Lex Martin

A Monologue, from a Fictional Character named Lenny, or Marlo
(anxiously awaiting)
Writing before midnight is like eating chalk before you realize it's meant for sidewalks. Sometimes I bite my nails down to stubs, perseverating, as if by writing it down today, I risk losing it to the evening rain. Is this thought better said tomorrow? 
That is, it’s a butterfly knife. Open it wrong and you’re fucked. 
11:59.
Midnight.
Let’s begin.
“I miss you. I’d never tell you that, and it’s only your towering absence that allows me to write that down. Ever get so close to a feeling that you could have mistaken it for a wind-swept ride along unfurling country roads, with nothing on but aviators and your favorite pair of pants? Now, there’s a feeling that’ll slip out under you. Reminds me of some dark nights. We couldn’t tell up from down if we spit a hundred times. We traced those moments with our fingertips. Nothing like having your footing before slipping into the sea, you and I. I have scars to prove it on every fin.”
“Slipped into the sea, you and I…” what, am I fucking T.S. Eliot? Oh, I like that. “B.S. Eliot.”
Starting is harder than ending. Starts are harder than endings. Beginnings are harder than ends. If you don’t know what I mean, there is nothing in my power to tell you, any clearer, “stand up and help yourself, you marmot!” Other than, “stop writing,” that is. I can’t, and that, I blame on you.
As for who knows best myself, I’d sink a ship if I had one guess: ain’t my daddy, ain’t my lover, ain’t a fucking parrot on my shoulder. And it ain’t me. (it’s not him)
You’ll never read this, or anything, ever again, so what’s the deal, here? If I’m mixing drinks, who’s drinking?
You took the last bottle of cognac. We both know what that means. I’m stuck with gin.
Nihlism. It’s the tonic in my drink. Beyond this placate-the-genius-in-class bullshit, I’d say it makes some sense to me. That is, it’s out of my control, which makes some sense because two days ago I could have sworn my lucky one would have come back for a kiss and now I’m convinced he’s rotten at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
(sips) Oh, that’s good. (finally, something good)
“Darker than tar, darker than the darkest person you’ve ever imagined, darker than making jokes about babies and then telling them to little kids. That’s how dark it’d have to be to out dark the dark I’m suspecting has swallowed my lucky.”
Write too soon about a scar and it heals like a rip in an air balloon. I wait till midnight, at the earliest. It’s my most accountable time. By the time my head hits the desk, voilá! Yesterday becomes yesterday, and my head is screaming, but hey, at least I’ll know up from down.



Author’s Note
Who’s speaking? Believe me, this is not me. My words are mine so long as I choose to claim them. Well, blasted be the customs, I divorce my creation! Away, foul beast, go slump your shoulders in some other domain! Alexander Martin would like nothing to do with the aforementioned sentiments. If you, buckaroo, find yourself drawn to them, there’s nothing stopping you from speaking them, teaching them, reproducing them on flyers all over town, or better yet, getting a needle and inking them down. If somebody asks you where they came from, consider lying. Vengeance may rain upon you like a Shel Silverstein poem considered from adulthood. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtFzarGyyzM