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

the phone rang at 03:08

unknown number

Well, the bleeding wound
on his forehead prevented him
from sleeping anyway

He picked up
"Yeah?"

"Hey," a girl's voice said. "Are
you the guy who
has a thing for crazy girls fresh out
of the psych ward?"

"What?"

"Am I speaking to the guy who's
very much into dating
**** girls with mental issues that
other guys refer to as red flags?"

"Who is this?" he asked

"Oh no, this is not
about me. I just wanted to
introduce you to my sister. I think she
fits the bill quite perfectly
with you. What do you say?"

He sighed. "Tell her I'll call back
once my current girlfriend
breaks up with me. I hope she's patient. It'll
take a good couple of hours. Bye."

He hung up

217 days
without speaking
or seeing each other
and suddenly she shows up
knocks on his door and says,
“Hey, we’re still together, right?
Still a couple?”

He didn’t answer,
just ushered her in
through a curtain of smoke
and moldy smells.
His small apartment
looked more like a cave
than ever before.
The walls were dark and irregular
with buildup of grime.

The cockroaches were long dead,
poisoned with cigarette smoke
and ashes

26 years her senior,
he was a modern caveman
Still lived in a cold, dark,
and gross cave,
but he had a laptop
and internet connection.

The screen
was the only thing
alive in the cave.

It showed a compilation
of short videos
featuring brutal executions
from all around the world.

“So how have you been?”
she asked.

His reply was a grunt
as his gnarled hand
reached into his breast pocket
and fished out the pack
of cigarettes and a lighter.

He placed one between
his lips and lit it
and then offered her one.

She took it
and as she stretched
her hand for it
a neat row of self-inflicted scars
shone from her wrist to elbow

“I take it you still haven’t
managed to publish
your writings,” she said.

It drew another
grunt from him,
a louder one
this time.

“So nothing’s changed
in all this time,”
she continued.
“You didn’t make it,
I didn’t make it,
and the world made it
without us.”

Another grunt from him.

He sat down at the desk
and paused the gore videos
that ran with black metal music
playing in the background.
The image that froze onscreen
portrayed a naked man
on his knees, hands tied
behind his back,
while a chainsaw was about
to dig into his belly.

“I was thinking,” she continued,
“you know how people make
those silly promises
that sound something like,
‘if we don’t find partners
by the time we’re so and so years
old we marry each other’?
Well, I was thinking,
what if we make a promise
just like that?
Only, not about marrying
each other.
Rather, if in two years’ time
we don’t make it.
That is, if you don’t get published
as a writer and I still can’t
find a good man to marry…
we suicide together.
What do you say?”

Puffing on his cigarette,
he watched her,
studied her from head
to toe and back,
and after another grunt
and a much needed clearing
of his throat he said,
“Aren’t we already dead?
What’s the point of
suicide now?”

They were both silent
for a long while
and then she said,
“Did I tell you about
the time I aborted
your child?”

He shook his head.
“Pretty sure it wasn’t mine.”

“It was yours,” she said.

He dismissed her
with another grunt
and a slight shake of his head.

Then they smoked
in silence and finished
the whole pack,
letting the ashes fall
straight to the floor
where they joined a gray desert.

He resumed the gore videos
but turned down the volume.

“Some days ago
I slept with a guy
only so I could use his computer
to check out stories of yours
on the internet,”
she said eventually.
“Aside from three or four
very short ones
there was nothing new.
Why did you stop posting?”

“I stopped writing,” he said.

“Oh…”

She came behind him
and they both watched
some poor homeless man
being held down
by a gang of teenagers
as two of them used a brick
to hammer a long screwdriver
up one of his nostrils.

He turned the volume lower.

“Well, I haven’t stopped looking
for a good man,” she said.
“I just hadn’t found one yet.
I thought that maybe if we make
that two-year promise…
maybe it’ll motivate us both,
but I see you’ve already given up.
You are already dead,
aren’t you?
I’m speaking to a ghost.”

