Leftovers

I remember my first joint
skipping days in High School
me and a buddy bought it like that
pre-rolled
a real no-brainer

We passed it
back & forth
quickly & giddily
laughing & coughing
until near its end
at which we both met
with zealotry
a burned out roach

We tried sucking on it at a distance
making cones of our lips
to inhale the air around the butt
while clicking the big Bic flame
in the blindspot of our own noses

I’ve always had a Jew’s nose
from my maternal grandfather
planted in the middle of my face
so the spaces of the world
which I have never seen
have become a collective hole
in my perceivable existence

I rationalized outloud
if I’m holding the roach
in my fingertips
to my outstretched lips
there is at least a good inch
from my face to the flame
but
because I can’t see
past my own shnoz
my brain is responding
to an incalculable threat
and there aint no way
I can convince my brain otherwise

So,
I told my buddy
that I was going to close my eyes
inhale at the joint
while he slowly brought the flame
to ignite our charred little dilemma

We took some deep breaths
calmed our nerves
moved into the shade of the stairway
to reduce interference from the wind

I got ready
I heard a click
then two more
then some rustling
then another click
and boom
my lungs were full of smoke

We cheered
but it felt like
he burnt my fucking lips off
he didn’t though
I was fine

It didn’t matter
the gaiety ensued
I nursed my lips
& tried to tell him he fucked it up
but he hadn’t
& it didn’t matter
we laughed so hard
we couldn’t understand a word
either of us were saying

Loft Brand Cigarettes

When John & I lived together in the loft downtown
we we’re both in our early twenties
he being a couple of years younger than me
was head first into the post-21 self-destruction

I had been running in place for a couple of years
chasing the dumb gods of rock & roll
with loose Christian girls, Psychopaths, Deadbeats, Drunks,
Losers, & Women who love Losers
like an old cartoon I just kicked up dust
with some invisible hand against my chest
the Earth beneath my feet shoveled by my shuffling determination
until I was deep running in my grave
I was ready to lie down for the count
& leave that roadrunner be

John was still working at the coffeeshop
did the entire time we lived there
I’d already quit
& was sometimes fucking this horrible lying brat of a woman
to pay my half of the rent
in the beginning

At first we slept in the big open room
a couple of feet away from each other in the dark & empty space
one on the futon, the other on the chair

Don’t remember when we got the fishtank we used as a writing desk
but I bet John picked it up on the street or by a dumpster
left for the pickings by some one-time aquatic habitat enthusiast
before we got that tank though there was this big box
which we had packed all John’s things in when he left home

That was the first time I’d met John’s father,
I wouldn’t see him again until we were moving out,
he came by to help us patch-up all the holes in the wall
we put in, fighting drunkenly in the winter

In between John & I cut ourselves off from the main vein
John built a cocoon of the place
picking up every couch he saw on the side of the road
it should’ve been ridiculous but most people enjoyed the luxury of it
visitors could be guaranteed two full cushions of American sofa

That old American furniture
that is unceremoniously burgled from Grandma’s houses
around the world
was being collected for a perpetually growing exhibit
in our living room

The fabric was rich with texture, patten & design,
thin corduroy rivets massaged your every aching muscle
with each subtle shift

Most of our visitors had no idea though
they came over at night
& no number of lamps could light that cavern

The ceiling was so high & the walls so long
that you could see a radiating aura around each bulb
a clear outline of their effect on the darkness
& something about just seeing that
made them seem always dim & dying
or like so much candlelight flickering hot above it's own wax

We never could afford A.C. so we kept the windows open most of the time
& sounds from the street would drift up to us at night
we’d holler at the bums & smash&grabbers,
kids our age in from the county & out for a night in the clubs
the street would answer us too
& we would meet it
sometimes drunk, sometimes naked, mostly with streams of warm urine,
hostility, laughing, gibberish, unintelligible declarations
of self & country

So people came over like they were going out for the night
I never knew why
it was a no-holds barred slugfest in there
I never wondered then, but I wonder now
if they thought that John & I were only like that for company
because the fight never stopped when they left
& John & I stayed the same animals when the sun came up

