Silence and sleep, like fields of amaranth lie

A shadow slips through the night, flitting across the street. In the half-light of the waning moon, the figure is barely discernible, but we can see that it is a tall, man-shaped thing. The stranger seems to hesitate for a moment, as if unsure of whether to go down Main, and then turns left down Beale street. He reaches the riverside, and climbs over the embankment, wading into the shallows.

***

The sun beats down about his head and shoulders. Sweat mixes thickly with white face-paint, and clots into his synophrys. His lips feel chapped and thick under the crimson lipstick smeared over his mouth. Feet hurting, the slap slap slap of his oversized shoes on the pavement becomes a mantra. He marches on. Ti-i-i-me [slap] is on [slosh]my [slap] side…[slosh] yes [slap] it is [slap-slosh]. The gasoline sloshes in its jerry can, happily syncopating the rhythm of his shoes.

***

The night is young. He runs a hand over his scalp, feeling the smoothness of it. It pleases him. He heads down towards the waterfront, walking briskly down Folsom. He moves with a certain confidence, sure of where he is going, and exactly how fast he wants to get there. Striding across Spear street, he looks up at the bay bridge looming overhead, like a leviathan in the fog. It pleases him.

***

The sun. Warm. Love the heat.

***

He stops in the middle of the square. People are milling around, busy with their daily routines. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a) a book of matches b) a piece of green chalk c) a feather.
Nobody spares more than a second glance at the clown in the polyester suit standing in the middle of the square. Not even when the clown plucks a feather out of the air and draws a green circle on the ground, around himself, precisely 4.5 feet from the instep of each flappy foot.

***

A vulpine smile reveals crooked canines, flashing in the moonlight. As if competing with his teeth, his knife glints in the dark too, for a brief instant, before the blade disappears into the woman's entrails, like a thaumaturgist's trick. Now you see it, now you don’t.

***

The gasoline soaks right through his suit. Passerby halt in their tracks and stare at him, stupefied. He glances back morosely, an exaggerated expression of pure longing on his face. Then he sets himself on fire.

***

Open sky. Taste of the sea on the wanton wind. The smell of her perfume, carried on a breeze.

***

A single drop of blood drips off his earring and onto the toe of his shoe. His face smeared with gore, he chokes back the thick, sickly sweet taste of menstrual blood, and a howl gurgles its way out of his throat. Echoing into the night, he announces his presence to the audient void.

***

I am a bird of prey. Your poets and visionaries write odes to me, and what I represent. My eye sees all of creation, and all of creation fears my gaze.

***

The harbour is silent, the world asleep. A body floats down Wolf Creek, drowned in whiskey, or river slime, or both. A whore leans against a doorway and watches the shadowy figure make his way up over the embankment, onto mud island. The light from the tip of her cigarette is twice-reflected in the blue of her eyes. And behind the wall of sleep, all is silence, silence.