You can still be good
at what you do
without liking
what you do

It’s more common than
you’d imagine

The words reflected his face
in the steamy bathroom mirror

He watched
until he felt cold in his
nakedness
and shivered

reached for the towel
wiped
got out of the bathroom
put on clothes
and returned to his writing
desk

The blank page was ugly

unlike the somewhat encouraging
words on the steamy mirror

He reached into the drawer
pulled out the pen
stuck it into his mouth
clicked it

Reached again into the drawer
pulled out the gun
pointed it at the blank page
fired

He wrote for the remainder of
the day and the next
night around the smokey hole

It was finally
beautiful

he takes his old wrinkled
notebook
and the black pen

and finds a
spot from which he can observe
the people
and write down what he
imagines to be their inner
conversations

It passes the time

and it takes away
attention from his own
inner conversations

It’s like a prescription drug
he has to take for the
rest of his life
and the twenty-nine bookshelves
filled with notebooks
he has at home stand as proof of that

But this will be
the last one,
he promised himself
as he closed the notebook and
walked up to the bridge

Run wild
That was the motto

Of course it didn’t address
running wild
in the streets
and away from angry shopkeepers
and the police
and rival gangs
and betrayed friends

It all starts with a
run from responsibility,
evading reality

“Think you
can live like that?” father had said.
“Go ahead and try. C’mon, not
like you’re of any
use round here. Go!”

He went

and the years have passed and
he was never missed

But tonight he would return
with a couple of
friends
some rope
and a few sharp objects

A dim light was flickering in the kitchen
meaning the old man
would be at the table with a belly
heavy with drink
and a head light with fumes

So not much changed

"Well, let's go."

the woman smiled at him
and showed her
legs from beneath a
white coat

She was close to his face

Stretched on the label of
the rubbing alcohol bottle

70% alcohol

He liked this woman because her
smile never faded
and she was always inviting

"Oh, if you insist," he said
and made an
effort to push himself away from the
moldy pillow and stand

He grabbed the bottle
added some water
stirred
held his breath
and drank

The words "I love you," came from his mouth
enveloped in thick steam

and there was a brutal
growl in his guts

but none of that
mattered. The woman was still
smiling at him, still
lovely

Yeah, there were those times
when he talked with
grandma about God
and she told him what a horrible place
hell is

"You suffer every day but can't die."

"Every day?"

"Every day. And can't die. Only
suffer!"

Grandma had four years of
schooling to her life
She didn't consider
the possibility of getting used to
the suffering
If it happens daily and you
don't die... well.

Hell therefore is not pain

It is monotony

Today he had 18 years of schooling
and 10 of working
a dead-end office job
He was accredited to define hell

Hell was monotony

Doing the same thing over
and over
and over again for the rest of
eternity

That was hell

And maybe grandma would've
agreed

maybe not

But there was one thing he remembered
about hell. Something he'd
heard from his mother back in the day
she'd quit chemotherapy to save the
money for his college
"The way out is
one smile away!" she'd said

Yeah. The way out.

He stood

left his cubicle
went into the bathroom
took out the razor blade from his pocket

and slashed from the corners
of his lips
all the way to the ears

deep

And again

There it was. An avalanche of feeling. So
much feeling!

He dipped his fingers into
the blood and
drew a smiling face on the
mirror

One smile away!

He shook with laughter and
adrenaline. There
was so much to feel! He laughed for
a full seven minutes.

And then returned to
his cubicle
and resumed work

The others were too deep in
hell to notice him
or the trail he left behind

The way she'd creep up on you
and just appear
from behind like some cat,
you'd think she
was some trained assassin or something

I felt her punch
my shoulder and then her
other hand falling on
my nape and squeezing
"Hey, lucky boy. You should be so ****
glad you ran into me."

In the fist that hit my shoulder
she held a bunch of
crumpled bills
and brought them before my eyes

"What's that?" I said

"Our tickets to the bar
down the street. And you've the honor
to accompany me there. Drinks
are on me today. But you do
owe me, don't think otherwise, okay?"

"Where'd you get that money?" I asked.
"Why's it so *****?"

"I stole 'em from Ol' Horn Nose
while he was taking a ****."

"What?"
Ol' Horn Nose was the homeless guy
who roamed around the block, usually begging
in front of the supermarkets
and pharmacies

She brought the fist to her nose
and smelled the bills
and then shrugged

"You can't be serious," I said. Of course
I didn't believe her
but just then
the old man rounds the corner
and spots us
and points his crooked finger at us
and screams

Immediately two cops
round the corner
and approach us with big strides
but by the time they get to us
there's only me

The assassin girl
was gone

I haven't seen her since
but she does
cross my mind every now and then

Especially when I pay with
cash at the bar

his eyes looked fresh out of
a ******* crying
session

I walked up to him
and asked what
was wrong

He showed me his phone and
what I saw were pictures of some
dismembered kitten,
head and legs and tail cut off

"The ****?" I said

He shook his head. "My girlfriend. She
thought I gave my cat
almost as much attention as I
gave her. She couldn't
have that."

