Beirupdate, circle

We awake as though from sleep into our final week like the throat of a great landscape and the scriptured ceiling drops through the glaze and onto my face like the fug that overhangs this place. Our hosts from times-ago join us for dinner and S rides his all-american suzuki with A on his arm after pouring pitchers to the bars of rhymes we know too well. J and I linger and fail not to pay the Monday round by backchatting the security I pushed down the steps and called a cunt but says hi to E anyway. We don’t tip the best service we ever had and instead hit Gemmayze and bump W and L into the monkeyhole where not for the final time J and I note the circularity. Someone brings vodka and with sincerity a single measure of chaser that tastes to me of devilry so we walk the deadzone road and shout at taxis. L spears a parked car with his shoulder though later claims he fell and the owner takes to debate like a wronged mother. He holds a sandwich as I say fuck you check your car have you checked your car fuck you and L roars the roar of wolves and then a sandwich slaps me on the cheek and sprays bluecheese over my world. Alcohol and consensus quell my effort to end his life so we walk the remaining road in cigarette smoke and adrenaline. In the morning J explains to Yassar Arafat why there’s a monster box of vegetables on the floor while I steal paint in Hamra to make custom threads we wear to neighbors in the night. I tell the bar I don’t ever want to ask for more and soon I’m outside tonguing a dog. We bisect the alleyway bar to bar wherever a heavy allows but I win with an ashtray to my lips and I drink as though I don’t know and then muscles relaxes and doublefists bottles we don’t need. At dusk like silhouettes behind a salad of ash and apple and almaza we realize Beirut has swallowed our lives.