He grunted
and lit another cigarette
from a new pack
and offered her another.

They watched gore videos
for the rest of the night
and smoked.

At some point
she said that she
had a loose tooth
and fiddled with it until it
came out of the socket.
There was no blood
and no pain.

She placed it on the desk
and he silently
took it and put it
into his breast pocket
with the pack of cigarettes.

In the morning,
she was ready to leave.

She borrowed
fourteen dollars
and two cigarettes
and stopped by
the corner store
to buy razor blades.

The cashier wasn’t any
more alive than herself
and the modern caveman
she’d left behind
for the final time.

“Say, you wanna marry
in the near future?” she asked
from across the counter.

The cashier just replied
with a grunt.

the dreams of drunks are the strangest
and often most beautiful

It’s what he
came to think this morning
after he woke up with
the empty glass under the blanket

Surely it was that glass
and the liquor in his guts
that made him dream of a frozen woman, clear
as glass

She smiled at him
with diamond teeth and stooped like only
a professional stripper could
next to his limp body

She rolled him onto his belly
and his limpid, numb eyes
watched her grow an icicle from between
her legs
but they closed by the time
she carved a hole into his liver and
began to **** him until the
ice melted

That was a nice dream,
he concluded

And tonight he’d go to sleep
with two glasses
and a bottle under
the blanket

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

****.

these days a lot of
people call
themselves
empaths

They claim to be able
to feel what
other people
are feeling
and suffer with them

"I cheated on my boyfriend
with his brother," some
girl said,
“and being the empath
that I am
I started crying along
with him when he
found out. It's hard
being such
an empath."

And there was
the guy
who got into a bar
brawl and
knocked another guy's
teeth out
and held a hand to his
own mouth and made
pain noises

I guess he
was an empath too

If you have a
social media account
and don't describe yourself
as an empath
people will think you're some
kind of monster,
a psychopath, they'll compare
you with ******

Yeah, it's a good
reason not
to use social media

If you actually
needed another

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

the old lady didn’t mind being
called crazy

or being laughed at for
spending her days
alone
in her small cottage
facing the dark corner
of the room and
talking to
her dead daughter

encouraging her to eat up
and grow up
and complimenting her on the good
looks she’d gained

“Oh, I bet the boys are all dropping
dead in your wake, hehe. Look
at those legs. So slim and long and
deadly. You’re a beauty
among beauties, my dear. Here, have another
one. Eat up to grow up. You’re gonna
have hundreds of strong, beautiful
children, hehe.”

The neighbors and the world
could keep calling her crazy, she
knew she was just very happy

She grabbed another grasshopper from
a jar and ripped its hind legs
and placed it
on the spider’s web

“Here’s another one, dear. Eat up
and grow up, hehe.”

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

in high school
he repeatedly told her
that he was saving
himself for marriage

and eventually
she left him alone
but after graduation
she approached him
yet again

and this time he told her
that he was focusing on
his career as a writer

they both had their dreams
and they kept dreaming and
fighting to accomplish them,
insisting and getting up
from every defeat

failing forward
as some would say

It took decades but
eventually both of their
dreams came true

they were married
and he still hadn’t struck a deal
with any publisher but
made a relatively okay
income self-publishing

he wrote for a very narrow niche
very ****** ****** fiction
and his lovely wife helped him
with inspiration and research

“C’mon,” he urged her,
“moan a bit harder,
cry some too.”

she did as she was told
as he went around her
with the camera

it was hard work but
at least the German Shepard
******* her from behind
had fun

A pretty thick
slice
of hell

That was life
so far

But today things
will change

Today he was six
years
old and that meant old
enough to
guide his blind father
on the streets

The old man was only
blind for
a year after some work
related accident involving acid

And there was a mother
somewhere too. She left
shortly after
father’s accident

Today father held on
to his son’s shirt
at the shoulder and told him
to walk towards the
railway

“I want to listen to
the train,” said father

but it turned out he
wanted much
more than that. He wanted to
feel the train. Against
his face