"****, man. I'm so sorry."

"My mother gave me that kitten
before she
left for Italy…"

"Gods… you… You reported your girlfriend,
right?"

Just then his phone rang
and he was quick to pick up. It was
an alarm. He looked at
the screen and took a few big steps away
from me. "Sorry bro, you took too
much of my time. I gotta get home now."

"Wait," I said, "Aren't we going for
some drinks?"

He ran away from me
as fast as he could. "Sorry, I can't give
you that much of my time. My
girlfriend's waiting for me. Bye."

Well, I went drinking
by myself. Unfortunately it did not
get the images out
of my head

there's been a collection of
rather
dark thoughts lately

and he was
studying it from the comfort
of his bed

The other day he found a good pillow
in the dumpster
and used it to cover the spot
on the mattress where the
rusty springs emerged
Now the bed was fine again

good enough for
daydreaming

After you've tried out all herbs
and powders
all that's left are the dreams

the daydreams
and the nightdreams
and the nightmares
and the daymares

On another day spent dumpster diving
he'd found a plastic bag
with about six severed hands
They were still cold

some mafia **** was going on
in the city

He took them home
and tried to cook them
hoping to obtain at least some bits of meat

He had no pan and of course no oil
so he impaled them with iron
rods at the writs
and placed them upright in a barrel
he lit up

He sat back watching them
smelling them

Higher on hunger than on the herbs
he'd smoked

And then he'd realized
that they were women's hands
and fantasized about
them springing to life and crawling over
him and doing things to him

It gave him a *******
or perhaps the illusion of one

but regardless
that was a fun night

The closest he came to having females
over. Some who cooked and
fed him after the fun time

He'll remember that night
for the rest of
his life

That did it
He was tired of coming home from work
and finding
a ******* book on the table
instead of food

but the book was also on his
pillow when he went to bed

on the toilet tank

in the garage

in the shed behind the house

and on the dashboard of his ******* car

He had enough of it

And one day he told her
he had enough of it and enough of her
It was time to break up
this wasn't going to work

He was not going to quit smoking
and she was not going to quit nagging him
to read her book on quitting smoking

"I won't marry you until you're 101 days clean,"
she'd said

He smoked a pack and a half a day

It was time to break up
and, gods, she didn't take it lightly

In that morning he left her alone to collect
all her stuff from his house and be gone
by the time he returned

She was indeed gone by the time he returned
and took nothing more than what belonged to
her and even left something behind
Her self-published book on how to quit smoking,
what else?

He sighed
picked it up from the coffee table
looked it over
sat on the couch
put a cigarette between his lips and
when he lit it the house blew up

Perhaps a big moral in the book was to
always check the gas after a
breakup

but it was too late now

there's nothing good on TV
when you're in
a crap mood

"****," he thought. "Nothing's gonna be
good on TV for
the next 18 years. At least."

he sighed
and shifted his position on
the couch

four days till New Year's Eve
and he already
got the greatest
gift one could wish for. A positive
pregnancy test from
his girlfriend

Oh, he was over the
moon
and everybody knew

"Meh, I don't need TV. I'm
the best actor
I've seen..."

he deliberately chose
the nastiest
sound for the alarm clock

Zeeeehhweeeehhchhh

and there it went
again
Every four hours. Announcing that he
had to start the
engine again lest he
froze to death

The phone had 17% battery left. He
would need to visit
the library again
for a recharge but it was becoming
increasingly
harder as the smell of homeless
was growing more
potent on him

He checked the time again
turned off the phone
turned on the engine
wiped the windshield with his gloved hand
watched his breath leave his mouth
fumbled around for a cigarette

no luck

He took out the lighter and
struck it
and all it produced were sparks

It's been quite a lot of
no luck
lately

At the library he took small
chapbooks
with him to a desk and pretended
to be studying them
while the phone charged besides
him
but not having anything
better to do he
read some of the poems in
those chapbooks. He didn't understand
poetry, didn't know
how to read it to
make sense. He was simply not
a man of writing and reading,
didn't understand why
the lines were so choppy
and didn't go all the way
to the right margin of the page. Why did it
have to look so
intentionally wrong? Also
why didn't it rhyme if
it was called poetry? He resigned himself
eventually. He'll never understand
this part of literature

but still, there was
something
he read in one of those deranged
verses with words all
over the page. One poem that
ended something like this:

"then something else in me said, no, save the tiniest
bit.
it needn’t be much, just a spark.
a spark can set a whole forest on
fire.
just a spark.
save it."

