she was taller than me
thin, in her 20s.
she was wearing tight blue jeans
a T-shirt and a hat
to hide her face.
even though she looked at the ground
the hat didn’t hide her face well.
she said hello and then smiled.
I said hello back and held the door
open for her.
she thank me and walked in.
I kept thinking about her face.
it was horribly scared
from eyelid to jaw bone
on both sides.
she really had it.
to think of all the staring
all the insults
everything stupid people say
all the lonely nights
all the hours looking in the mirror
wondering why?
she really struck me.
she has lived a life that most people
would never dream of in their
darkest nightmares.
she said, in a happy voice, “so long”
she walked out, got in her car
drove away.
I just stood there
watching her car drive off into the distance
thinking that she had such a sunny
dispostion.
she was the most beautiful woman
that I had ever seen at the post office.

sitting there,
on my bed,
I was warm and tired.
my head and shoulders felt as if
they weren’t attached
I wasn’t anxious for once
that was nice.

before I could do anything
to stop it,
my face,
slowly slipped down off my skull,
slid down off my chin,
down my shirt,
until it came to rest on my lap.

I looked up at my head from
my crotch,
saw a smooth place
where my face should’ve been.
my beard was gone as well,
it must’ve been attached to my face.
when I looked at my head
there was no nose,
no mouth,
no eye sockets,
nothing.
it was perfectly smooth.
everything must’ve stuck on my face.
it took me a minute to process this.
I remember thinking to myself,
this could be a problem.

I heard a woman’s voice,
it said, “that’s weird.”
it was, so I didn’t argue.
I tried to scan the room to find her but
couldn’t.
I felt the bed sink a little
like someone sat down on it with me.
I strained my eyes, then gave up.
I heard the voice again,
“it’s really, really weird.”
it really, really was.

I’ve had worse days.

I don’t talk about this part of my life
very much
let alone write about it.

for some time,
I was living in a series
of awful, shitty places.
didn’t have much choice.
each one became worse
than the one before it,
but I became more accepting.

one place was a good sized room
it had a cot with a half inch mattress
a blanket
and a wooden box nailed to the wall
for me to put my shit in.

I really crawled into myself there
didn’t talk to anyone
it was just me
that is where I fell back in love with reading
I was reading a lot of classics
a lot of Poe
read and re-read Frankenstein 100 times.

I didn’t have any money
and when I did get some
it went to staying alive there
dry ramen noodles and instant coffee.

I dried out there.
no smoking either.

I had found a old porno mag
and had glued pictures from it on the
wall next to my bed
with toothpaste.
I had all these beautiful naked women
circa 1973
smiling at me on crinkled paper.

I was still alone.
I had wonderful and ridiculous thoughts
while I was there.
I thought if I could find a corpse
I could reanimate it!
I had no science background at all
but it seemed so easy in the book.
I just figured I would tape a metal stick
to the corpse’s hand and shove it in the light socket.
Then I would have a friend.

I looked for a couple days for a corpse
but came up empty handed.
Then one night, I saw a rat
run along one of the walls
on the far side of the room.
I would wait and wait to see them but they rarely
came out while I was awake.
I thought if I could catch one
I would make it my friend
it would love me.

I found a cardboard toilet paper tube
I slid it into one of my dirty socks.
I ripped off a thin strip of my bed sheet
then poked a hole in the tube
and one near the top of the sock
I slid the strip through it and tied it off
I dropped a piece of stale bread into the sock
and tied the other end of the strip to my
index finger of my left hand.

I got in bed
let my arm hang off of it
and placed the tube along the wall
once they hear me sleeping, I thought,
they will run out here and eat the bread
I will feel it
and pull the sock up.
I will have a friend
and I won’t be alone.

every night
I would sleep
peacefully.
never waking up until morning
and each morning
the stale bread would be gone.
the sock would be empty.
I would set the trap and try again
the next night,
going to sleep with a smile on my face.

the reason I didn’t kill myself there
was because each night I was full of hope.

I never caught a rat
and a few months later
I was gone from that shit hole
to bigger and better problems.

I always have been
always was
and probably always will be
terrified of cops.
cops are the only people
who can drastically
change your life
change the course
your direction
in a matter of seconds.
just being in the wrong place
at the wrong time
could stick with you
your entire lifetime.

when I was a kid,
I looked weird to normals.
clothes were dirty
I had a mohawk
dyed some stupid color
wore studs and spikes
I was a freak
metal coming out of my face
tattoos.
if I was within a mile of a cop
no matter what I was doing
they would stop me.
be it in a car
on a skateboard
or on foot
next thing I knew
I was sitting on the curb
sometimes with new bracelets
the cop would tear up my car
or tear out my pockets
never find anything.
they would try to come up with
a good reason as to why I was stopped
it was the usual bullshit
“a report came in of someone
matching your description
robbing a gas station”
or some other shit
that both of us knew wasn’t true.
after talking with me for a bit
they knew they’d fucked up
and they would
usually
let me go
telling me to stay out of trouble
which meant
STAY OFF THE STREETS.