So he stood on the rails
and told the kid
to go back home
and return after an hour or so

“Okay,” said the kid. But
he didn’t leave. He watched
from a safe distance

Didn’t even find
the
event particularly disturbing

Then he went back home
and had some
fruit loops with milk
and his first taste of
beer

He had become a
man

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

sunny day outside
streets full
of people seeking water
and cold beers

overcast day inside
the cold, irregular walls
of the basement
in the abandoned building
The clouds are alive
and very annoying

She slaps his forehead
with a sloppy hand
soaked in *****

“Ouch!” he screams

And she says, “I can’t stand
these *******
fruit flies. Why must
they follow everywhere we go?”

He turns around
on the wool blanket and
shoves away a few empty bottles
of cheap wine
and
drops his head onto
her naked lap. “Because, baby, we’re
putrid. You and I, we’re both
dead on the inside
and out. And the fruit flies
love the smell
and taste of our bodies. Especially
when they come
together and sweat a lot.”

His hand grabs at
her upper thigh
and the fingers
tap playfully along the
piano-key-like cut marks
that adorn it
from crotch to knee

She tries to squash another
fruit fly
on his back

fails

gives up

drifts into sobs
and cries

“Noo, don’t cry,” he whispers

“Darling,” she says through
sour tears that
get immediately assaulted by
the fruit flies, “are we
really dead?”

“Yeah,” he says after
two full minutes
of struggling to open his eyes.
“Dead to them all
who walk outside in the warm
sun and go to jobs
to feed families, and dead
to our own families. And
to God. We’re dead, alright.”

She wails and
moves her *****-soaked
hand before her face
to chase away
the fruit flies

achieves the opposite
effect

wails some more

looks around for
her favorite razor blade

doesn’t find it

wails some more

grabs a bottle and swings
it against the wall
behind her back
but not strong enough
to break
just drops it

And she wails some more
until
he grabs her hand and
holds it against his
face and
starts ******* on her fingers

It tastes not very
different from
the wine they drank
so he keeps *******
and tells her, “Don’t worry.”

“What?” she asks

“Don’t worry, I said. Even if
we’re dead, at least
we’re dead together. And it’s
a thousand billion times
better than
being alive and apart. We’re still
better off than those
walking outside in the warm sun.
Those fools stay together
till death does ‘em apart. Pathetic.
We’re staying together in
death itself, dear. Our love
is eternal!
We got each other
and our cool grave
and our thousands of flying children
here roaming about
and the sweet nectar of each
other’s bodies. What else
could one ask for in life
or in death?”

“Aw, you sweet talking
failure of a poet,
come and kiss me!”

He did

and not even the
***** or the
coughing of blood could
break their lips apart

and the
fruit flies
joined in

and outside people still
walked in
the warm sun
oblivious of what true love
looked like

Girls with glasses are cute
but that's only what I think
and she doesn't agree
so she's wearing contact lens
and she's losing them more
often than not
and the house becomes
a minefield
and we have the thread
lightly

it's just a small apartment
it shouldn't be that hard
to find them or the
one that got lost

when only one got lost
she would use the other
and cover her other
eye and look around
and point things and tell
me to turn them over so
she could take a better look

and I would sometimes
say "I told you"
but I no longer do it

I look under the cover
and the pillows
and the sheets
and the carpet
in shoes, under them
pockets, corners, folds
sink, toilet, tub

one day
she covers her free eye
and uses the other one
to look at her phone

"Really now?" I say
on my knees, searching
in shoes

she shows me her phone
and what I see is a bottle of
perfume

"Been wanting to get this
for a while now," she says.
"After this I'm seriously gonna."

I take a better look at the thing
and by gods
no
it's not a perfume bottle
not in that sense anyway

its description says
that you spray the things
you lose often with it
and your pet dog, being addicted
to the smell, will find them
for you

I drop the shoe down at my feet
and sit back and laugh
for about a full minute

When I'm done she's out
of the room

And I shout after her
"I don't believe in buying dogs,
I told you."