His English wasn't the
best but he
understood the message well enough

the spark was
there
still

You don't need the
employee of the month
badge to know
that you're it

He knew he was it

The other day he asked the girl
who called whether she
had any family

She said no
"And I don't want any. I don't want
to hurt them with
my going away. So it's better that
they don't exist." She
sounded so tired, so drowsy,

so helpless

He started tearing up
and told her. "If you do it... If you
do it then I'm gonna cry. I will
remember you. I will never
forget you. I will be the
family you're leaving behind if you
go. You will leave me in
great pain, I tell you that. In great pain! I
will cry every day and... and please don't
do it. Please let's talk about it. I'm
here for you. Let's talk. Please." He was
crying into
the receiver

And the response was
a loud bang
from the other side. It was over.
The caller was gone

He hung up
wiped his tears and
awaited the next caller

There was no win
or fail in this job
but still
he did a fine work

He smiled to himself

Here we go
open the beer can
bring it to the lips
have a sip
and...
There it is
that PSA starts running on TV
about a great part of the population
caring for nothing but how to get high
The numbers are alarming
Getting high has become
as much a science as it is an art
and a banal thing
Everyone seeks to escape reality

with desperation

therefore
the strongest drug of all
is suicide

so potent it can get you high
even if you just think about it

I had my share
but managed to change my mind early
I no longer think of suicide
but make others do it
and that still counts as getting high
since they're all characters in my writings

He started writing at the
age of thirty-eight
and most of his early poems were
about starting late,
being a late bloomer

He said he'd spent those thirty-eight
years figuring out what not to be
and in the process of figuring
that out he did a lot of
living
changed countless jobs
and locations
and lovers
enemies
customs
religions
political views
philosophies
opinions

and now it was time to
document all that
with as little fiction added
as possible

he began
and went on
fueled by the saying
"Since I started so late
I owe it to myself
to keep going."

He kept going

And the young
fresh writers
the budding talents
the prodigies
****-talked him for being a delirious
old fool who mistook
fiction for reality
And they rated and reviewed
his works and referred to them
as being dull garbage that
belonged into the trash can

"Oh, poor fool," they said. "He's just
trying to sell the world bald cats.
That's what he's trying to do. He strips
them of fur, of the beauty that makes
cats desirable, lovable. Behold,
his works are so raw, the
writing so simple, so
lazy and devoid of any description.
He tells the reader that there are
curtains before the window but fails to
show what color, shape, smell,
effectiveness of keeping the sunlight away
from a housewife's eyes while she
examines the cucumbers brought in
with the last trip to the grocery store.
Raw and dry
that's how he is
raw and dry
and that deems his works not
worthy of our attention.
Though we are a bit sorry for the old fool.
No matter what the voices in his head
told him
there is such a thing as being too
late to begin
and this is it. See? He's like an eighty
year old playing hockey with the pros,
athletes in their prime."

What those who haven't done
enough living fail to realize is that
in this world there is a market for
literally anything and everything.
And a market you can't find
is just a market that has but to be
started
and the customers will come.
There are lots of people who love
bald cats and even prefer them
over the furry ones.
No market has ever died because
of the customer
only because of the merchant.
As long as you're that merchant who
doesn't give up you'll sell your
stuff eventually

four jobs in two months

and it wasn't even his
fault. He just
left because they didn't pay him

"Nobody works for
free," he said as he closed the
fridge, the
last can of beer in his hand,
not too cold

"Hey, leave some for me," his
girlfriend said

He threw himself on the couch,
careful to avoid
the spot where
springs poked their rusty
silver heads out

He opened the beer. "I keep
tellin' you I should
just open
my own business."

"Um-hm."

"No really, you know what this
town has in abundance?" He
took a sip

"Poverty?" she said, already stretching
her hand for the can

He handed her the can. "Yeah, poverty.
And poverty means homeless men.
Men nobody gives a **** about. Hell,
everyone wants them to
vanish. I was thinking,
maybe I can cash in on that. I could hunt
them down at night and
use their meat in a fast-food restaurant. It can
pass as pork. Everything passes in
this town.
What do you think?"

She took another sip. Handed
the can back to him. "Yeah. I know
where you can
begin, by the way. Tonight I'll show
you the alley my dad
and uncle sleep in."

He raised the can. "Cheers."

He went nine years without doing
it. Five of those
were spent in prison so it
was just normal
but the other four he spent
desperately trying and failing

He did look fine before
he got into ******* drugs
and crime

Well, there was this
cute drug dealer
down the block
from whom he kept buying
only to get to see
her and try to strike up a
conversation

He didn't care that
she was pregnant
He called up almost daily to
meet up and
buy but he wasn't too
good at
conversation. Had no game,
as others would put it

And on the other side
she wasn't so
good at putting the products
together
She constantly laced the **** with
some other ****
and one such **** was so
bad that
when he smoked it
he got all ***** and creative
and desperate

He grabbed a black
permanent marker and
drew a **** across his
left forearm

It wasn't good enough so he
cut it open with
a razor and began to
lick at it and finger it
around the bone
and eventually **** it until
he came

He came about four, five
times until
he passed out

the absolute worst part about
being locked up
in the psych ward was having
no access to guns

No greater torture
for him

He spent his creative hours
in the workshop
drawing chicks with guns
and jerking off to them

“You're pretty good at this,”
said one of the
nurses

He snorted. “I'm hella good at
everything that involves
shooting, babe.”

“Oh sir, I didn't mean... I
meant drawing. You're pretty
good at drawing.”