After a good night we’d pilfer from the ashtrays their choicest butts
& between forefinger & thumb
we’d roll out their contents into a bowl
& roll a couple of smokes
a little bit menthol, a lotta Camel, some already handrolled Bugle & Top,
the occasional slutty Marlboro, a little grass if we were lucky
they always tasted aged & roasted
& we smoked them first thing after when we woke up
& laughed & scoffed & coughed & took a good look around the place

Apologies for the Rubber Chicken Poetry Slam (Monterey, CA)

I’m happy to say now
that I’m sorry I stopped writing
& competing

You should know
that getting up there & fighting it out
with so many amazing writers
was a real pleasure every week
& when I won
it was just the icing on the cake

But I won quite a bit
& at first I was flattered
but soon turned to shame

I couldn’t understand how I could win
on what grounds
could I be deemed better
& why I had to be made the robber
I gave my winnings back to the donations
& still
I couldn’t help feeling bloody

I wanted to win at first
I liked the attention
the recognition
I aimed to please you all
I’d borrow your eyes
& look again at every word
I’d written

I won that way most
writing what I knew
would grab your attention
but as honest as it was
& it was
it was still a lie

I subjugated your perception
I was making accidents
we could all relate to
& at the same time
still feeling your push
the weight of your combined genius
& running the numbers
striving, always striving
to beat down the beast of my own
inquisition

I won & it was a lie
I was not a competitor

We were all putting on puppet shows
Screaming from inside ourselves
to fill some inflated effigy
into convulsing wildly
Dancing interpretive dances
for people we knew nothing about

Don’t read me sorely
it was still dance,
screaming,
theatre
it was still the only good reason
to wake up early & go to bed late
but I never really wanted to win it
ever

So I stopped risking it
then I stopped competing at all
went away for a while
came back to watch from afar
or not show up at all

I’m sorry I stopped playing the game
but,
I never could stand
anything
where people have to pick sides
They always make me feel
abandoned

Class as a More Tangible Thing

My mother grew up well
Her father had no small success
in Real Estate Development
They had a maid growing up
Her mother was home to cook dinner
every night
& yet, she hated it.

I think she harbored the hope
that common families
with their duel incomes,
softball games,
PTA,
& summer roadtrip vacations,
despite the hardships
we’re still somehow happier.

She, like me, pursued poverty
at first chance of legal liberty
worked civil service jobs
a Cop until they forced her out
for having us kids
then a Nurse.

I have a picture of her in her Whites
Nurse’s cap perched atop
her perfectly permed head
just smiling wide-eyed
like the picture of Nursedom
in the 1940s.

I was raised among solid wood furniture
mostly wedding presents
pictures of hens
cross-stitch
good china unused.

My mother always worked
after my Father left
which was as long as I’d been around
My brother & I we’re latchkey kids
my bike was a hand-me-down
of my brothers
cleaned up real nice
we had traditions around the TV

My mother was a working class hero
local news coverage
of a struggling family
doing what they can
for themselves & their communities
She met a man
a fellow volunteer from Ohio
& they married.

My mother couldn’t have been further
from her upbringing
She’s lived that way her whole life
& now her aching heart
keeps looking for love
in the lower middle class
& I can’t convince her
that she’s lived her whole life
split up
with her head in the clouds
& her heart on the ground
& neither place
holds any guarantee of love.

Dead birds on the side of the interstate through Caseyville, Il.

Sun,
If there was ever a time to relent it should’ve been then
I would’ve carried my bags in the rain
just to not have to drag them across state lines
in that Midwest Summer heat.

Was picked up with my thumb out
about a ten minutes drive from downtown St. Louis
I can’t remember a thing about them
don’t even remember if they were man or woman
You’d think I would
considering the chunk of my ass they saved
but they delivered me so speedily
from what would’ve been
the better part of a morning’s suffering
that their heroic act seems to eradicate
the significance of itself.

It is as though they robbed me of a would-be memory
& that which occurred
regardless of how significant
was still so far from what should have been recorded
that I couldn’t connect the synapses
between the dead birds, the heat,
the strap, with each step, grazing against
the sweat soaked shoulder of my t-shirt
& arriving downtown.

Truth Serum

They we’re an unlikely pair, more to say, they were an improbable pair. Both boys, the same age, arrived at Harbor View Mental Care Facility on the same day at roughly the same time. Both were well below the average age of the usual patients and neither was there under the suspicion of drug use.

