If you wanna be a writer
Write

If you wanna be a good one
don't get yourself a cozy, comfy,
warm, clean studio. Just don't.
It won't help you, it'll do the opposite.

If you wanna be a great one
be a wanderer, do more living than
writing, break rules and laws and
glasses and bottles and heads and
lots of hearts

If you wanna be an outstanding one
break yourself

If you wanna be godlike
join the gods
There's a shotgun in the corner

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."

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

she woke up because her feet were cold
The window was open
and she had not the audacity to
stand and shut it in someone else’s house

He was still asleep
beside her
The sheets were stained with her maiden’s
blood
That was all right
She was twenty
But him.... He was also twenty but that’s not the point

This was the boy who
put her through hell during both middle
and high school

The bully

There was that time when he pushed
her down the stairs
and broke her thumb

that time during the field trip
when he threw a rock
straight into the side of her head

that time when he put
a frog in her
lunchbox
And another in her backpack that she
carried home

That time he kicked the ball
in her face giving her
a ****** nose

that time when he threw a snowball
at her ear

And there was another incident
resulting in a chipped tooth

and all of that was besides the
name-calling and the random hair pulling
and the tripping and the scaring
and all...

Yet now here she was
Here they were
In his house
In his bed

And all because he contacted her the previous day
and apologized for everything. Truth
is her life placed some nasty miles both
behind and ahead of her
and someone being nice all of a sudden...

It was so easy to get her
And what did he think of her now?

She felt tears trickling down
her cheeks as she thought of this and
stared at his sleeping body beside her

Maybe the time to
get revenge was now

Or was it not?

I'm getting busy in the office at work
listening and analyzing the lyrics
of albums I can find on YouTube
there are a few

Right now, the artist is talking about
choking a ***** with a cable
and spitting into her mouth as she
gasps for air and struggles
to scream
and then he says he'll
****** his ***** into her
dead mouth and will
feel like mouth ******* a fish

afterwards the artist
goes on a killing spree
in the streets and
throws racial slurs at those about
to be shot

he also shoots the police

what an interesting life this man
must lead

I mean, it says on the cover of the
album and he said it in the
intro that he's describing his life
in this work

impressive, truly
impressive

but you know, I too am a bit of a
******* lifer

I'm sitting in this comfy office,
in a comfy chair, surrounded by monitors,
sipping Irish coffee, because I'm so *******
that I smuggled a pint of cheap whiskey
here and poured into a coffee

and I'm using a screen to look at
photos of girls who work as
game attendants in the casinos I
supervise through cameras
and also, I swatted a mosquito on
some other screen

and I look at the bigger picture and
think to myself
Eh, what a live...
Drugs, women, ******...

and lyrics about 'em

****.

Jesus, what was that!?

a thing crawled out from
under the park bench he
was sleeping on

it didn't look like a stray dog
when it ran away
didn't look like an animal
at all
the thing ran on two legs
and it ran fast

he stood and checked his
shoes and the shoes were on his feet
then he checked his
pockets for his most important
possession
in this world - his ID

it was there

tomorrow was supposed to be
a big day
He had a job interview
for a position as night guard
at a fishing lake

he would be given a
modest salary and a small
cabin to stay in
and all he'd have to do would
be sound the alarm if someone
comes to fish illegally in the lake

the job of his dreams

He could dedicate the time spent
in the cabin to watching the lake
and dreaming
and writing and maybe... maybe....
dare he think it? Maybe... even
making it into the industry one day

but as he sits back he realizes
the day will most probably not
be tomorrow
the sharp pain in his side
says so
and his hand reaches to it
and returns before the dim
distant lights of the park alley
holding a rusty syringe needle,
it's tip ******

the syringe is under the bench

he sits on the bench and
starts crying

why? Why? WHY?

She parked in his driveway
and got out of the car
and went to the door
and knocked

A woman opened up
“Oh, hi. You must be my
husband’s date.”

“Um… what?”

