Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

We are in the bowels of a bar on Houston street. It was empty when we first stumbled in around five but now the post-office crowd are pouring in, sucked into the darkness like leaves into a storm drain, riding the tide of filth and water, hugging the sidewalk, rushing blindly on to god knows where. So this isn't a bar after all. The walls; damp and congealed, rats scurrying across our shoes, and the crack and rummage of slow content cockroaches. Here comes Artaud back from the bar. He's grinning, which means something's happened. He's carrying two glasses of cheap beer: three dollars a glass if you manage not to tip. In the dim candle-light that smears a blurred red light across the room he seems like a devil. This is it! He says slamming the glasses down hard onto the table top and falling into his seat. This is what? I say. IT he says. Don't you see? We're exactly where we should be. The eye of the storm! The heart of the sewer! Look at these fuckers! He lifts his arms as if cradling a giant globe on his shoulders, trapping loud suited men in a deep parenthesis. How long do they have left? Days? Minutes? New York is emptying out. The Great Cleansing! One violent bowel movement that they'll talk about for years. But doesn't that excite you? Doesn't the idea of adults - grown men and women jostling for little pieces of society, selling childish trivialities like Coca Cola make you vibrate with excitement? Grown adults! All that anxiety and hope and ambition and sugar water! And here we are swimming among them, carried down the same stream of shit. It's perfect! Perfect! Wait, what time is it? It's still only six thirty. I need to make a phone call he says. I watch as he leaves the bar, pushing through groups of drinkers. Pigeons! He screams. And I watch as he ascends the stairs to be reborn into the cold evening light of Houston street.