Unlike their fellow inmates who generally were under the charge of possessing a great disregard for the pain they caused their legal guardians, both boys were committed for failing to kill themselves. Though the accusations were strangely similar in both cases, the two boys were certain to have a different breed of trial.

They watched their older compatriots fight and cry; they learned to swear then and to defend themselves and never once thought, among abortion tales and confessions of manslaughter, that they’re lives appeared better in comparison. The two boys would never be treated as victims, none of them would as a company policy, but in the case of the teenage patients the illusion could serve as a carrot on a stick for as long as the counselors saw fit.

The counselors were great phonies, overworked and undermanaged croakers, checking down the list making up most of their allotted time. The boys watched them very closely as they’d humor a patient with a moment to plea, reassuring them with every step that they too believe their incarceration was a result of undue and unfortunate circumstances, and when their appeal was through asking them with absurd confidence, “Now don’t you see where you went wrong?”

But that kind of sadism was spared the two boys. They were to be seen separate from the group, in tight, bright rooms and emptied gymnasiums. The doctors and counselors would first note the boys’ strange way of speaking, their intellect and shared disassociation with their fathers. Then they’d see stranger similarities, the boys’ accents seemed to switch between them or merge into a whole other dialect, they simultaneously devolved into more reclusive states and answered only with short and contemptuous condemnations.

A different strategy had to be developed and the boys could see the doctors were grasping at straws, breaking down the old habits and rethinking how again to communicate with children. The pair fed them false information, manipulating their every move, when they were restrained they would escape and sit on the stretchers in the darkness and wait for the counselors to unlock the door. The counselors were at their collective wit’s end and when they’d come through the door the boys wouldn’t say a word no matter how they yelled at them and struck them.

The decision was made a month into treatment, the boys were in some way feeding into the other’s illness and if only separated they would be both be cured. The boys saw the flaw in this logic and yet, over the next two weeks, they were transformed. Each settled into an accent all their own, though neither doctor nor nurse could remember what they sounded like upon their arrival, that concern was quickly overshadowed by their change in outlook. They confessed time and time again to their fault in all that had previously occurred and spoke of every incident with an unprecedented clarity of thought.

They were deemed a landmark success and slated to leave the facility and return to their families with only the prerequisite follow-ups with a local counselor. The success of each boy’s treatment had miraculously erased all previous association between them in the minds of the gleeful staff and so not a second thought was giving to their coincidental simultaneous release date. The doctor was certain whatever they may have shared would now become just another part of the sad story they would abandon there on the day of their departure.

So the doctor was not surprised when the day came and both boys spent their mornings, taking account of their few possessions, cleaning up and quietly containing their joy from the other patients whose release dates were still pending. Neither boy even shared the same space until one counselor called all the patients into the rec room to ask them, as an assignment, to each write a letter addressing themselves. The two boys were encouraged to participate, despite the fact that they would be leaving before lunch, perhaps under the hope that their success stories would result in self-affirmations the whole group could benefit from.

The boys, now in their own clothes, were an unlikely pair, more to say, they were an improbable pair. Now, no one in the room could see any reason why they would be anywhere but on either sides of the room, writing. But the letters they left would make that day forever a blur in the mind of all who witnessed it, for when the counselor that night, in the boys recent absence, sat down to read every letter aloud to the group he read their letters back to back and they read:

Dear me,

I know we haven’t spoken in some time now but it doesn’t mean that I don’t think about you and how you are. They’re giving me pills now, I think in the end they figured that the source of my problem was that I couldn’t tell the truth. I hope its not a truth serum, I hope it just stops me from talking at all instead of yapping out whatever’s in my head all the time. Anyway, I’m heading home to find out if I’ve changed as much as they say I have.

Good Luck,
Me

Dear me,

It’s great to hear from you and I’m glad you get to leave this place. I’ve missed you a lot too and I know you weren’t allowed to speak to me. They’re giving me drugs too; I think they said I just had a hard time remembering what was important. I think it’s a drug that is supposed to help me focus. I hope it doesn’t make me remember everything. They tell me I’m going home today and everything will be better.

Good Luck,
Me