I’m a month away from my 42 birthday
and I still fear cops.
when I see one on the road
I tense.
I’ve done nothing wrong
but I am afraid for my life
because these people
these humans
have the power
if they wanted to use it
to make sure that I don’t sleep
in my bed that night
they have so much power
so much control
they can completely change
anyones destiny.

I guess the cops that fucked with me
are all either dead, retired or have
a kooshy desk job
maybe the cops that are out there now
are nicer people
I don’t know
because
(knock on wood)
I haven’t been stopped in a long time
but maybe with the softening
of our society
the cops have gotten a little sweeter.

here’s to hoping.

it’s Valentines Day
I want to do something nice for my wife.
I won’t write her a poem.
that’s all ego and too obvious.
I’ll be a good guy
and go buy her something
with money I don’t have.
she’ll love it.
she’ll tell me that I shouldn’t have
gotten her anything.
she’ll kiss me and say,
Happy Valentine’s Day, Babe!
We will hug and I’ll know
that I was a good guy today.

baby, baby!
it’s all fucked up!
it’s shit, baby!

what is? she asked.

me! I’m shit! I’m all fucked up!

what are you talking about?

it’s my writing, baby! it’s shit!

why?

it’s all about crap, baby, crap!
all I am writing about now is either
taking a shit,
going to the doctors,
going to the post office,
chicks I fucked 25 years ago!
25 fucking years!
and WALMART!
I’m fucking writing about going to
WALMART!

so, what’s wring with that?

what’s wrong with that?
it’s shit!
it’s WALMART!
where the fuck is the danger?
where is sex?
where are the dark fucking souls?

she shook her head.
you are being ridiculous.
someone needs to talk Walmart.
someone needs to be the voice
of consumerism in America.

fuck that, baby! It’s all shit!
I’ll end up with so much material
that I’ll end up writing a book
ALL
ABOUT
WALMART!

I think you should, she said.

no, baby! It’s all shit!
fucking strike me down
someone up there!
it’s shit!
it’s all shit!
there’s no desire.
there’s no flame.
it’s like fucking the mundane!
missionary!
no fear!
nothing!
it’s all over!

she sighed,
well, she said, I’d read it.

you would?

yeah.

he took a fork out of the drawer and
bent the a couple of the prongs down
he stuck them in the light socket

everything was dark.

when you have depression
it’s easier to do things
early.

what I mean by this is,
if you get up
before the phone rings
before she asks you anything
before you realize the bills are due
before anything can fuck your day
if you get up
take a shower
put on deodorant
cut your nails
put on socks and shoes
if you do these things
before the day fucks you
you will have accomplished something.

if you wait
for the phone to ring
for someone to yell
for the bills to come in
for the dogs to bark
etc.
you will put it off.

you will.

you will look at the dirt
under your long nails
the callouses on your bare feet
you will smell your stink
your crotch
you will sit in dirty clothes
days since your last shower
light a cigarette and say,
“I’ll do it tomorrow.”

you beautiful thing, you!
you have brought me so much joy
the last three months
i don’t know what i would’ve done
without you.

you died yesterday.
it broke my heart.
you broke my heart.
you got me through one of the hardest times
in my life.

you looked like a little baby chick.
like a toy chick.
you were big and yellow
but fit perfectly in my hand.
the red button
looked like your beak.
i don’t know why i did,
but early on in our relationship
i took the metal guard off of you
that made the flint wheel
look like your eye.

you were with me everywhere i went
i loved you so much!
without you
i couldn’t have had coffee every day
you lit the stove
you lit my cigarettes
you lit my candles
you lit up my life
those three dark months
where i never thought i would see light again.

then,
after some beer and some wine
i tried to light you
to see your flame
and you were gone
i held your beak down to my ear
and heard no gas
i tried to light my cigarette off the stove
then remembered that i needed you
to light that as well.
a tear rolled down my cheek.
a chapter of my life closed
as your entire existence did.

i left you on the counter
but i think my wife threw you away
i haven’t seen you.
i don’t think a dead baby chick could walk.
i’m not mad at my wife.
she never knew how i felt about you.
to her, you were just a broken Bic.

my knuckles were bloody
from punching that other kid
in the mouth
breaking a few teeth.
my hand was sore
but he was in more pain
he had to tell his folks
that even though
he was old enough now
to get the death penalty,
a 14 year old he fucked with
busted his face
and ruined all the work
that the orthodontist had done.
i felt good that i beat him
but felt awful too
because i knew
i could never make him feel as bad
as his parents were about to.
i’d never wish that on anyone.