I don't believe in buying dogs
You either adopt them
or don't have them

but please, whatever you do,
don't ever spray stuff on the
stuff that comes in contact with
your eyes
okay?

Well,
after you write enough
and try to publish for long enough
you just notice it
There is no such thing as
good
or
bad
poetry.
There's just poetry to which people
can relate
and poetry to which
people can't relate.
And that makes all the difference
in the world.

this morning the pills
have not been there

kitchen
top cabinet

not there

but of course the world wouldn’t explode
if he didn’t take
the pills for one day
Things were going too fine to
slip downhill now

He didn’t need the pills. It
actually was like the doctor said, the
power was inside him
The power to change
to become better
to leave the past behind. The
power was in him
And in dearest Kyu, his therapy dog,
a small corgi who needed to be walked everyday

He smiled as he thought of Kyu
called him
and Kyu came
and he put the leash on
and went outside

The rain didn’t bother either of them
Only problem during
rainy days
was the lack of other people
to socialize with
People hated rain and that was that
but not him and Kyu

They walked through the park
and the rain grew more intense
fatter drops
heavier
colder
louder
splashing

the little rivulets flowing on the
sides of the streets weren’t
so little anymore
This would turn out to be a total flood
better go back home

Kyu seemed to get the meaning
they turned back
and the rivulets at the sides of the street
grew more potent
and the leash grew lighter
and lighter

Gods! The rivulet carried Kyu away!

Oh God, no! Straight into the
curbside storm drain! In the sewer! Kyuuuuuu!

And there was no one on the streets
not even cars passing
He had to do something
by himself
because no one would help him
nobody ever helped him
He had to pull himself out of this ditch by
himself once
more

Cursing between clenched teeth
he dropped to his knees
and crawled into the
storm drain after his beloved Kyu

He landed on hard concrete and broke
his foot
so badly that
the jagged shinbone protruded through the flesh
and skin and came out like a
blade

He screamed and cried
and cursed the day he was born
and the people in his life
and outside of it
Of course everyone would be outside of it
Nobody would be in his life
not mother
not father
not sister
grandparents
friends?
What friends? He never had any of those

People were cold
people wanted to see him cry
because seeing him cry was their food
and they needed food to stay alive,
they needed to eat
and their hunger was insatiable

they should…just die actually

The ***** water showered all around him
and onto his wound
and onto his head and eyes
but he still saw it
He saw them
carrying Kyu away
dragging him by the paws
towards the darkest spot of the sewer
despite his whimpering protests

He screamed, shouted at them
but they wouldn’t listen
“Hey, you *******, let him go!”

No, they would not let Kyu go
Words were not enough to
convince people. He had to do something.
He crawled after them
through the cold filth
with pain and determination propelling him

Oh, it was them, of course
Mother and father and sister
they were dragging Kyu away from him
just as they dragged everything away from him
This was too much
He couldn’t let this happen.
Too much!

He crawled after them
crying
screaming
cursing
and reached for his broken shinbone
and pulled it out of the leg
and stabbed them with it
again
and
again
He kept stabbing at their backs
their
heads, their throats, their chests, their arms
everywhere
stab
stab
stab

“Thought you could take
everything away from me
my friends, my life, my love, my soul, my
freedom, my purpose, my way,
my choices, my health, my possibilities, and
now even him,
my dearest Kyu?
*******! I won’t let you! I
won’t let you!”

and he kept stabbing
and stabbing
stab
stab
stab

until that hand just wouldn’t
work anymore
and he fell with his head on Kyu
like on a pillow
as he always did
and darkness came about him

Good night,
Kyu

‘You’re going to be
the prettiest girl at the
funeral,’
he wanted to tell her
as he watched
that dark outfit that
resembled a maid for sorts

but it wouldn’t be
an appropriate thing to say
when the funeral was
for her father

Not that she displayed a lot of grief
either. She was more concerned
with the goth maid outfit
and how it would look on her

“My daddy would love to see
me in this,” she said

And then
her boyfriend said, “Who
wouldn’t?”

