Hanging horizontal
Eyes rolling wildly in darkness
The AM radio whispers
A Texas mother is arrested after leaving her 3 children home unattended, police say they arrived and found her 18 month old burned to death in an oven"
I think about my *** of coffee
Black
I roll out of bed
Walk to the sink
The mirror disappoints again
I think of Sartre
Advising to stay away from the sight
Of yourself
Then I think of
Lepers, burn victims,
old amatuer boxers
And I feel a little better
I sit down and have coffee
With some of the greatest humans
Humanity has ever produced
Then I think about the ones
I will encounter today
Not so great...
"And there it is...the nausea."
-Sartre
I walk into the bathroom
And the cold burns
I step into the shower
And the water burns
I brush my hair in the mirror
And yes
That burns too
I step into my work uniform
And brown boots
I ask myself
"Are you ready to go?"
Keys, phone, wallet...
"I guess so..."
I walk past the mirror
then stop
I think
This is all so
Silly
The whole thing is so *******
Silly
I smirk at myself
I think
"I have had woman, I have fought men, I could never turn back...and all that lead me to where? This very moment"
-Sartre
I close the door
Then step out into
The cold dark
Morning

Walking down a mournful street
In a heartbroken neighborhood
Wasted cement
The birds whispered nervously
The sun shined because
It has to
At the base of a sagging wood fence
I saw the paws of a pitbull
Digging frantically
Blood seeping into the mud
She paused to poke her snout
Through to the other side
I stopped and thought
You poor beast
The people and the wind
Are just as cruel
On this side
But I felt real foolish when
That dog broke free
Ripped a child from a mothers arms
Devoured it
In a bed of flowers
Then crawled back under its fence
While the sun kept shining
Because
It has to

Alone can't be right...
It sounds like too harsh of a word
For this
How about
Dreaming?
Or waiting?
Karma?
Or an act of god?
The women are out there
Walking circles in grocery stores
Staring into bar bathroom mirrors
Wearing white dresses with
Blue roses
Smiling
Smelling of lavender
High heel steps combusting like
Matches
As they scrape against the filthy
Streets
Bodies shining like moonlight reflecting
off the blade of a butcher
The women are out there
Tonight there's two right outside
Smoking from a pipe in the alley
Talking louder than my radio
"He was like 'Please baby, we can make it work', I was like 'Nah fool! You been creepin!'"
"Ah my gah, that fools drama... COUGH COUGH"
"**** girl, imma fine me a new manCOUGH tonight!
**** that fool!"
"Aye! YOU gotta do YOU girl!"
The women are out there
They're right outside my window
Waiting
And tonight
That's close enough
For me

First
She walked out
And I had to learn
That I was a coward
An orphaned lover
An old house cat
Abandoned
In a grocery store parking lot
I had to face it again
The emptiness
I smoked all of those nights
Away
I was numb
I was nothing
I lost 30 lbs in 2 months
Then it all caught up with me
One night my heart started beating
Rapidly
I couldn't breath
Started to shake
I sat in a corner and watched
The room grow ten times it's size
I heard a static crack in the ears
I was lost and unhuman
I was a rabid dog trapped in a corner
I felt sick for weeks after
So
I gave up the ***
Switched to drinking
Whole bottles of whiskey
128 lbs, shirtless, screaming
The fellas laughed at the beginning
Until I started throwing ****
Trying to fight everybody, anybody
I had 3 new catch phrases
"I'll ****** **** you man"
"I'll smash all your ******* teeth in"
"I've seen it all man."
After a while it became
Too much for the fellas
And soon they were all gone
So
I found better company
Dostoevsky, Fante,Bukowski,Hemingway,
Hamsun,Lorca,Sartre, etc.
I found a ****** apartment
in San Pedro
Drank beer and read every night
Until the loneliness felt comfortable
And then I
Accidentally
Became alcoholic
Then i took my wild act
To the streets
A few weeks ago I was at a concert
And this guy kept elbowing me
In the ribs
I said "If you keep sticking that elbow
To me, I'll ****** **** you man."
I said it cool and soft
And the guy looked real scared
And I was too
So
I had to quit drinking...
I keep thinking about
Zarathustra
Rising from his cave
After years of solitude...
A guy at work said
"November's almost gone
Man, this year just blew right by"
And I thought
'Good.'

We stood face to face
Two alive
Both human
Occupying the same
Time
I felt her words like
Deafening disease
And she stared at my face
Like it was
Dogshit
While somewhere else
A flower bloomed
A lion tore at the neck of a gazelle
A child was born
A star died in the sky
A woman stared at her *******
In the mirror
A tribe ate rats for supper
A man masturbated in the dark
The universe was in perfect
Harmony

A beautifully coated
Fat raccoon
That didn't make it
Across the long lonely stretch
Of Gaffey Street
Behind the petroleum refinery
The tongue hanging in eternal horror
Eyes dangling from the skull
It made me sick
When we were kids we found a
Rotten opossum on the
other side of town
The upper class,clean,quiet part
We poked at it with sticks
Flipped it over
The other side soggy with death
There were maggots crawling out of
It's eye
It made me sick
All the guys said
"****! She's fine!" When she
Passed by
Yes, she had quite an ***
A body that tempted Christ
And left the devils in agony
You could see it in her walk
The guys said "She has beautiful
eyes
Hazel/green/grey
They change colors in the light"
I hadn't noticed
So I took a look
Her gaze was abandoned
Floating meaninglessly
In a forever unknown
Space
And then she opened her mouth...
It made me sick

Waking up
Covered by the dark
Rolling over
Watching the sky
Through the only window
In a ****** apartment
The sun started to rise
Right at 6 AM
Cold blue cracking black
As if it were on a schedule
Following somebody's rules
Like all the sad
Sad people
I thought
"That's not right,
That's real ****** up!"
I wished the sun would
Change it's mind
Lie back down
And not be seen
Or heard from
For 3 days
Then I crawled out of bed
And started to get ready for
Work