“Yeah, **** drawing. I wanna
shoot ****. Say, could I
at least get some gunpowder. I just
wanna snort it. Nothing more,
I swear.”

She gave the usual answer. “I'll
check with the doctor
and see what
can be done.”
and was gone

He wasn't mad enough to believe
her
He was just mad enough to
use the tools in the workshop to
shape a wooden gun handle from
a small log
and staple it to the
base of his *****, to make the whole
thing resemble a pistol

He held the wooden
handle and moved it
up and down while staring at
his drawings
until he shot his load at them

It is known
You can never hold on to
an adventurer

and she was one

And she was gone

and he stood by the window
and smelled the
guitar she left behind,
not knowing how to play it

A girl like her
travels around the world
like a sailor and
loves many boys and men
and they never forget her

The one mistake
they all share is
trying to lock her in their
world

It’s like trying to
capture the sun’s light in
a bag and take it
into your dark house

Women like her
are responsible for
men who call themselves
romantics and write love poems
and dream

He struck the cords
of the guitar
once. Looked out
the window. Warm, sunny day.
Streets busy with children
running fast, passing by
adults who walked slow

you can’t unlock the door
when there’s a key
inside the lock
from the other side

right,
all you can do now is
to plead with your kid to
let you in

it’s 12:47 AM
and kid’s got school in the morning
He’s not asleep
because there was no one to tell him
to go to sleep
There was no one home all day
and this late into the night
and he’s ******
and very hungry, tired and
full of rage

Where have you been all this
time, mom?

Indeed, where have you been?

Better leave the answer
for tomorrow
when the spirits will sizzle
a bit less

Until then
take off your high heels
and the glitter from your face
and the ***** from your hair
and lie down on the
doormat and
maybe pray yourself to sleep

It’ll get better. One day
you know it will

from the violet cloud above
God stretched a
hand and passed down to him
the dagger with
a blade made of frozen ****

“Take this,” said God, “and pose
yourself at the
gates of the school. Offer to
clean the
students under the fingernails
and toenails with it.
Now go.”

He woke up when
the mongrel dog whose tail he grabbed
and squeezed and pulled
started to cry and bark
and turn to bite at his hand

He screamed and backed away from
the poor thing
and watched it run away

He looked at himself

Naked and smeared with soot
and mud and whatnot

He looked around him

The landfill
just outside town

He fell to his knees

****, those were some good mushrooms

He stood and walked
back towards the town

He just had to stand
walk to the kitchen
open the fridge
get a can of beer
open it
and come back to the desk
sit down and lean back in the chair

was this something to
laugh about?
Cry?
Ignore?

He emptied the can
with gulps rather than sips
to get as drunk as possible
with a 4.5% alcohol concentration

He sighed
and opened the laptop again
Stared at it

double-clicked the internet browser
pressed Ctrl and then H

A history full of ****

on his widowed mom’s laptop

Of course it kept getting infected
with viruses
and she brought it over to be fixed

Those websites were from the
very shady family of **** websites

He would’ve grabbed another beer
but there was none left

Better just get back to work and
fix mom’s laptop
What else to do?
Fifteen or so years ago she surely knew
what he was doing with that missing
pair of ******* and that bra
She wasn’t dumb.

The wheel turns

Just like one of those titles from the
history list said:
“***** **** stuck in cart wheel gets anally ***** by hillbillies”

He clicked it

it was a charming night
She really
liked a man who could
drive her from
the restaurant after having
quite some glasses
to drink
and he was that man

He drove her to
his house
and helped her out of the
car like a
gentleman
and even held her hand
all the way to
the door

Her heart was pounding
and her brain too. A voice
kept saying
'He's the one. He's the one!'

It was silenced
when she saw two small
animal heads on his
doorstep. A cat's and
a bunny's. The doormat
was soaked with
their blood

She froze and
the gentleman said, “Oh crap,
not this **** again.”
And he walked up to
them and kicked them
to the side like mini soccer *****

“My ex-wife,” he said with a shrug. “Just
another one of
her antics. You get used
after a while.”
He opened the door and
motioned her in

She hesitated

he declared himself insane
before the world

and the world did worse
than not to
believe or ridicule him

The world
ignored him

He was an old writer
with a body
rotting from the inside
A cancer in his lungs, right
around the heart

Effort made him faint
Oftentimes the effort of sitting
on the toilet and pushing

But when he wasn't on the
toilet he
was at his desk

writing

And smoking. There was
a candle on the corner of his desk
always burning

The rule was that for every
seven minutes spent
not writing he'd hold his hand
above the flame for
seven seconds

His hands looked like decomposing
carcasses of mole-rats

but they could
still hold
the pen

He would go on writing
for the rest of
his life

all seven
hours of it

She followed him home from
the casino
because he
swore he was a gambling addict

A true gambler

he lived only to gamble

Never missed a chance to declare it

"I like gamblers," she
said. "Love 'em to death."

He was all
smiles

and then she continued, "Say, what
about a little gamble
of our own? You down for that?"

