rotten as dead meat under sun.
She is a perfume of purity under the hate
I wear in metal over bone.
Another enemy stares me down
and I turn away from the almost-dream
to my reality.
This is who I am--
a fighter in a ring, a man in a cage.
Nothing more.
It is not allowed.
To the politicians and the "normal" men,
we are gutter rats, the freaks
that they fear enough to breed hate.
They carry the cancer and their venom
in their eyes when they look at us.
To me, they are but faces I will soon forget,
mere shadows in my gray world.
At times I envy them just one thing,
and I carry that posion behind my mind.
At least they remember.
Yet if I could choose a face for my past,
I would want it to look like her--
with timid brown eyes of a foal,
and lips softer than roses on silk.
She was the dream amid smoke.
I drink my beer and try to ignore how she shivers
either from cold or from the fear
clinging to her like burned incense.
She was not made for places like this or
for dirty men like me.
Another enemy charges from behind.
Her scream warns me into defense
and the claws come out.
This is who I am--
a freak in bar, a thing with no past.
Nothing more.
It is not allowed.
She is not allowed.
And I turn to leave her behind,
stopping, as I pass, to steal one last breath
of I will never have
before walking alone into the cold.
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