Time is the Fire by Michael Londra

In my nicotine visions, it’s the same amphetamine dream every time.

I float up the exterior of Delmore’s last flophouse. This typical Times Square bedbug welfare hotel, tucked somewhere between the Kitty Kat $5.00 Dating Service and Wonderland’s Topless Palace of Fun. Peep shows, dirty bookstores, pimps, Howard Johnson’s. 

Delmore’s alone in the hallway by the third floor elevator. Gasping for air, writhing on his back, tongue curled in on itself like a fist, he rips the buttons from his pastrami-and-mustard stained white short-sleeved shirt to relieve the relentless crushing pressure against his chest. All he wants is to breathe. That will never happen again.

Why am I always late in dreams, just like I am always late in real life?

The door to Delmore’s crummy furnished room is wide open. Now we peer inside together. Various unpublished manuscripts hover as his field of vision collapses to a black dot. Sprawls of messy stacks on a brown threadbare carpet. No one will ever read his unfinished stanzas to Narcissus, the unpublished novel set during his years at Harvard, or the unedited one-thousand page essay about coffee’s influence on the development of the pinball machine. All of it swept into the dumpster, along with himself.

Rising on a fold-out poker table, two sacred objects—his portable black Smith Corona typewriter and disintegrating Finnegans Wake. Crazy Delmore took Joyce’s frayed monster everywhere. Even the bleachers at the Polo Grounds where he worshipped the New York Giants, annotating the margins while somehow following the action on the baseball diamond. Maybe Delmore loved Wake too much, you know? Once, at the White Horse Tavern, I watched in shame as he performed wild scenes from it, humiliating himself for free drinks. Sickened, I swore to protect him from such indignities.

"Please live with me," I said to him. "I’ll keep you sober."

This wasn't a realistic possibility, to say the least. I’d been high as a kite from age thirteen. Who was I going to be able to take care of?

But my instinct that Delmore was in danger was justified later on that same night after he embarrassed himself at the White Horse. Four of his so-called friends coincidentally bumped into us as I was escorting Delmore home to the Chelsea Hotel. Of all things, they started an argument with Delmore over T.S. Eliot. He loved that Eliot dude. Then, out of spite, one of those four creeps called the cops, reporting Delmore drunk and disorderly. The opportunity to rat on Delmore was too funny to pass up, I guess.

I begged the officers that came to let him go. Nix. Those flatfoots cared zilch. Next stop Bellevue. Fifteen electroshock treatments in two months shattered Delmore’s mind like a jam jar thrown on pavement. While he was locked up, I moved on with my life without him. That's when I started a new band. Oh, and got hooked on Cannibal Dust.

But once he got out of the hospital, Delmore wanted to move in with me anyway. He immediately quit his professor job at Syracuse University, and met me at the White Horse Tavern to announce that he had officially accepted my kind offer to live under my roof. I had forgotten that I made that offer, actually. That's how high on Cannibal Dust I was. So I had to break the bad news.

"I’m sorry, Delmore. Change of plans. I’m in a band. There's no room for you to stay with us."

His eyes got big with pain. Out of the quivering, twisted slash of his mouth poured a wild, unhinged howl, as if trying to scream a gaping hole into the sky.    

"You've joined the CIA. Oh my God, they turned you into a double agent." Sweat lashed his forehead, dripped off his chin. Scanning the floor for something, he seemed momentarily confused. "My heart...my heart...where is my heart..."          

Then, rubbing his face vigorously, he stood. Crying a rush of tears, he lifted his empty whisky glass and threw it at my left ear, demolishing the back wall mirror. Shaking his head, tripping over his whirling feet, he suddenly galloped into the dark night. Never saw him alive again. I let him down. That's how I killed him. I killed Delmore.

Now, in my dream, the dream that won't stop torturing me, I’m standing over him. The horror is nearly complete. Everything almost done. Delmore stops fighting to live. His eyes close. His voice is a vibrating bone harp in my skull. Delmore’s final words. A pure glistening sound that I remember from his workshops. When I was a random mope and he was some ex-famous writer I never heard of. The only human who gave me permission to really write.

Delmore whispers to me, "Wait, Lou. Don’t leave. I will be forgotten unless you tell my story. Don’t let them think I was only a drunk, pulling phones out of walls, scrounging on bleeding knees for Dexedrine crumbs. Tell them I wrote sonnets to the sun. Explain how much I adored Willie Mays and loved my wives. And I love you. Put my scribbles in my casket. I want to proofread during my funeral. Does God get The New York Times?"

Holding his head in my hands, I recite his poetry to him. Everything I memorized. Until the black jackhammer of death slams the full weight of eternity straight through the cracked center of his broken sight.

That’s when morning sunlight stabs through my lids into my retinas. I wake up.

Delmore’s vanished with the dream. I tried to rescue Delmore, carry him on my shoulders into reality. But I’m dope sick on Cannibal Dust. I'm virulent. I can barely take care of myself. I snort and inject. What can I do to truly help? Delmore, forgive me.

Leaving the Ludlow Street walkup shared with the rest of my band, I hop the A train with my guitar case, like Duke Ellington commanded listeners on that famous record of his. When I'm awake, it keeps spinning on full blast in my head, along with Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman," my favorite song.

Stumbling out at Lexington Avenue, I busk under the Apollo marquee announcing JAMES BROWN ONE NIGHT ONLY, which was two nights ago, to earn the extra cash required for my illegal pharmaceuticals. Three more bucks and I’ll dope it up. All right, all night. Till tomorrow’s fix.

On the subway uptown, I mentally sketched a beautiful poem for Delmore, but hitting the sidewalk, I forgot it. Strapping on my cheap acoustic anyway, Delmore’s undead voice flows out my throat. Delmore is tectonic. He is archeological. His hieroglyphics decorate my tongue like Tut’s tomb. Delmore’s lost heart now skins my body. Sheathed in Delmore, he is my armor.

I chant and sing aloud all my confessions to thee, Our Lady of Migraines—yes, I should have saved Delmore. I atone in my music. My guilt is my work. I must continue. I will never stop. Delmore is my job. Delmore, my responsibility.

Delmore, singing inside me.