I had a friend
No
I had a brother
Met him when I was about six or seven years old
And at this moment
I can say
That without a doubt
He is the most unluckiest ******* I ever met

Once we were walking in the playground
Him and another friend
We’re walking side by side
A bird flies over us
And ***** on my friend
That was my friend
My brother Alan
The unluckiest ******* I ever knew

His mother died of cancer when my friend was just two years old
Man what that would do to a child I can only imagine
Things like that
Like those kinds of experiences
They shape people's lives
And so it was for my friend
That for the rest of his life
His mother’s death haunted him
In some unsettling way

From an early age
He started abusing drugs
I know because I abused drugs with him
But drugs
for my friend
would go on to ruin his life
like so many addicts

When he was twenty five
His father died
Left him roughly a million dollars
At the time of his father’s death
He was addicted to ****
That drug took him for such a ride
He stopped communicating with the outside world
Cut everyone off
Family
friends
everyone
For months
No one could get a hold of him
Nothing
Someone had called the sheriff's out to the house
He wouldn’t open the door
There was nothing no one could do to get a hold of this guy
Until one day I decided that was it
I went to his house
Broke in through the garage window in broad daylight
The garage smelled like **** and something dead

The backdoor opens
And there he is
Standing there
Disheveled
Unshaven
unclean
Standing with this queer look on his face
What are you doing he asks me
I’ve come to see if you’re alive *******
What the ****

Inside the house
Inside the house was nothing like I had ever seen
There was trash everywhere
In almost every single place there was trash
All along the floorboards
throughout the kitchen
dining room
Living room
Trash on top of the dining room table
Fast food boxes
Bags
Wrappers crumpled up with days old melted cheese still clinging to it
Grease stained pizza boxes
The little Chinese take out boxes
The tiny metal handles showing signs of rust
And in the middle of the living room was the biggest heap trash I ever saw
with wads and wads of toilet paper
All of over the floor
An entire mound of it
The the product of endless nights of watching ****

I sat down
He offered me a beer
Little while later we smoked a bowl
I asked him why he wasn’t returning my calls
He tells me he’s been meaning to call me
And that was it
I pressed him no more
I didn’t know it then
But I know it now
I didn’t press the matter because my friend was suffering
He was suffering
A person living the way he was living
Addicted to ****
Disconnected from everyone
Family
Friends
Everyone except the drug dealer
That’s someone who’s suffering
And again a little of his mother followed him here

We talked of other times
Times like the present
Getting high
Drunk
And then that one instance that breaks the silence like none other
All the calm in the air
Gone
Like the wind was knocked out of the room
A knock at the door
We looked at each other
And then those words that one ever wants to hear

It’s the police, open up

*******
We look at each other
Did you call the police he asks me
No
Again a knock and the command
Alan walks to the door and opens it
Two police officers were standing there
A man and a women officer
They ask to come in
They say someone called of a break in
And that’s when everyone looks at me
I tell them I broke in
That it was me
That I broke it to see if he was alright

The woman officer walked around the living
She was visibly disturbed
She asks Alan how he could live like this
He doesn’t answer
The other officer began a kind of lecture
Alan just stood there
Nodding his head

Hey buddy, you can’t stop talking to people
You see your friend here
He cares about you

About that time there was another knock at the door
It’s the repo man
A man wearing a three piece suit
He’s come to get the truck parked in the garage
There hasn’t been a payment on it in months
Alan hands him the keys
He looks at me
Not mean or angry
But pleading for my help
Or maybe God
I don’t know

I stood there and watched this transpire
Watched the repo man drive off with the truck
Watched the officers leave
And then I watched my friend sit in his chair
Crying with his face buried in his hands
I’m sorry Alan
I don’t know how many times of said those words in my life
Too many I think

And that was my friend
All his life
Just like that
The most unluckiest ******* I ever knew

The east side
The drug pushers
Pimps
And hoes
The ***** alleys ways
Grass growing up through every single nook
Crevice
And crack of the imagination

The east side
How I love you
Only there I can see a homeless black ******
Gingerly crossing the street
Only there do I see men walking
Holding their beers
Wrapped up in brown paper bags
Where the Latina girls wear large hoop earrings
Dark make-up and hair
The black girls with their red lipstick

The east side
Smelling of dirt and ****
The internal engine of the city
The cracked houses
The homeless riding electric wheelchairs in the middle of the street
The tagged walls
The abandoned houses
The sign throwing
The shootings
The stabbings
The killings