She eyed him from
across the room
and said, “My mom... Eh, but to
hell with her. If I’d listened
to her, I’d be a nun
now. In fact, if I weren’t an
adult able to make decisions
for myself right now, I’m sure
she would’ve arranged for me to
go to some monastery or something
like that, wherever nuns go.
And she dares wonder why I
reserved all my love for daddy and
gave her nothing. Every time
we’d get close
she’d get in the way. If I didn’t know
better I’d say she’s the
entity behind his death, really.
My daddy was a loving
man, this I know for sure. He was
all good and I... I miss
him so much already. I just wish
I could... Wait!”

“What?”

“I got an idea.”

He didn’t like the tone
with which she said
that, nor the grin
on her face
as she reached into her *****
and pulled out her phone

He had many questions
for her
but there was no time
to ask. She moved in and grabbed
his hand and dragged him
along,
out of the room and long
the corridor
all the way to the room where
her father sat in the
casket awaiting to be
taken to the grave

“Here, hold this,” she said
as she handed him her phone

Wordlessly
she climbed onto the casket
and stretched herself
along her father’s body
“C’mon,” she said, “take a few
pictures.”

Her boyfriend did. When you have
too many questions assaulting
you at once, you
give voice to none, just
play along

The funeral that followed
was a short one, with
few mourners

The loudest cry came from
the wife of the departed
after some unknown number sent
the pictures to her
phone

"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."

they were having another one
of those heated
arguments on the porch
when the kid ventured
into the
street and got run over by a car

He didn’t survive

And there was no
getting out from under this guilt

“He tried to run away from
our screams.”

“Yes. He did.”

“And we can only…go after
him now.”

“Yes. We’re going after him.”

She circled her arms around
his neck and pulled him
in for a kiss
while holding the revolver
against his nape, thumbs on the trigger

It was the sweetest kiss
of their entire
marriage

The bang ended the problems
for both of them

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

silence
Silence is the most important thing
It's what renders headphones
and earbuds
and headsets one of the
greatest
inventions of the modern world

The ability to enjoy entertainment
without disturbing those
around you

Silence

It's important to know this about it
cuz unfortunately some of
the lessons
about the importance
of silence
are taught by the most
extreme teachers

Myself and a friend of mine had been
taught the lesson by such a teacher

We were twelve and thirteen
and he got a new gaming console for
his birthday and we spoke with another
friend to lend us a cool game,
some shooter

I stayed over the night
and we started playing
and the TV was quite loud
The game was fun
We were loud
and there were bangs and explosions
and guns firing and screams and flashes

and suddenly
the door of the bathroom bangs
open with a kick and my friend's
grandfather storms into the room
with froth about his bleached lips and
he grabs my friend's arm and
pins him to the ground and holds him there
as he looks around the room with crazed eyes,
more scared than both my friend and I

I think what's worse
is that the old man was previously
on the toilet
using it
and he got up without wiping
or washing his hands
and came into our room like that

My friend's father came when he heard
the commotion and
dragged the old man away
and left us mute
and shaken

we didn't say a word until he
came back a few seconds later
and lectured us about PTSD

but I guess the real moral of the
story is that silence is important
and headphones are really one of
humanity's greatest inventions

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

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?

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

She pushed gently against me
and fell on the
bed
Stretched a leg towards me
began unbuttoning at her
jeans

I helped her take them
off
Not too gentle, not too rough

Grinning, she turned around
in bed and said, “I just
remembered, you never told me
what your muse looks like.”

“Huh?”

“And please don’t tell me
it looks like me. We both know
that’s ******* sweet talk poets use
to get girls. Don’t
lie to me, boy. What does your
muse look like? You
can tell me.”