“Oh, it’s okay. We’re in a very
open marriage, really.
It’s fine. Come in.”

She tried to remember
a time when she felt more
embarrassed and out
of place. Failed. Gave up.
Came in.

The woman closed the door
behind her
Locked it
Took out the gun
Fired

It was worth it

The husband was dead in the
bathtub. Shot in the head
And his wife used his phone to
text this other woman
and ask her to come
over

The wife got a very, very light
sentence
and no one disagreed with
her actions

She was the hero all local housewives
wanted to be like,
an inspiration, a celebrity,
someone they looked up to

so, you're writing poetry
or, well, at least you pretend to
and you pretend you're good at
it and the people want more from you

nice

but how come none of
what you write is uplifting stuff?

if anything, you've got more
depressing **** than uplifting
stuff
and you expect to get popular
with that?

get real!

you've got to inspire people
you've got to write
motivational stuff, uplifting, hope giving
stuff, upbeat verses brimming with
intelligence and radiating brilliance

your words are like confetti on a page
why are they
so scattered?

what poem is this?

why does it start with a lowercase letter?
are you dumb? Don't you know
how to write?

you're unbelievable, man, unbelievable
and don't even mention the
nonexistence of rhymes, pfff, lame...

this is not a ******* poem, fool
it's child's mockery
and you should grow up and stop
pretending you're doing this for a living

Understand,
you can't write poetry to save your life!
Christ, just look at the anatomy of this... thing

to behold your poem before one's eyes
feels like watching an escaped lab rat
dragging its entrails on the ground

the poor ******* is blind, toeless,
toothless, there's a syringe needle stuck
up its *** and its stomach is cut open
and the guts are pinkish yellow worms
that coil around its hind legs

that's what one of your poems look
like on the page, to the viewer's eyes

I'd seriously stop this **** if I were you
Grow the hell up, get yourself a wife
start a family and focus on
your career instead
of writing for
ghosts
You get it?


Um, yeah. Sure


Are you sure?


I am.


You're not gonna write about this
after I'm gone?


Nah, I'm not gonna write about this
conversation after you're gone
and I won't pretend I'm showing
it to the world and
they're enjoying it
and the critics praise me
and all that.
I'm done.


That's good to hear.
Take care, man. And remember, less
daydreaming and more attention to
the screens, okay? You're paid to do a
job here. To supervise casinos, the
people who work there and what
they do, okay?


Okay.


Good. I'm glad we could get
on the same page here.
Good day now.


Good day.

R.I.P
my name below in
The Bookman Old Style font
And then
"He Never Stopped Writing"

Really, to have this engraved on my
tombstone feels more important than
all other goals and wishes
more important than buying a house or
starting a family or a business,
going on a trip around the world,
winning the lottery, having real friends,
building... Ah, but what am I talking about?
Forgive me, I am drunk
and when I am drunk I crawl
under the skin
of some character that's not me

those aren't my goals and
wishes
me, I want to have "He never stopped
writing" engraved on my tombstone
more than I wish I was the only
human being left on planet Earth.
And that is really something,
believe me
Not to be at all is better than
to be and to love it, love that you are
and...
Hold on, there's a character here
who doesn't agree with me
Shame, just when I thought I was
done killing them

"He never stopped disagreeing
with his
creator"

R.I.P

If this world has something
in abundance that'll be
people who offer solutions to
problems that don't exist

And to offer a solution to
a problem that doesn't exist
means to create the problem
yourself

Thus,
computer viruses are created
by companies that develop
antivirus software
and
diseases are created by doctors
and
crime is created by police
and
ignorance is created by teachers
and
hate is created by spouses
and
famine is created by chefs
and
the milk man creates a lack of
calcium in the bones and dentists
create tooth decay and owners of
beauty parlors give birth to ugly children
and I'm not even gonna talk about 'em
priests, man.