The east side
Don’t ever change
I need you

Surrounding myself with greatness
Maybe they’ll shed a little of greatness on me

Miles
Sarte
McCarthy

I feel like I hang with you cats
When I’m alone in my room

Camus
Wright
Hedges

Some say they stand on the shoulders of giants
I stand on the shoulders of gods

Watts
Hesse
Jung

These people have shaped the way I think
The way I hold my pen
The way I speak when spoken to

X
Marquez
Plato

They are the fathers I never met
The love I always receive
I am them
As they are me
And so
I weep to weep
And reach for a pen
Or key

Cages
They say they’re not cages
But they’re cages
People wrapped in shiny blankets
They look like they’re getting ready to get cooked
Anything but
It’s **** cold in there
No sleep
Only cold and concrete
Shivering so much I wouldn’t be surprised if their teeth shot out of their mouth

These lives
These stories
These people treated like dogs

Separated at the border
A child cries
“Mama, mama!”
But the machine can’t hear you
The industrial capital neo liberal machine
It can’t hear you
It says to you, “you’re not human, little thing”

But I can hear this child
I can feel in body the wrongs being done to it
I just don’t understand it
But I want to

I want to understand how people can separate a child from its Father
Brother
Sister
mother
Don’t you know we’re humans?
Don’t you know we hurt
We cry
We laugh
We love

Living in a time where life is threatened at every moment
Where we have a doomsday clock
Telling us when all existence will end
The Climate Emergency
Nuclear Proliferation
A great pandemic

No wonder we have so many people on drugs
Self-medicating
The neo-liberal model of economics has left us no alternative
It is an economy based on a loss of meaning
A loss of meaning for our culture
Here in the United States

Here in the United States
And around the world
We have been alienated from nature
We have been alienated from others
We have been alienated from our work
And worst of all
We have been alienated from ourselves
This way of being
The consumer way of being
Holds no real purpose

Why do you think we have mass shootings
This general feeling of nihilism has its consequences
The young see it
They feel it coming
What is happening now
Only proves their convictions to life

So what the **** do we do
I say
We fight like hell
We fight by not giving in
By seeing that neighbor as a friend
Not an enemy
You see those people suffering on the tv screen
Not as those people
But our people

**** the rich
Until we
The working class
The middle class
The poor and forgotten class
Share one unifying idea
We are forever doomed

If we don’t wake up and realize the waters been heated up
And it’s getting ready to boil
Many more people will suffer
while all the gazillionaires
Holed up in their cozy little bunkers
Watch all of us perish
Like smoke in the wind
Snuggled up to their television screen

I’ve gone beyond
Introverts
Extroverts
By nature I’m an extrovert
But I’m a drug induced introvert
So, because time mends all things
I am what’s ******* out by the prolonged experience of these two ways of being

To the lady who knocked on my door
Looking for your cats
You scared me
With you rat nest hair
And slight but evil like stare
I didn’t do anything to them
I tell you
I haven’t seen them around
But you won’t take my word
You accuse me
saying I drowned them
And buried them in the ground

A tear drops from your blood shot eye
I don’t know if it’s from sadness
Or from the bottom of a bottle of demise
I make sure to stay six feet away
I talk to you from the crack in my door
Now I know where I’ve seen you before
This woman who knocked on my door

It was a dream
A horrid dream
A nightmare it seems
You were standing as you are now
But there was something written above your brow
Branded to your forehead
Were the letters FHP
And you were holding a bottle of whiskey
When you talked spittle shot from your mouth
I ducked and dodged about
But your virus finally caught hold me
I could feel it growing
This disease

When I awoke
My hands were around my throat
Thinking I couldn’t breathe
But then I realized it was just a dream
And now you
The woman who knocked on my door
I’m not so sure it was just a dream anymore
Are you sure you’re just here for your cats
Not my soul
Eating at my insides like rats
Go away please
Leave me in peace
So I can sit here in my isolated misery
Waiting to sleep
To dream

My wife and I rented a house in what we thought was a good neighborhood
We were there for only a couple of months before we were burglarized
Who ever it was kicked in the side door into the garage
And since we never locked the door from the house to the garage
It was an easy way in
They didn’t take much
The Xbox
The laptop
But it was the fact that someone broke into our home that ****** me off
That had never happened to me before
We figured it was someone that was watching the house
They had broke in at exactly the time we would be out

We had bought our daughter her first bike that year for Christmas
A Dora themed bike with training wheels
glittery tassels
And a bell that hardly worked
I had taken her out riding in the cul de sac
Down the street we went
Me by her side