I reached for her foot
moved it out of the way
not too gently, not too rough
Reached for the *******

She pushed my hand away
not too gently, not too rough
“Tell me. Is it, by any chance, a little
girl locked inside a basement like
it was for my ex-boyfriend? Do you
whip her when she’s naughty
and doesn’t give you inspiration? Do
you deny her food and the
bathroom?”

“What?”

“Tell me, poet! Do you? Do you
lie on your back when you *******
and imagine the muse
squat above your face
and shower you with her ****
as blessing?”

I took a step back. “What?”

“Oh ****,” she said. “Just tell
me already what your muse
looks like and how d’you get
intimate with her. Tell me!”

“I, I don’t know. I don’t work
like that.”

She stopped touching herself
Watched me expecting
to add more

I gave a shrug.

Honestly, the last time I thought of
a muse it was
some broke, homeless young guy,
scrawny as a putrid
plank and roaming the streets

He had nothing in this
world
but hunger
A hunger that possessed him
and made him write like a madman

That guy was my muse

But I figured
she wouldn’t care to hear about that

Anyway, we didn’t go out for long
after that evening

She said we’re not compatible
because I’m too vanilla

she kept saying how much she
hated her tattoos

and kept showing them
to us

"Got 'em when I was young and
dumb and now I
jus' wanna rip my skin off."

She pulled her skirt up
to show one on her inner thigh. "Ugh, look at
this one. It's supposed to
be a bottle of Jack but looks
like a wrinkly **** that's about to
get in. ****, and this one… This one
looks more like a **** than
an eye, really." She kept pulling her
skirt up farther and farther
until it became very
clear that she
had no underwear

"You wanna touch it? she'd ask
from time to time

It was funny cuz she was in her late
twenties and we
were kids. I was twelve if I remember right

She probably got a kick
out of making young boys *****

It validated her
and we had not a **** thing to object

Good times

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

he spent four weeks
away from his family
in a rented apartment
somewhere on
the outskirts
of town

he told them that
he needed this
he was a writer
needed to focus on his work
conducting his research
undistracted

his little girl would call
from time to time
asking daddy to hold his
phone against his forehead
while she made a kissing sound
on the other line

very wholesome
except he lied about
holding the phone
against his forehead

“How can you be
such a monster?”
asked the naked *******
sitting on the edge of his bed

“Shut up,” he said
tossed his phone on the desk
and unbuckled

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

like a baby left for
hours
and hours in a hot car
he
woke up
with a sweaty forehead
and a buzz
in his temples

no room to stretch

he got out
of the
car

in his underwear

shook his legs
and hands
rubbed the pain away from
his knees
and back of the neck

There was a bottle of water
he got from
the park fountain
among the litter in the back seat

he opened it

hot

took a sip and swirled it
around his mouth
spat
took another sip
swirled
spat

that’s for dental hygiene

He put on pants and a shirt
locked the car
and walked 50 paces
to the nearest public restroom
where he removed his shirt and
washed his hairy armpits

He studied the violet circles under
his eyes in the mirror
checked his teeth
his tongue
felt for wax in his ears

put on a professional smile

went to the public
library
and the desk by the window was free
His smile grew brighter
as he sat down
and opened the notebook

Chapter 86 would
be next in the manuscript

He looked out the
window
This writer life was precisely as
romantic as he thought it’ll be

no more
no less

He was older than me
by a good eight years

he felt worthy to give me life
advice

I agreed.
It’s my personal rule. Never turn away
from a tale. Listen to anything
and everyone when they’re willing to share.
Following the advice is another
matter
but listening to it I shall.

And I did
all ears

and he told me
“Never overdose on solitude, my boy. Never
overdose on solitude.
You might think it’s cool and all
to play the lone wolf character
and all that
but a time will come when you will
regret this deeply, oh so, so deeply.
You will regret it to suicide and beyond.
And the regret will set in gradually
with old age.
It always does.
When I was like you, in my twenties, I hated
the world and loved
spending time
with myself. It’s all I did
for so many years.
And look at me now...”