Only the bums and the orphans and
the stray dogs and cats and the
rats in the sewers and the pigeons
that **** on cars and statues
are truly without sin

as long as the world has them
the world is going to be just fine

same thing
After a painful breakup
she would
have her sister over
for some ******* drinking
and nasty chatting

Usually
there would be a little over
ten shots of tequila
with salt and no lemon
that brought along their favorite
story

"When I told you to
lie down on the carpet," her sister
said, "and I brought the
dog over you and ******
him off in
your hair."

"Crazy *****."

"No, it was funny! It was funnier when
dad saw you with
that **** stuck in your hair and
your collar and he
beat up our babysitter's boyfriend who
visited that day. Hahahahaha!"

"Poor ******..."

"Yeah. Him dying in the
hospital put daddy
behind bars, you know?"

"I know."

"And then it was all heaven for us."

"It was?"

"Duh. We were free to
go out with guys then. Mom didn't mind. She
had her own."

"Yeah, I guess
life was
pretty nice to us..."

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

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

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

well, she was cute in
the pictures
and in person
but she kinda broke the
spell when
she sat down at the table
and opened her
mouth

She just had to follow
every **** sentence
with a
cringe-worthy “meow” or “nya”
and she would
even rub her hand against
her face cat-like

“What’s up with that ****?” he
would’ve liked
to ask, but
kept to himself and stayed
a gentleman all throughout
the date

She only spoke about
animated shows
she watched and conventions she’d
participate to, always dressed
as some fantasy character

She showed him some
pictures on her phone and he
decided to make this
first date
the last
but then she said,
“Also, when I get ****** I
make those sounds, hehe.”

“What?” he said. “What sounds?”

“Oh, you know what I’m
talking about.” And then she proceeded
to reproduce the sounds
Right there
in the ******* restaurant

Sounded like some child getting
beat up real good
and repeatedly stabbed all over and
in tremendous pain

The other customers and
the staff
looked over and he could see
hands reaching for
phones, ready to record the
****

Well, to their credit, it
was some **** worth
recording
You don’t see and hear that
every day

Anyways, at the end of
the day he decided that it
just wasn’t the worst date
he’d been on

nor the worst ***
he had

Anything was better than
that time he
got stabbed by a
self-diagnosed ****** girl

Well, I am audacious enough to
call myself
a writer
so I'll say it, I'll introduce him,
my greatest character so far
He doesn't appear in my writings
much, but he does appear often enough,
too often actually, in my thoughts
He appears every time I cross
the living room and glance at the TV
and see a commercial
This character of mine, he wears a black
mask like that of a hangman and
he sneaks behind happy people in
commercials and just before they're
about to open their mouths and
deliver their happy lines he passes
a cord over their heads and violently
strangles them and I see them
thrashing about and chocking and
panicking and the commercials become
bearable once more
Thanks hangman, you are
a beloved character

It was a strange day

He still remembered it years
after it happened

Usually when he got
drunk

It didn’t take much for him
to get drunk
Sometimes two beers
were more than enough

He was perhaps
five or six
and big sister was in her early
teens
She was a rebel

Wore thick makeup
and revealing clothes
and fake piercings
and argued with mom and dad
about tattoos
and boyfriends

But on that day mom and dad
weren’t home
and there wasn’t much to do
in those times. There was
nothing interesting on TV
and the internet wasn’t a thing

But big sister had an idea

That morning they found the cat
dead in the basement. It was
old enough to die. Big sister
went there and retrieved it
and brought it upstairs
and placed it on the window sill
and they watched as birds
came to eat the maggots from
its rotting flesh

Big sister seemed to really
enjoy the show
and he didn’t want to upset her
so he pretended he
enjoyed too

These days
the drunker he’d get, the more
vivid the memory
would play in his head

He had three beers
now

he would start whistling
Very random
and very loud

even at night in bed

and stopping him was
very much a
gamble

The caterpillar-like
stitches on
his wife’s arm were a testimony
to that

He’s never been the same
since his head injury
Poor fellow just had the terrible,
terrible luck to
walk underneath an overpass while
some teenagers were throwing
big rocks for fun

Now he kept calling the emergency
number and crying that
his wife had
gone missing when she’d be just
in the other room or at work

The neighbors filed
noise complaints
because of
his nightly whistling
and apparently he no longer knew
how to use the
toilet paper. He always smelled
and it was worse when
he climbed in bed
besides his wife

It was hell
and hell broke people
and tonight again he started whistling
and woke her up
and as a response
she started whistling as well

They whistled together
in the dark
under the covers
and held hands and smiled
after so long

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.”

