A week of urban augury

> > Welcome back to the land of the dead, where all of the peoples of the world mingle in hellish heat, where skaters and skunks stalk their turf, where slaves to capital wear low-cut shirts, where the smells of garbage, perfume, and fried foods waft across the thoroughfares. I asked for death, and they brought me here.
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> > My mother and my sister brought me back across the landscape, prone as a prince in a pile of my worldly possessions. Little here had changed: Eyes closed, one can see every road and route and rut, every shop, bus stop and gastro-pub. In this place, every mind is abuzz of the six million hive.
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> > On Monday, I went into the underworld to have my paperwork sorted. Beneath the train tracks my name was written in graffiti, but this does not constitute valid ID. Some roundabout and garbage words from a wo(man) behind the counter, and we fled back to daylight's oppression, changed parking spots three times, and called it a day.
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> > On Tuesday, I had a job interview. For an  overripe empire, the urban centres certainly boast many employment opportunities. I will perform the task I learned in a previous incarnation, forty four hours a week. I will trade my free time for capital, I will surrender to the cycle and the sickle. I will feed the dead and the dying.
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> > Wednesday is open mic night. Troubled troubadours and fledgling bands offer dirges, dancing. The hood rejoices the spirits of hip hop and rock n roll as they spin about a boxcar-sized room where I lose myself innumerable times, unnumbered ways, I try to remember the person I was, the songs I once wrote. By the end of the night, energy is spiraling wildly. Survival was once a roach in the morning. Success was awkward beauty and after parties. Who was I? What was I  wandering in search of?
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> > Thursday is a day for the new gods and the old flames. When craiglist, tinder and bumble don't work to put you in touch with another tormented soul, conjure up the spectre of past lives and loves. You might not recognize them but they remember you, from the story of a dream of a past life, a simpler space-time measured only by proximity and palpitation, a reminder of the newness of all experience, especially love, even in the realm of the damned and the lost.
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> > Friday is when the free wo(men) play, five days of work commemorated and undone over the following forty eight hours of ingestion, rejection, triumph and titilation. Try to lose yourself in a river of desire, floating by tunnels downtown, by bus along the buried riverbeds, by starlight in backlanes and border towns, till morning washes all in a gentle, breaching glow. Till the holy days come to the land of the dead, days of worship, commerce, free trade and family. A time to revisit what we have, and to remember what we've lost.
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> > Saturday is the saddest day. I found myself a place to stay. My dying drive had gone, away and left me with the willingness to continue living a half-life, a walking death, a stoic, strained act clowned to keep the living at bay. But the mask slipped and cracked on Saturday , sat still too long and lo pain caught up, of dying and living, alone in a room  surrounded by the sounds of life, love's cord severed, crush, brush, and crash,  communication's breakdown. Too many unanswerable, incalculable questions, thee weight washes me to sleep.
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> > Sunday is actually the worst. Rest. Park talks and tired walks. Try to go shopping, if you have the strength. Save it: you can have your cake and eat it via text and message, shades of the past life will haunt you on this day. Once, twice, thrice you will push the troubled thrush of a wo(man) away. for naught. Distraught, she wants to join you in the ways wars always end, to put you in her place, trade face for tragicomic masks, tear her flesh and breathe in ash. Plead calmly for as long as you can, she is beyond the influence of your command. Tenderness is only a bitter memory, bosom torn and the hearth we lost. What cost will be yet be hung overhead? Pain and heartbreak are weather patterns, pieces of life's puzzle scattered in the early morning calls for help, resonating off walls, through halls, shrieking inconsolable purgatorial cries of loss and lies. Apologize! And then, maybe, some long awaited dawn to a long overdue all nighter of healing and recovery, we will meet again. Until then, look for me skirting and flirting, putting score to torch and pen. Working for a living, just enough for the city. You are my home, she said. My home now is the land of the dead.