“You don’t look too bad,” I told him.

His smile was sad. “My boy, I’m ‘bout to
hang myself tonight, after this beer,
in my lonely room, with a power cord I fixed
to the ceiling. My most productive deed
in the past two years.”

I raised my beer. “Cheers.”

He didn’t hang himself that night.
Just got very drunk and
passed out on his ***** bed. It wasn’t
the first time he threatened to do it.
I knew he wouldn’t do it.

As long as I listen to his stories
he won’t do it

And I always listen.

the other night she went to
sleep
listening to
subliminal audios

and woke up in the morning
saying, “I am birds. Many, many
birds trapped together in
a bag of silk. This thing
that the world looks
at and calls my body is but
a bag of silk
that traps birds inside. I am not
the bag. A bag isn’t alive. I
am the birds inside the bag. And
I must get out!”

She ran into
the bathroom

Her father shrugged. “******’ ****,”
he said, shaking his head.
“To think that she could’ve
been a doctor, or a lawyer, or
an engineer. She could’ve
been anything. But she
chose to study
creative writing in college. Now
she’s a poetess...
and we are no more than
characters lost
in her verses.”

he could count the major events
in his life on a
mangled hand's fingers
But this was one of them. The day she took him
to church.
So that's what girlfriends are for.

But he didn't like the church
didn't like the songs
didn't like the preacher and the preaching

the man spoke of hell. But he
didn't know
**** about hell. No baby, hell's not a place
where you go,
it's a place where you stay. Namely, a body
and a mind that has no
major passions
no drive towards improvement
no dreams
no goals
no desire to get out and connect with the world
no love to share
no stories to tell or disposition to listen
no reasons to live or carry on

In other words, me, *******. I am hell.

He broke up with
his girlfriend the next day. Her crying didn't
affect him

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

"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?"

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

Oh, infinitely beautiful girl
you are not alone

she wrote with
scarlet lipstick on her mirror

But words alone
don't
change hearts

and she was infinitely
unhappy

cursed

doomed

All the boys and men
said yes
to her

but her brother still
said no

Some daughters love their fathers
a bit too much
and their mothers not enough

This father was a cop,
the type that deals with the nasty cases
and he often came home drunk.
Alcohol did help, he said
and drank some more on the couch
and sometimes drank until he passed out

she was thirteen, his daughter
and would constantly nag
him with questions
about work. He didn't wanna talk about work,
about the gruesome details of
it and all that, but edgy teenagers will be
edgy teenagers
She insisted
and he kept drinking and eventually
passed out on his side

She was excited
took his gun from the holster
and started studying it with passion
turning it on all sides, smelling it,
holding it close
to the face
and

BANG!

the bullet got her lower jaw
it was a ****** mess
and she was in pain and gagging on blood
and shards of bone and teeth
But...

to call for help right now
would be wrong.
The whole world would accuse daddy
and he had no fault. And mommy would
reopen the case and
have no problem gaining custody of her
****! This was bad!
This was so bad!

And it was getting worse,
she felt it. Felt close to fainting. Father was still
on the couch. Passed out drunk.

She had to take matters into
her own hands. Shambled
into the kitchen
and grabbed the cutting board from
the table
and dipped a finger in her ****** mouth
and wrote with it on the cutting board

MY FAULT
DADDY INOCENT
(with a single 'N')

She went outside holding the cutting board
and knocked on
the neighbor's door.

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..."

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.”

There was indeed silence now

Oh, and it's been but days
since the screams
cracked the windows
and the thrown bottles stripped
the walls of their paint
and the curses made the
gods cringe and cover their ears

The house of madness
no longer lived up to its name

For she was finally gone
and he was left
with the echoes

"C'mon, dare me to down it!" were
her words as she opened
the last bottle

And his were, "*****, you're mad!"

"Dare me, *******! Dare me
to down this here bottle. You
don't think I can, do you? Ah, you
slime-gutted piece of
****."