In five years.
I don't know where I'll be in
five years
I promised to myself that
I'll be an official published writer
and never told anyone about it
never told my mother about it
but perhaps in
five years
I'll just come home
drunk and ***** all over the
toilet bowl and sink and my shoes
and shirt and I'll fall face down
on the cold tiles and break
my front teeth
and never smile again
It's no myth, it happened before
but I was living with my
grandmother at that time and it
was perhaps the shock of her life
Yet she forgave me
even when I couldn't forgive myself
All I could do was come up with
promises, like
my very soul was a woman whom
I've wronged so **** bad that
I'll have to sacrifice something
of equal or higher value to make up
for it and even after I'd make up
for it things would just
not be the same as before

So I promised myself that I'll get
seriously serious about writing
and do it consistently and
ignore distractions like friends
and girlfriends and pastimes
and eating and sleeping
I would only go to work in order to
earn enough to survive modestly
and spend the rest of my
existence writing and writing
and writing

I wrote so badly that ******* people
could look down on me with pity
and not much changed
But I wrote a lot
And as long as the goal put
volume over quality the goal would be met

Well, all this writing taught
me something
in the
end.
Taught me that sacrifice is the
key to anything one could wish for
in life.
And the sacrifice gets you what
you wished for precisely
at the time when you no longer want it

he was a doctor

*******, they were looking at
a doctor
He came into the casino in a suit,
the same suit every day and night
dark gray
shiny with grease around the
elbows and lower back
smelly
patched up in places

he kinda forgot what it was like to be
sober

and lately he kinda forgot what
it was like to win at the slot machines

he forgot how to perform surgery
how to diagnose a patient

forgot what the company of a woman felt like

forgot what love was

he was a machine that consumed cheap
but strong alcohol
Rubbing alcohol filtered through bread
That stuff was 70% alcohol
his liver knew it

"Ah, pleaseeee, for the love of God, don't
make me work with this
stuff again," he would scream while
playing at the slot machine

and the bouncer would walk up to him
and say, "Hey, hey, doc. Everything all right, man?"

"Oh, sorry. That was my liver shouting
through my mouth. He's a *****."

They say companies that deliver food
get very suspicious when their
regular customers,
the people who order every day,
stop ordering all of a sudden
They even check on them

Well, we don't deliver food
but we got really concerned when
our favorite doctor stopped
showing up
all of a sudden

Maybe our managers would've checked
up on him but
there was no phone to call
and no door to knock on

Still, one of our boys went to the nearby
park and asked the homeless men around
for our favorite doctor
and the man handed him a
newspaper

****,
it wasn't even on the front page
there was some political **** on the
front page
Nobody gave a **** about that article

The real thing was a few pages
after, not even colored
HOMELESS MAN DIES AFTER TRYING TO
PERFORM SURGERY ON HIMSELF
IN PUBLIC RESTROOM

That was a doctor with guts
Guts pouring out of him
straight into the sink
and another cluster found in the toilet

We framed the article and pasted
it on a board in the back room
of the casino

our very own patron saint

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

He kept coming back
That was his only skill

Respect is not something you can possibly
be born with. The children of
kings and lords
should know this
but most don't

Though this kid who kept coming back
he was no one's son
A vagabond
His body bony in all places
no meat
under the skin

A skin that had all the colors
from pale to yellow to blue to
crimson to pitch black
*****
scarred
sore
and something that looked
like bone peeking out of tissue

He got beat up every time he came to the
fighting pit behind the tavern

Never won a fight against
those well-fed, bulky sons of farmers
and blacksmiths and butchers
with puffy arms and wide napes