That’s when I see this little Mexican lady
She’s coming out of this house
And she has this look on her face
I didn’t know right then what that look was
Only that it was familiar
It was only later did I realize it was shame

This house I had been suspicious of
Ever since we had been burglarized
Cars pulling up to the house
Idling
Someone goes in quick and comes back out just as fast
The car takes off
Drugs deals going on there daily

I had thought for months
That if anyone stole anything from our house
They had something to do with this house
Just my gut telling me things

So then this little mexican lady shuffles to the end of the cul de sac
To the gate where she meets this guy
He passes something over the fence to her but I can’t tell what it is
I’m busy with my daughter going the opposite way down the street
By the time I turn around and head back to our house
The guy
Young guy about 25
And the woman are walking toward me
We just so happen to be passing in front of the drug house at the same time
Him going in one direction
Me in another

And there he is
Holding in both of his arms
A backpack with a small flat screen tv
The cords wrapped around it
It’s the afternoon
In complete and unmasked daylight
I just watch him
This look of “what the ****” on my face

What’s up man he says
Nothing I say
Just seeing you walk into that house with stolen merchandise
I know I shouldn’t have said anything
I should have just kept my mouth shut
But that voice in my head was shouting
This is the ******* right here!
Well he didn’t like that
What said that to him

What business is it of yours
Are you a ******* cop
I could have got this at the pawn shop
And on and on
He’s coming closer to me
Me and my daughter
I tried to ignore him
Tried to walk away
But he just kept coming
The woman
Who I think was his mom
She was telling him, “la nina, la nina”
He just shrugged her off and kept coming
Kept cussing at me
Who the **** do you think you are

I think it was the papa bear in me
The papa bear that’s in every father
Every parent
when their child is in perceived danger
******* you don’t know who your ******* with
I say
I’ll ******* up
This is where he starts to back up
But I’m not finished

I’m going to take me daughter to my house
Meet me there so I can kick your ******* ***
He’s all the way to the front door by this time
His mother trying to push him into the house
Him with a look of “what the ****” on his face

I take my little girl back to the house
I go and sit down on the trunk of my car
Waiting
Someone comes out of the house and looks in me direction

I’m right here I say
My arms raised up to the sky
Moments later my wife comes out
What are you doing?
You’re not a teenager
Do you want to lose job
And on and on until I completely feel like a five year old
Dejected
Until finally I get off my ***
Walking behind my wife into the house
I take one last look toward the drug house but there’s no one there

Later when I calmed down
My wife tells that when she asked my daughter where I was
She said I was outside
That I was speaking some other language to some man down the street

Coming out of the ******* and hear - Oh there’s Bronson, ****
And I say, what ****
I laugh it off and pat the person on the back
My buddy says you can’t touch people because of the coronavirus
I laugh and touch the next teacher on the shoulder

This exchange shows the goings on of our workplace
Hell, it shows the goings on of every workplace
He’s talking about her
She’s talking about him
She wants he
He wants she
And on and on
It’s all *******
But funny *******, nonetheless

It makes things interesting
If you have thick skin
If not that little ego will get worn away
Like something being chewed over and over again
Until all you have left is this mangled old thing
And the only thing to do at that point is spit it out
Or swallow it

Why do I cry
This sadness comes from a place in me
Untouched by reality
So deep it might of started centuries ago
All I know is you are here with me
The sadness
All I know is that these tears are real
As real as my breath
My blood
Oddly enough
This feeling gives me solace
Perhaps because I know I’m alive
More than any moment before
I am alive
Locked away behind these closed doors

So much information out there
Bombarded by information
What am I to believe?
So many people with an agenda
With a motive for their point of view
So many wanting to gain or maintain power
Who do I believe?

It seems
More and more
I can only believe in myself
My body
For truth is in the body
Every thought
Every sensation
Every emotion
Those are the facts of me
I can be certain of those
Not that they are true
But they are true that they came to be

Behind all these thoughts
Feelings
Emotions
There is a viewer
An observer
That which is not me
Prior to the thought of me
Apriori

It is the place of non being
The place where all of this
This world
These facts
These gestures of humanity
Are born of
When I sit quiet
I feel this truth
But as soon as I try to reveal it to you
It’s gone
Like a bird when I reach out to catch it
It Flys away
just out of reach

I haven’t had contact with anyone
Other than my family
For ten days
When I meet neighbors on walks
I always make sure they’re at least across the street

Sure I do yoga
I lift weights
Meditate
And now I’m starting to run again
Have to keep a routine