"Baby," he said, "long as it's a
gamble I'm down to hells
and below, haha."

Once in the room
she climbed on the bed
and removed her clothes
and shuffled through her purse
and pulled out about a dozen
hypodermic needles

"What you doin' with those?"
he asked

She grinned at him
and spread her
legs and pointed between them
"I'll stick some of 'em
here in these lips. Your part
of the gamble is to
turn off the lights and slide
your way between 'em. Let's go, gambler.
Oh, and no fingers. It's
an all-or-nothing gamble."

she had long
dark
metallic looking nails

and black lips on a very
pale face

the clothes too
were designed to make her look
cold and dead

but she was quite lovely
to her new boyfriend, the mortician

She was an artist, she'd told him
And she'd also
told him that she'd like
to learn more about
human anatomy for her drawings

"That one!" she said on
their sixth date in the morgue
"I want that one! Cut his head
open from forehead
to nape. I need to see
how the brain's
kept in there."

He sighed and prepared the
electric saw. There
wasn't much for him
to complain. He'd done
pretty well
at 47, hooking up with this
22-year-old

The last time they visited him
in the hospital,
mother made the big
announcement

She was once more
pregnant

at 44

Hoping for a second son
of course

Because the first son
aged 21
was such a failure, of course

He will never become
anything worthwhile
Not from this hospital bed
with a broken hip
and spine

It wouldn’t have happened
if his dream
wasn’t to make it big
in the gang

But his dream was to
make it big in the
local street gang
Serving the ******* goddess and
hustling his way to the top

Well it was all fine
until that one deal that
went horribly wrong

People die when they stop
dreaming

Now he dreamed to just
die already

Surely his brother will choose
a better dream. He
had to

I liked her dad
He was an interesting guy

preached all day
long
about smartphone
addiction
while his daughter was on her
smartphone, ignoring
him

“A human life,” he was saying.
“Controlled by a piece
of plastic
with lights. A destiny
completely determined by
a machine
designed by corporations to become
god, to claim souls. How
blind, how utterly and
impossibly blind a whole generation
of human beings can be. To
willingly subject
themselves to slavery like
that. Their thumbs
and fingers always tap-tap-tapping
that screen
as if trying to break
their soul free from beyond. But
it never happens. You cannot
break a door
by merely knocking on it...”

“Whatever, dude,” said his daughter
with the phone before
her face

He shook his head and
then looked at me. This time
I too was looking
at my phone.
“I see she has corrupted you too,”
he said. “Shame. I was hoping
it could be
the other way around
just for once.”

I let the phone
down. “Me? Oh no, I was just
checking my e-mail. I've
sent some poems to
a bunch of publishers and
was hoping to
see a reply or something.”

“Hm, and is there any
reply?” he asked

“No,” I said

He nodded. “How about
a beer?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

I was walking home from work
and it started to rain
big, fat drops

I had no umbrella

I ran for a couple of blocks and decided this
won't do
I found shelter
under the awning of some abandoned flower shop

There were bushes and greenery
and weeds all about it
and in the bushes there was a homeless guy
taking a crap

We made eye contact

He said hi

"Hello," I said

"Would you happen to have some
paper in there?" he asked
pointing at my backpack.
I always carry my food in my backpack

He probably thought I was returning from
school or something
and would have some books
or notebooks or something like that

I maintained eye contact
took off my backpack
looked inside
There was a Tupperware casserole in which I had
fried chicken
The only paper I had was an A4 copy of
the contract that stated
I got a raise to my salary

I took it out
and held it to him

he grabbed it
smiled
"My god, thank you so much. You're
a good lad, really. Say, wouldn't you be interested
in a job by some chance? Part-time."

"Where?" I said

"Why, at this here flower shop," he said. "I plan to
reopen in a month's time. Got a new supplier an' all
that. I'll make it worth it."

I thought about it for the time
it took him to wipe his ***
with my contract

"Nah," I said. "I've already got a job. Sorry."

"Oh well, should you ever change your mind,
come here and ask for Santa Flea, okay? That'll be
me by the way."

"All right," I said

When I got home I asked my girlfriend
if she was ready to go out

"To celebrate my raise," I said

"Oh ****," she said. "How much?"

"Just a ****** sum," I said

Wasted years

What do they look like?
Can you show in a picture?

He nodded to himself
as he thought
about it

Of course
who other than him to know
what wasted years look like

After 45 years spent inside
a box he was qualified to
judge. And it wasn’t
even prison. It was the office.
Accounting.

45 years

And today...
Today he was the 65-year-old
photographer
who raised the camera before
the mirror and snapped
a selfie
and said
“I am wasted years.”