They fought mostly for respect
and the money was a side prize
But the bony boy
came only for the money
and he never got any
But he never begged in the marketplace either

The bony boy had
a pride about him
a pride that never left until the day
he could no longer stand in the fighting pit
after that fatal blow
It wasn't even that much of a strong hit
but his neck was so weak
it snapped

And they gathered in a circle
around him
mute
and stared

stared until their backs felt brushed,
shoved to the side by a pair of
hands weaker even than the bony boy's
Softer

"That's his little sister,"
someone said as they all moved
aside and let her reach the
bony boy,
crying

"So it's her that he fought for
all this time."

"Yes."

"And he kept coming back
every time."

"Yes."

"Insane."

"Wah, respect for the little guy."

"You know what, boys,
I think we should do it.
Give the little girl the prize money."

"Yeah."

"Though this ain't no fantasy land
and no poem.
So, no poem, no poetic justice.
We'll give the girl the prize money alright,
but she'll have to earn it.
Hopefully doing a better job than
her brother."

"Yeah, girl, just like your brother,
come back every time you need money.
Unlike him
you'll get it.
You really will."

"Right, now off with those
rags and let your fight begin.
I'll go first."

but what if it was
all a dream?
All a nightmare

What if he wasn't just a construction worker
who fell from the
scaffold and couldn't get up
and was in incredible pain from the torso up
because he had no more feeling below?

If this was all a dream
all a nightmare
and he was no construction worker barely
making ends meet
then his wife did not divorce him
a few weeks ago
and she did not take the kids
and she did not have another man in her life

If it was all a dream
a nightmare
then
he did not
just
jump to his death

If it was all a dream
a nightmare

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

The philosophers are still trying,
still striving to answer to
the age
old
question: What is a poem?

Sure, they figured what's the
meaning of life and other
metaphysical truths but
poetry...

And what is not a poem?

a to-do list is a poem

the obituaries are poems

that curse word followed by
racial slurs scribbled on the
inside of the cabin, probably
with ****, is poetry

blood spilled writes poetry
just as well as does the one
contained

a well landed punch is not weaker
poetry than one missing

to chew sand is to make poetry
and it's not lesser than chewing
bread

to rip a piece of paper and
place it under your fingernail
and hold the finger above
a burning candle is to make
poetry

to fall from a tree and lay down
while being chewed by wild dogs
is to be poetic

to let death win without a fight
or to greet it with open arms
or to bully it into taking you
is to create a poem

and to remain silent when the world is
loud... Ah, not many can create such
poems but those who do make them
exceptional

you're an alright poet if you can tie a
knot and you become a good poet
if you can turn the knot
into a noose and you grow to be
a great poet if you can put the noose
around your throat

luckily the world has some
great poets

but the world also has godlike poets

I wonder what they do

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

"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."

A sewage cleaner
that's what the happy man was
but it was not why he was happy

they said his fiance
announced she was pregnant
and she probably was his
fiance because she was pregnant

and she moved in with him
in his bachelor apartment
and were living quite crammed and
she didn't go out much so
they couldn't tell if she was
as happy as him

the reason he was the talk of the office
was the resignation letter he submitted
in the morning
No one even knew his name before that
and no one noticed he was happy
and no one will see him ever again
but they
will remember him
and his
happy face
and will gossip and make
up stories about him


It's there even a doubt? they'll say
That child's not his, man.
Just more proof that women can
get what they want without working
She got pregnant by someone who
didn't want her and found
this fool, moved in with him
and profits. That simple, yeah.

I heard he ***** her while
drunk

He used drugs as well,
I mean, that happy face... uh...

To tell you the truth, she's
mentally ill, the wife to be. That condition...
it makes you think with an eight year old's
mind even though you're an adult.

Retardation?

Yeah, an' you can guess how she got pregnant
with him.

Gods, what a despicable individual. And to think
that we worked in the same place with him.
All this time and had no idea.