I’m scheduled back to work until May 1
I doubt they will send us back to work
Back to school to work with some of worst harbingers of disease
Teenagers
Yeah, the governor is not going to put people in danger
Threatening a second outbreak of this virus
No, newsome has stepped up
More so than the idiot in the White House

I don’t care what all the rightwingers say
He helped create this catastrophe with his ignorance
His arrogance
His narcissism
His regard for only himself

When a truly rational person discerns the facts
Really looking at what could have been done before this
Trump is responsible for all of it
for not getting things done sooner
His cult of personality could have got all these people ready
If he would have just said it’s a big deal
If he just would have just let the scientists
Doctors
Specialists of disease and control
Do their ******* job we all wouldn’t be under lock down
Waiting for some invisible enemy to come to **** us

Once sickness
Disease
Sets in
Thoughts of the future become lost
Erased by pain
Suffering
And the thought of death

One must keep their eyes to the ground
See what is right in front of them
I suppose that’s why everyone is scared
Corona virus
Everyone so scared of a virus named after a beer
Corona
Crown

It stalks in the night
Silent
It looks for those in the daylight
It causes people to buy gallons upon gallons of water
Toilet paper
Food
so much food you get sick just thinking about eating it all

People have become the enemy
Friends
Family
Bringing death with them when they enter a room

Possible death lingers in the air
On my skin
Or on a doorknob
Yes you
I am afraid of you
The one who will take me away
My son away
My daughter
My wife

Burn them
**** them
Take them away from me
But what I’m really saying is
Burn me
**** me
Take me away from you

This will not end well
Some will only have their memories to cling to
Pictures of the dead
Others will live in torment
Why did I go there
Why didn’t I stay home

One thing is for sure
The worst is let to come

It’s getting serious
We’re all ordered to stay in place
Not to go out
Over half the population of California could be infected in 8 weeks
I hope none of us in this house gets it
I want us to see this thing from a distant
As a spectator a sport
Watching this horrific moment in time pass us
Unscathed

I want that for my family
But you never know what the future will hold
The most minute detail can change the course of an entire life

I don’t want to go outside
I’m scared to
What if I get it
I’m not like these youngsters that go about like everythings fine
Seems like that there’s just a disconnect of some kind

My daughter
My daughter fly’s to Washington D.C. to visit her boyfriend
In the midst of a pandemic
She takes a flight
A flight where there are other people
A whole airport with all these people
What the hell was she thinking
She wasn’t
She’s not supposed to
She’s twenty years old

Hunker in place
That’s what I’m going to do
As supplies last
We have enough food for about a month
Got five pounds of flour today
Another ten pounds coming tomorrow
Dropped off by friends brave enough to venture out
Risk themselves for the rest
As soon as I received the groceries I walked straight to the bathroom and washed my hands

The worst is yet to come
I’m hoping it doesn’t hit Bakersfield too hard
I don’t think it will
We don’t have a major airport
No major port from sea
Our city is kind of isolated from the rest of California
Conserative
Republican leaning
The tail end of the Bible Belt

What I saw once as a vice
I now see as a benefit
Out here in the San Joaquin Valley
Our rural and isolated ways
Ways which we were criticized by real city folk
Los Angeles
San Diego
San Francisco
These ways could help keep us alive

My little girl
Not so little anymore
Oh how I love you so
A beaming light of joy
Bouncing
Running
Playing around this house
The vision of you
Makes me feel like life itself is looking right at me
The whole world focused on this moment
Makes me feel that every wrong I ever committed was right
Because without them I wouldn’t have you here with me
Makes me feel that everything ever done
Even before me was me
Was all worth it
Life opening up before me
Like a flower in spring
Like a child’s hand
Like a fawn opening its’ eyes for the first time
All of it is more than just right
It’s what's supposed to be
And so you are supposed to happen to me
My love
The unquestioned part of my life
Happy birthday

I’m reading the Plague
I have been reading it for sometime now
right at the start of this whole Corona virus catastrophe
So many similarities between the story and now
Politicians who don’t want to tell the truth
Incompetent people in power
The constant fear of the plague
Or in our case a pandemic

On the cover of this book there is an eye
A human eye
Staring back at me
The Plague by Albert Camus
It might be Camus’s eye
Against a red background
It gives off the feeling of having the plague