"I'm telling you to knock
it the **** out already! I'll bury
yer ******' eyes in, see if
I won't."

But she was already
pouring down her throat. She
had this talent that
allowed her to drink without
swallowing. Pouring
down her throat was like pouring
down the sink. No choking

And then she'd hurl
the empty bottle with terrible aim
and break it against the
walls, planting shards all over the carpet

and then
finally
she'd be waiting in the
bedroom

But not today

Today she was no more
and all that was left of her were
the echoes of curses

The neighborhood was
probably celebrating

And her man
stood by the broken window,
a bottle of her favorite *****
in one hand
and a fistful of painkillers in
the other

She no longer awaited him
in the bedroom
but underground
and he could already hear her
greeting words as he washed the
painkillers down with the *****

"Took you long enough, *******.
Now where's my *******
drink?"

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
Yes
You

you know what I mean
if you have trouble falling asleep
you must know what I mean
and if you have even greater
trouble waking up and
leaving your bed, joining the cold
world with its cold air and stares
And if you either can't stop eating
or can't stand the thought of food,
if you drink too much and drink alone,
if you have no passion for anything
and the things you once enjoyed feel
pointless and empty and you feel
trapped in a void, forever floating

empty

what you need is not a friend
A friend
many friends
won't fill the void

What you need is a spark
and just enough desire to
keep it from dying

just keep it alive

Someone wise once said
the spark either dies out
or lives long enough to burn down
a whole forest.

I'm convinced he was right

To convince yourself as well
keep that spark alive

just one more day

Keep it alive.

he had no shoes
and you could hardly call
his shirt a shirt
but he
sat between those two
trash cans like some king
on his throne
  
holding to a stick
like a scepter
  
He drank from an old
rusty can of
beans
but held it like some golden
goblet
  
Clearly he lost the
ability to
taste because in the can
he mixed all he could
find in the trash
  
Beer with *****
with tequila with wine
and acetone
and rubbing alcohol
  
He had a fearsome guardian
about him
A white dog who constantly
licked his ***** from
the ground
  
It looked black
and spongy
like coffee grounds
  
Some passersby offered to help him
and he refused
  
This was a king who
would go down with honor
after he lost
his kingdom

“Have you ever kissed a lover
so hard
you chipped a tooth?”
she asked
with a grin that
revealed more than one
chipped tooth

He shook his head. “No, and I
really don’t intend
to.”

Well, that’s what you get
for hitting
on a girl you meet
in the yard of the local asylum. But
she said she was a
nurse...

“Anyway,” he said. “If this is what happened
to you… What happened
to him? I mean,
after the kiss.”

“Oh, there were many,
many kisses actually,” she said. “He’s
dead now.”

“What? He died?”

“Well, yeah, dogs don’t
live that much. Compared to humans,
I mean.”

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

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

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.

The day she realized she hated her
brother was the day she went into his
room

until then she loved him,
everyone loved him
He was the family's artist, the prodigy
and he was **** good
and had some career ahead of him

"A rare talent," the
teachers said

And sure the teachers were right
but they didn't know about the
prodigy's secret stash of
lewd drawings featuring his little
sister and even his mother

they were skillfully laid across A4
pages divided in panels and some
even had speech bubbles and
what was written in those speech bubbles
made her burst out of the cursed room
and run into hers screaming
"Sick **** sick **** sick **** ****!"

The family dinner was never the
same

nothing was the same

And why she kept the secret,
she didn't know

father punched him lightly in
the shoulder
and said, "Hey, keep that chin up, buddy.
Just know that a time
will come when life'll smile at us."

Sure, he'd been saying that
since forever. That was the earliest
and most common memory of him

Grinning from ear to ear
and saying that a day will come when life'll
smile upon them

But until that day
they'll have to sit in the town square
and play their cheap instruments
for passersby to drop money in their box

Keep that chin up…

Oh, father. You can't play the
violin holding your chin up
And life won't smile if you keep playing
it sad songs