4779 digital pages filled
with ramblings
about feelings

thousands of
grammar and
spelling mistakes

a broken heart
consuming itself

a final ‘goodbye’ that came
out of a lover’s mouth long ago
still echoing in the ears

a stadium-load of cockroaches
and rats partying
in the house

a mailbox chocking
on unpaid bills

her room a mass grave
of empty bottles
snowed with ash

no income

electricity about to
be cut off

and she’s still
writing

he downs the second bottle
of wine
and then curses the
beer for not
tasting as good

the rectangular desk before
him looks round
now
and his chair grows wheels

all the insects in the
apartment
crawl under the
clock on the wall
and spin the hands
backwards

lots of things are happening
but the
story before him doesn't
write itself
The paper is still pale
the pen
still frozen
The next word will never come
out
let alone the next line

He leans back
and the demon calls from
the other side of the window
and tells him
to hurry up

"That's not how
writing works," he whispers back

But he doesn't
know how
it works anymore

So he just stands
and walks to
the window
opens it
and answers
the call

"It's not that it was the worst
but it was very bad," the old
man said.
"I wasn't hanging but the noose
was so thick around my frail neck.
I was nine. And the
forest was
dark.
Night.
And holding me, they made my
old man dig a deep hole.
He did as they said
to buy my freedom.
They untied me then and
put the rope around my old man's
arms and legs
and threw him in the hole
and covered him up with dirt.
They didn't make me watch.
But I did.
I wanted to photograph their
faces with my eyes
to burn their smirks under my eyelids.
Well, the saddest thing about it all is
that they died, all of them were
caught and condemned to death
before I was old enough or strong
enough to hunt down and
**** them myself.
The greatest regret of my life.
The world, you see, has no true justice
It never had.
You see, young man, that's why I
can never be a child of God.
He wants us all to forgive.
I can't.
Don't want.
Will not.
Ever.
So instead of going to church
I pass out in bars like this one
It's been my favorite lately
And you're my only friend, young man.
You're the only one weird enough to
listen to this old, demented fool's stories."

"I'll always listen,"
I said.
"Here, how about another drink?"

"Another drink, sure. Thanks.
But I'm afraid you won't be
listening to these stories for long.
I'm going away, young man."

"Where?"

"Well, to court first
and then
definitely
to jail."

"To jail at your age?
What did you do?"

The old man smiled a toothless
smile. "Old as I am, I used to have
front teeth, you know? Well, the
reason I no longer have them...
I bit a child's ear off.
It was his face.
It reminded me of them. Belonged to the
same race. So I figured... you know,
maybe he was one of their descendants.
It was the least I could do. All
I could do...
I told you I'm crazy. I told
everyone."

"Yep, but I'm listening. I'm a
writer..."

"Really?"

"No, but I try to be. Want to."

"Heh, guess we're both crazy
after all. Cheers."

always cold in the north

perhaps coming here
was a
mistake after all
It's not so much the weather as
it is the ever gray sky

It favors depression

Lack of sunlight
lack of vitamin D

He walked his dog around the
block
and counted zero smiles
out of sixty-three faces seen
and passed by

The block was no fun
so he followed the dog into the
back alleys. It
picked up on
some
smell

and the smell grew potent enough
that even he
was beginning to feel it

Not pleasant

He expected a dumpster

But found two dumpsters
and a homeless
old man huddled between
them
Ragged to threads
holding a dead raccoon on his lap
eating from its flesh

raw
and ******

Aw ****, he whispered.
Maybe this place
ain't so bad
after all

He jumped off the building and
the metallic wings carried
him high
towards the clouds
where others like him swam in absolute
bliss

but then something
hit his head
and
he woke up

turned around in bed
and realized there
was blood trickling from
his eyebrow

The girl besides him was
holding a
stapler in her hands
and her eyes were watching
him with hate

"What the ****!?" he shouted

"Keep it down," she said. "Ah, you've
got some nerve to
play victim here, boy."

"What?"

"Oh, I tell you what. I was talking to
you and for a reply
you turned your back
to me and closed your eyes and
fell asleep. Like, what the ****? So
I figured if you
can't keep your eyelids away
from your eyes I'll give
you a hand. Ah, sometimes I think I'm just
too good for you, boy."

He put his head on
the pillow and breathed heavily
"Yeah," he said. "Me too."

"Relax," she told him. "I never
miss."

She found his vein from
the first try
and shot him
And the stuff was so good that
he died

overdose

She watched him from above
Watched the tears in
his eyes
and the froth bubbling around
his mouth

"I told you my daughter was
off limits, ******. I told you. And I
told you I never miss, didn't I?"

what would be the reason
to have an open casket funeral?

Why should the living
see the dead?

He addressed the questions to no one
in particular
but his dead wife answered from the
picture on the wall
"Don't you wanna see me, darling?"

"Not like that, I don't," he said. "That's
why I have your portrait. So I don't
have to look at your
dead body in the casket. But your
mom wouldn't understand..."

"Darling, I think you're the one
who doesn't
understand. And I think it's
time we talk about your therapist."

"What about my therapist?"

"You tell me. You tell me why did she have
to tell you that she's single now
and looking to settle. I thought she
was supposed to
help you cope with the premature death
of your wife, not tell you her
problems."

"Dear, please..."

"And one more thing. I don't like
the medicine she
prescribed you. Have you even read the
label? That ****'s dangerous, you
know?"