I hope I don’t catch this virus
I just don’t want to go through all the *******
Going to the hospital
Having strangers look after you
Looking into your private life
I hate that ****
Plus dying would ****
I have kids to see grow up
Yeah, I gotta do that
The father thing
The father experience
But if I can’t
If I do succumb to this killer of lungs
I will do my best to have an honorable death
Hell, I’ll be scared shitless
**** I don’t want to get this thing
I still have a whole lot of life left in me
I just hope this itch in my throat is a head cold
Not the Plague

I think of you
Every now and again
I can’t believe that you're gone
Funny though
It’s been so long that I think you might walk through the door

All I have is memories
I don’t even have pictures
Your letters
All those letters
Thrown away years ago
As I was cast away
Really
I cast myself away

I feel responsible
And in a way I am
But I am a fact among factors
So many circumstances bearing down on all of us at one time
It is comical to think that I am that one circumstance
Out of so many
That tipped the scales
To make you do what you did

But still
I wasn’t there when you needed me most
There was a time when we were both so young
When we found solace from the world in each other
In our words
In our arms
On our lips

You were it for me
It was the happiest time of my life
I reach out in front of me to that phantom face
The face in mind
The face forever enshrined within the impossible

I know I will never sit with you again
Hold you again
Kiss you again
And so I sit here waiting for time to take me
As one day it will
But between this day and that
You will go on in me as a light shines at night
For all of us live within the hearts of others
As you live in mine

Toilet paper
Toilet paper
My kingdom for toilet paper
People around here are treating toilet paper as if it were gold
You would think people couldn’t function without it
Like suddenly they would forgot how to speak
Or eat
Or ****

This virus has got people scared
Me
I’m so much scared
I’m just well aware of my ignorance
I have no idea what is going to happen
But I don’t think there is going to be Armageddon
Many people around here do

Food aisles are bare
Paper products all gone
Water
Frozen foods
Canned foods
Chips
Gone like they never were
Leaving behind an empty feeling of anticipation
Ominous and looming

There isn’t a bullet to spare in the whole **** city
Every place is sold out
Walmart
Dickeys
All the guns shops
All those **** right wing crazies
Who god and guns make are great combination
They’re scared the most
In makes sense though
Once you’re conditioned to fear
It’s easy to swap one fear for another

There is that little voice in me that says
They may be right
It might be Armageddon
But then I think that’s *******
Why be afraid?
That’s too debilitating
Rather
Be aware
Be fit and strong
Be ready at all times
I can’t control what might happen
But I can control me
What I do

I am aware that my family needs to eat
So we need food
We have food
My gun is loaded with plenty of ammo
Now, I’m no gun nut
I’m just sensible
I bought the **** thing last year
On credit
My wife was ******

Along with the gun I also purchased 500 rounds of ammo
So I’m good in that department
I don’t have to worry about some starving homeless guy busting down the front door
Raiding the bathroom first
Using my toilet paper to wipe his *** for the first time in a week
It could happen

I just hope I don’t get it
I’ve smoked a little **** these last few weeks
Lungs could be compromised
I’m not thinking so much for myself
It’s for my children
My wife would get over it
But my kids
It would hit them hard
My death would create an everlasting experience
Felt at all times
During every part of their entire life
They would be defined by it
So, lets not die just yet
For their sake

My brother just left my house
It sure is interesting to have a relationship with someone your entire lifetime
And more interesting is how that relationship changes over time
At first we didn’t get along too well
He was the baby until I came along 11 years later
He didn’t like that I think
Used to pull my pants down and hit me
hit me with the belt
Saying all the while that my mom and dad spoiled me
Letting me get away with everything
So he took it upon himself to dish out some justice
Revenge
Revenge for me being born

All the way through my childhood and into adolescence
It was like this
But you know
I didn’t see it like that at the time
It wasn’t until later
Looking back at my life did I realized that I was abused
Physically
Mentally
By my older brother

The hardest part about it was that I loved him
And yet he would do that to me
I suppose that hurt me the most as a child

The abuse finally culminated with me having a mental breakdown
That day I had ditched school with my girlfriend
My brother found me with her at my friends house
Takes me home and starts threatening me
Hitting me
I was terrified
And so I lost it
I was fifteen years old

The psychologist
The tests
The interviews
More tests

My mom almost admitted me to a group home
But my dad said no
Bring his *** back home he said

The surprise drug test
With the guy looking at my **** while I give a sample

And then the day came  when my brother and I fought
Me seventeen and him twenty eight
Throwing him off of me
To the ground
I jumped on him and punched him in the face
Over and over again

Now
Some thirty years later
Now that both of us are grown men
None of that really matters
Today my brother and I
We’re friends