I seen you walking

A poetic? piece of flash fiction

 I seen you walking from the drug-happy streets of Albany to the identity-confused streets of Boston, where all anyone talked about was craft beers and “homeless” hipsters out for gags walked the streets of Harvard square bumming cigarettes off of the other rich shitheads. To Tokyo, Holy Tokyo! Where as a kid you stood wide-eyed at the foot of a life sized Gundam, and walked the electric streets of Akihabara where people cosplay spiritually and every store sold toys on the first floor and porn on the last, and I seen that look on your face when you finally found the fabled Japanese beer vending machine sitting angelically beside another filled with thongs. But the cool beer couldn't save you from a summer heat so bad if you weren't in heaven you'd have figured you were in hell. I seen you walking wordlessly down those streets, and I seen you with your hangman head hanging all the way back home to your small town streets, quiet in the night, quiet but for the voices set there on the gravestones. Well, your room doesn't fit you right no more and your fingers sure can't seem to make your six-string sing no more; you want to play Dick Dale but are sounding like Muddy Waters which, okay isn't so bad, but the sun 's not particularly keen on shining through your window at the moment. So you leave and meet up with the guys at the local dive down the road for a couple pints and when they're ready to hit up the next hole they ask where you want to go, but you haven't thought about that yet. You never do, ya know. I seen you walk out that bar's door and the moon sits above you like a hole in the sky, screaming. The wind whipping your ears is its carried cry through the endless depths of eventide.  

Reviews

[KWP]

Well - what can I say? I love your work here.

I saw it all with you, I walked those streets and suburbs in Japan and I felt that goddamn 40 C degree heat on the pavement while extracting a beer from a vending machine. I walked that bridge and tried as I may to avoid those brimming crowds whilst observing the cosplay rituals from a distance.

I love the pace. I could recommend that the first sentence needs a relook cos, well it's more than a mouthful. Perhaps break it into two. I could also recommend you use paragraphs to highlight certain areas - for example

To Tokyo, Holy Tokyo! and everywhere you say 'I seen you' - I think it would give readers a chance to absorb all the awesome imagery your have plotted along this path. I don't think it would affect the pace if you did so. I think it would also encourage people to read down the page onstead of thinking 'wow! big paragraph' like I did.

Those small bits aside, I am so glad I read this, it has inspired me so. You are a great writer and I think this would make an excellent first page of a novel.

LOVE X