Yeah, I heard that she's ******* but not only
Guess what, she's a blood relative of him,
some cousin. I don't know how the hell
but she got in his care and... Look what's
happened now. Crazy.

No, no, guys, seriously now. The devil's not
as dark as y'all point out now. She's not
******* or a blood relative
to him. Just the one
******* with whom the
****** happened
to break. These things happen,
it's nothing to laugh about. Now she pretty
much owns him, I guess.
For the next few months at least.

Surely you mean years
I think she actually scammed him

Yeah, it's a common thing with
'em ******. When they feel like going on
a vacation they get pregnant and sue some
fool for child support and go all semi queens
'n ****.
the ****** doesn't have to break
they just have to keep it afterwards
and put the stuff inside.
So take heed, gentlemen. Always be
flushing your used condoms down
the toilet if you want to avoid
the ultimate misery. Throwing
'em in the trash bin is not enough anymore

Oh, ****, that's hella good advice, man
Wonder why we don't see more of
them used condoms in the sewers we clean

****, that stands to prove that the
world is full of men who don't
raise their own children

How?

You shut up, new guy! Get back to work now.
Jesus, the nerve of this rookie...

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

the *** was good
She loved to swallow. Even
from the ******. Had
a real fetish with it

They passed out eventually
in each other’s
arms
and somewhere towards
the morning he
woke up with a blade in the
gut

It twisted hard

He gasped for air
and watched her eyes, demanding
an explanation

Her response was a shrug. “Just
wanted to see what it
feels like. I think I
love it.”

He didn’t survive
and she faced no real consequences

The world is full of fetishists

some girls like to
swallow *** and carve their
partners up for fun

and some men
like to hook up with
psych ward patients

There never was a time in history
when madness was not
romanticized
and idolized
and alluring as sin

There were times
when I got
home
threw my backpack in the corner
took off my shoes
my jacket
walked into my room
took off my pants, my shirt
put on sweatpants, another shirt
turned on the PC
ate a bag of salty potato chips
drank whatever I could
wasted time

I was happy in those times

Today I write.

Um... it doesn't rhyme,
she said

I looked at her
You kidding?

And then she shook her head
No, look, this poem
really has no rhymes
at all
You sure it's the right file?

Let me see

She handed me her phone
and I looked at the text
on the screen, smirked, turned off
the phone and kissed her

You are truly the cutest, I said.

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

so the assignment was to write about
what the perfect
vacation would look like

and he wrote about
running away from home and
stealing a car
and running people over

robbing a gas station
assaulting and beating
a lady in the restrooms

shooting the cops
smashing their heads in

and at the end driving the car
into a wall and
dying with a shitload of money
and a lady’s head in
the trunk

“Your kid seems very…
troubled,” said the
teacher

“Oh my God!” said the mother. “No,
it’s his father…”

“Hm? His father treats him…
inappropriately you mean?”

“Well, you see… no actually.
His father doesn’t spend
much time with him. He is
a writer…”

“Oh. I see.”

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

she ran to the desk
opened the drawer
shuffled around
got the scotch tape
and a ******

Ran towards him and
fell to her knees

She hurried to put
the ****** on,
laughing like a child
knowingly doing something
bad, yet exciting

Then she wrapped the whole thing
in scotch tape
giving it plenty of
sharp ridges and pointy
spots

When it was done she spat on
it a few times
and gave it a few
licks

It was the best way to get
****** while
dealing with a yeast infection

The scratching sensation
on the inside
is simply divine, she
said

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

she slid out of that short
skirt and
removed the ******* as well
and hopped on the bed
and took off her shirt
and bra

then assumed the lotus
position and
very calmly said, "You got like…
a needle and some rubbing alcohol?"

"Um, what for?" he asked

She looked him
in the eyes. "I want you to
watch me pierce my
*******. I've some cute rings
I want to see shining in 'em.
So, you down for it?"

He was silent for a long
time. Just staring
at her ****. "Um… I'm out of rubbing
alcohol. Will some
***** do?"