He stormed out of
the room and
went straight to the morgue
and told the morticians to seal his
dead wife's lips with glue or
something

They looked at him like he
was crazy

"What is it?" he asked

"Well, sir, to glue the dead's lips
for the open casket ceremony is
just... standard procedure. Else the mouth
opens and it's not a pretty sight. Did
you work with the dead or something?"

He thought a bit
"Yeah," he said. "Something. Something
like that."

It wasn't looking good at all
the framed picture of Jesus
had cuts all over it
On the face
In the hair
On the hands joined in prayer
And the eyes were crossed out deep
and cut out

why would he
do that?
Why would a five year old do that
to the gift he got from
grandma?
Was the child possessed? Oh, God! Was
the child possessed by the devil?

They took him to church to
find out
and the priest
asked him why did he cut the Jesus
in the framed picture and
the kid said, "I wanted a bike, not a stupid
picture!"

"He is definitely possessed," said the priest
"You'll have to bring him
to church every Thursday and Sunday. And I
will give you further instructions."

Grandma fainted
mother broke down crying

Father got him a bike actually. But mother
and grandma made sure it
won't reach him. Because father left
mother and went
away to live a life of sin with another woman.
All ties had to be cut
with that sinner.
The bike was donated to a foster home where
the nuns pasted a picture of Jesus
on the basket to protect the
rider from accidents
But the first kid who rode it fell off while
climbing a ***** and
the bike slid across the asphalt
leaving deep scratches into the face of Jesus

the knight piece of
a chess board
is a sharp thing
because of the horse's pointy ears

This old man came into the ER
with one of those stuck
in his eye
and of course the medics asked how the hell
did it happen

He told them he didn't see with
that eye anyway

"Yes, but still, why did you do it? Why
would you stab the piece
into your eye like that?"

Someone whispered 'dementia'
The patient was in his mid eighties

He told them,
"I just had to get out of that place. Y'all
have anything to drink 'round here?"

The next day an article had been printed
in the local paper
titled
WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER PUT YOUR
OLD PARENTS INTO A NURSING HOME

It was long
and few people read it

He comes home from art school
and finds cold food on the table
and a note
Something along the lines
be good, eat, do your homework,
clean your room, be good
Love, mom

He puts the food in the microwave
pushes the buttons
waits
takes the food out
eats
There's a mirror on the wall
across the table
and he stares at his reflection
as he eats, watches the way he chews the food

He turns the TV on
and then off again
The house is silent as always

He gets into the bathroom
and removes his clothes
steps into the shower cabin
turns on the hot water
stands under it, shoulders slumped, looking down

The glass walls of the cabin fog up

He smiles

raises his finger
draws a feminine shape on the steamy glass
and rubs his hard ***** against it
He knows that's all the art he will create
and all the love he'll get

This morning too
it jumped on his bed and
cried and pounced on his
face and licked his forehead

Now he had a reason to wake up
To feed the cat

And he had a reason to
take showers
Because the cat didn't like to
lick a greasy face

He had a reason to go
out and look for work
Because cat food wasn’t free

And he had a reason to come
back home
Because the cat would miss him

He had a reason to live
And it was a tiny reason to live
but it still beat all
the reasons to die

FADE AWAY

Why was there a poster in his room
that said FADE AWAY?

It’s been around
since forever
now that he thought about it

And until today
there was no reason
to even think about it
Life was happening fast

It happened so fast
that it’s been 52 years
since the day he was born

Today there was nothing left to do
but observe the poster
that said FADE AWAY

And there was nothing else to do
not because he’d done it all
but because he hadn’t done ****

52 years and nothing done
Nothing worthwhile anyway

But values change, man
Oh, how they change

One day you’re young
thinking failure and shame
and ridicule are what ****

Well, you’re not wrong

But

Later when you’re old
you realize nothing ***** more
than never risking these things
when you were young

Now this

So now you either tell yourself
that it is never too late to be
what you might’ve been

Or you sit alone
in your silent room
with no wife
and no kids
no pets
and a pension
that comes once a month

And slowly blink your eyes
at your poster that says
FADE AWAY

Some things can never
be put back together
after they’ve been
taken apart

No matter how much
willpower is involved

One of those things,
she now knew for sure,
was a marriage

Like the one
she was presently fleeing,
flying down the highway
like a fiend or a bat out of hell

Another such thing
could be her right hand
resting severed on the seat
there beside her

Though she wasn’t so
sure about the hand
Maybe if she made it
to the hospital in time?

Maybe

The soul must know something
that the mind
can’t comprehend

That’s what they said when
they watched him
from afar

He slept under the bridge
at night

During the day
the poor fool sat
by the river banks
and threw stones into the water

All day long

With obsession

And when he’d see no other stones
he’d start crying

Few things are more disturbing
to the ear than
the cries of an adult

He had a family some years ago,
they said

Had a wife and kids

And a job in the mine yonder

Then a boulder fell on his
head one day and
along with his mind
it took everything away from him

as a kid
there's nothing
like wasting away inside a tiny
room
sitting on the backrest
of the couch
looking out the window
and seeing her
tread through the rain

a red umbrella covers
her.

