literary anti-hero; the center of a novel & significant as an afternoon weather report | by @tokemalone — ‘Wrecking Ball’ coming soon…
New York, NY
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I hollered at the heavens. I rolled on my dust-covered floor. My face stained with icing, I laughed right at the setting sun. I laughed at the world and its sick fucking joke. HA HA HA! It was the first time I cackled in weeks. Jake DeMonte, the punchline of Mother Earth’s set-up. Marisol called me. I answered, now feeling jolly.
She asked if she could come over. I told her no, that I had a date with a cinnamon bun.
“What’s that’sapposed to mean? You fuckin’ a black girl now?” she asked me.
Maybe that’s next, I thought.
“I’m looking to land a job at the United Nations,” I told her.
“Mmmhm,” she said. “You on top papa. Don’t you ever forget that. You call me when you want me to take care of you. But just remember, you on top, papa.”
She hung up the phone. I felt a lump in my throat at hearing her words. I felt the acid brewing, the dam broken. I felt the tears bursting from my eyes. I threw my phone down, stood up on the coffeetable, and flung my fists in the air.
The underdog. The next heavyweight champ, standing on his coffee table with his title belt held to the sky. Through my tears, like a war cry I shouted, “I’m on top, baby. I’m on top!”
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Jake DeMonte retweeted
Me in Italy, being led by the love of my life. We meet in the Piazza. Her English is subpar, and my Italian is bare minimum, so we spend the entire night passing my phone back and forth with the translate app open. At one point in the conversation, I have a thought that I’d be okay with communicating this way for the rest of my life so long as she’ll be standing there next to me. She puts me on to drinking Compari neat (or with a little bit of ice) and insists that I’ll get used to the bitterness. A Marlboro Gold in tandem, “ti colpisce nel punto giusto.”
It hits the spot.
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Jake DeMonte retweeted
The longer you muffle the voice screaming from the pit of your belly, the harder it becomes to open the gate to the rest of your days. You chose silence. A piss poor peace…and in the keeping of it, you pillaged the very ease you’re desperate for; that warm bosom you wish to lay your head on and whisper to.
Is it not beautiful, the way the words pour from you now?
A monster reborn. A reasonable man at last.
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Jake DeMonte retweeted
Everything that has ever happened to you has been nothing but a sentence along an endless scroll, THE endless scroll. You burn rubber and leave marks, rumbling down the asphalt with no target like a speeding bullet to purgatory. The point has never been to rush toward the end, the story never concludes. The point has always been to take control of the damn pen and ink so that the sentences aren’t jumbled up and full of shit. The idea all along was to write it yourself, but I’m curious to know who you were before you passed it off to the hand reaching over next to you?
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Jake DeMonte retweeted
Imagine being a writer or an artist, and all you ever do online is talk about being a writer and an artist. How great it is, how rough it gets, how lonely it can be. And other writers & artists reply, “yeah man. Right on!” And it’s validating. They too know how great, rough, and lonely being an artist is!!!
But then I wonder, while scrolling through tweets like such; all of the ‘claims’ for poetry or fiction. One quickly realizes there is no poetry nor fiction—there is bile, shit, & fraudulence. Not even their crap is real. More engagement is garnered for vibes and thoughts on AI than it is for a single stanza or short story. Writers! Artists! “Creatives”! What a legacy…280 characters, maybe more if they pay their subscription.
I shout high from the mountaintops for a real one to hobble along. A carcass with withered eyes and leathery skin. A corpse ran dry and thrown around like a toy chest aboard the trash truck. A wild fucker with bloodshot eyes and spiral notebooks filled with guts. I yell from the cliffs, “Where are you, Great Wordsmith…Great storyteller! In what bar, theatre, whorehouse, church, opium den, jail cell, looney bin, or forest are you hiding?”
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Every stanza I have ever written is a piece of flesh plucked from my being. One day, I will be nothing but a set of eyes and a heart, to which I will have to choose which I will give away first.
I gift to the world my eyes, so I am left only to feel the rhythm.
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“This photograph is my proof. There was that afternoon when things were still good between us, and she embraced me. And we were so happy. It did happen. She did love me. Look, see for yourself!”
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Jake DeMonte retweeted
“And so I say to my fellow beings, “give me life,” and I will give you the same.”
- @jakedemonte
"I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life but that great consciousness of life."
~ Kerouac - Journal entry (November 1951)
Jack Kerouac outside 'Kettle of Fish', 114 MacDougal St. in Greenwich Village. NYC
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