"It won't be nearly as
good," she said, "but hell,
let's give it a shot."

His mind was already ablaze with
images of her
being his wife

The boy sits in a dark room
and wants to write
but he only thinks
and the words still come up
but they are forgotten
and this pains the boy and he
then decides to sleep

but sleep too is
forgotten and he is
left with breathing and
staring into the darkness

The bed is uncomfortable
and the pillow is too high

he takes it from below his head
and holds it against his chest
in a tight embrace that seems
to grow
ever warmer and
more affectionate

his palm starts caressing
the bottom side of the pillow
and his lips start
making pecking motions
against the fabric

and soon enough he grows
hard and his hips
start moving on their
own and he thrusts
into the pillow and thrusts
and the bed starts shaking

"What the hell are you doing?" his
wife asks from besides him.

"I'm writing a poem. Go back
to sleep."

there was
simply
no other way

some things just have
to be done
else you risk dying
from the urge alone

Urge can ****

and his urge was
like the need
to inhale after exhaling
deeply

Unstoppable

There was no reason tied
to it other than
the desire to see what
happens, how
it'll turn out

so he did it

that's why they don't see
him around
anymore

He is now the stuff
of legends

He'll forever be the silent kid
who brought a knife
to the playground
because he wanted
desperately to stab it
through the underside of
the plastic slide
while someone came down towards it

it didn't matter who

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

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 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 likes to sleep late in the
afternoon, surpassing even me
and she wakes up a little groggy
and lays in bed and her coffee is a good
doze of browsing on her smartphone
which she lets charging all the short night

And then, when she's had enough
she smiles at me and puts her
phone aside and asks a
Would you rather question

And today's question was
"Would you rather **** a guy or
your own mother?"

"What?" I said. "Where did you find
that one?"

She said, "I made it up. So what's your
answer?"

"****, what would be yours?"

She thought for a bit. "Hehe, it'll have to be
changed a bit for me, no?"

"Yeah," I said. "So would you rather ****
your own dad or another girl?"

"It's a bit unfair," she said, "isn't it?
I mean, for boys. Me, I could easily
do either, hehe."

"Easily?"

"I already pretend you're my
daddy when we do it, don't I?"

"I though it's just a thing girls do."

"That's what they say."

"Well ****, so you sayin' you'd like
me even more if I resembled your
father more?"

"Aw, forget it. Just answer the question."

"If I beat you and kicked you out of the
house, like you said he did, would you
love me more?"

"Forget. It." she said. "Just answer my question."

"You answer mine first," I said.

And she though for a little longer and
though and thought about it
and checked her phone briefly and
finally said, "You know what, let's drop
both at once. What you want for breakfast?"

"I ate while you were sleeping," I said.

"Oh, well, where's the ashtray?"

"There's still some waffles from yesterday's
pack," I said. "And cream."

"Sounds fine. Can I have some in bed?"

"There's coffee too if you come to the
kitchen."

"Wow, you know how to bargain,
don't you?"

"Unlike your daddy you mean? Heard
he was fired last week. What's he
doing now?"

She gave a brief shake of her head
and got out of bed in her *******
stopped by me, kissed my cheek and
whispered in my ear, "Let's. Drop. It.
Okay?"

I said nothing
and she went to the bathroom.
When she came back the coffee
was ready and her ashtray was
on the table.
Her eyes didn't leave the
phone as she sat down.

I am a sidewalk

one upon whom your
feet dragged heavy and
wet and tired

and I wonder where you
are going
and where you're coming
from

I look up constantly and
am tired of soles and legs and
******* and dropped coins
and litter

and indifference

Too many people, too few dogs
and cats and some rats at night

But you are
different. You wear no shoes and
your little feet are cold and
so delicate
and in your wake you are painting
me with a trail of blood

you are not in the mood to
receive compliments, I know. But
I'll say it anyway. You are beautiful

I hope he never catches you

I wish there was
something I could do
about it

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

"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?"

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

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