Mother

she's going back
to the liquor store

the room was cold
and there were
gray flowers
of dampness blooming
all over the walls
He took off
his shoes and
the shoes were the
warmest things in
the room so the kitten
climbed into one of them
He sat on the
mattress in the corner
and petted the cat
in the shoe
He smiled and said
to the kitten, "At least
I have no debts."
Even God agreed
with him. He winked through
the hole in the
ceiling

Dad was fat all his life
Obese
He couldn’t do a lot of things.
Walk without special help
Bathe
Climb stairs
Sit in a normal chair
Drive a normal car
Sleep in a normal bed
And say “I love you, son.”

To draw those words out
of his dad he became a cartoonist,
but that also failed.

And now that his father
was dead,
collapsed face down
on the kitchen floor,
blood seeping out of a head wound,
he struggled to turn him over
on his back
and dipped his finger in the blood
and drew a speech bubble
next to his father’s head
and wrote in it the famous words.

Finally.
“I love you too, dad.”

There was a knock in the door
at about six AM

He wouldn't have opened if
he didn't check
through the peephole. It was
his aunt. Why would
she visit at a time
like this?

When he opened the door
she slapped him
across the face. "You *******
monster! You had the money, you
*******! You had the money all along!
You could pay for your mother's operation
and you didn't. You watched
her die in horrible
pains! How can you live with yourself?"

Ah yes, he knew what she
was talking about. But there
was no point explaining. He
closed the door in her face

went back to bed

"Who was it?" his girlfriend asked. "Another
one of your crazy exes?"

"No. It was my aunt who doesn't
have what I call internet education."

"What?"

"Internet education, dear. Rule number
one: not everything you see
on social media is true. Just because
I pose at the wheel of a brand new
Lamborghini doesn't mean I own
the **** car and am therefore
rich as ****, you know?"

"What kind of idiot would think that?"

"Oh, you'd be surprised..."

She came from work pretty early
and I knew when I
saw her that
she quit yet again

She changed four jobs in the last
five months and
got a tattoo that said APATHY
on her lower back

Her father died five months ago. He
died of what's called
almost-drunk-driving
He was sipping on a beer bottle while
driving fairly slow
on a country road
But the front wheels hit some log
or something
and the impact triggered the
airbag
It bloomed in his face and stabbed
the beer bottle into
his eye
causing him a major trauma to the brain

R.I.P
old man.

Maybe not your wife but
your daughter sure will miss you

She's coming from work
***** and ragged
Approaches me and demands a cigarette

I give her a small lighter

and she tells me to go
**** myself

"Well you're done with work
early today," I tell her.

"I quit," she says.

"Really? What was it this time?"

"What's every time, deepshit. The boss
or the coworkers or
the customers. Or all of them.
******* expect you to work on
holidays. Imagine
that. Like, Christmas is in three
days, for ****'s sake."

"I work on holidays," I say

"That's cuz you's a *****-***-*****
who won't say no when you
mean it. You're like...
all the rest of 'em."

"Maybe," I say. "But also, if I'm at
work I don't have to be with my relatives
and that's
a plus in my book."

"Pff, yeah, whatever. Lend me
a ten, will ya?"

"Best I can do is a five. And you
can keep the lighter."

like a popular song once said

She couldn't remember a time
when she felt needed

So she wrapped the
blanket around
her and cried while biting her
lips

oh, but it wasn't entirely
correct. In the other room
the old man kept
shouting her name
and knocking on the wall
He'd soiled his
underwear
again and needed help changing

She was very
needed now. She'd been needed ever
since mother left
for the last time and father followed
her
drunk as he was
and rolled the car down the hill. He wanted
to hit mother and her
new man with the car
and missed
And now his legs wouldn't work anymore
and his imbecile daughter
didn't take care of him
the right way

"The right way..." she said. "Is to
let you rot. Let your
body match your soul, old man..."
She placed the
pillow over her head
and closed her eyes
and remembered
the song

If love was red
then she was...

they all gathered around to hear
the little girl sing
and she seemed so happy
about it
she had to cry first
But they wouldn't dare join her in her
cry and instead cheered and
urged her to carry on

Sing

And she opened her mouth
to sing
but her mouth was wrong
in as far as singing went
broken
askew
defective
And she kept on singing
and they smiled brightly and dared
not flinch as she sprayed their
faces with spit

but eventually her mother started crying
and father embraced mother and
guided her red face against his
chest and started crying as well
and buried his red face in her hair

Our daughter is so talented
Oh God, oh dear God, so talented

And they began to pray
silently
and the aunt prayed she won't have
to name the song the little girl was singing
Oh God...

And the little girl went
pffff pfff brrr wa pfff chhh pff
with her swollen tongue between the
deformed lips
and surveyed the crowd and wondered
why her cousin wasn't present

Well, it was his loss
somehow he always got grounded
before her concertos

What an idiot