yesterday i saw dolphins
i swam with dolphins
their black knife jackknife dorsal-whatevers
slicing the water, scalpels into flesh,
disappearing, reappearing, disappearing,
reappearing
a herd of silent Lamborghini cracking jokes at my expense
(looks plural to me)

yesterday i saw dolphins
i chatted with an old man
who said they're laughing all the time, diving for *******
"Oh yeah, we get dolphins here,"
he might as well tell me Jesus lives there, too
or some kind of black magic came through
making these creatures appear
his nonchalance is weird

yesterday i swam with dolphins
well, saw, not swam, viewed, not caressed
but
all i want to do is see them
all i want to do is breathe with them
all i want to do is float in the same sea with them


my heart ripped to pieces in appreciation

Perhaps the earth is floating,
I do not know.
Perhaps the stars are little paper cutups
made by some giant scissors,
I do not know.
Perhaps the moon is a frozen tear,
I do not know.
Perhaps God is only a deep voice
heard by the deaf,
I do not know.

Perhaps I am no one.
True, I have a body
and I cannot escape from it.
I would like to fly out of my head,
but that is out of the question.
It is written on the tablet of destiny
that I am stuck here in this human form.
That being the case
I would like to call attention to my problem.

There is an animal inside me,
clutiching fast to my heart,
a huge carb.
The doctors of Boston
have thrown up their hands.
They have tried scalpels,
needles, poison gasses adn the like.
The crab remains.
It is a great weight.
I try to forget it, go about my business,
cook the broccoli, open the shut books,
brush my teeth and tie my shoes.
I have tried prayer
but as I pray the crab grips harder
and the pain enlarges.

I had a dream once,
perhaps it was a dream,
that the crab was my ignorance of God.
But who am I to believe in dreams?

teamara

As in the nub of the remains of crayola crayon that’s been used to color in so many smiling cartoon suns on a piece of paper-
Her favorite color is yellow.
And I don’t mean a wimpy *** pastel yellow or sometimes a pale yellow
I mean her favorite color is bright *** yellow.
Like Pikachu yellow.
Like she’s almost nineteen but she’s still willing to play Gameboy Pokemon yellow.
There’s something innocent yet corny kind of yellow about her.
She’s beautiful like yellow jirasol petals
She’s intricate as yellow thread woven in a Rasta Dom
She’s yellow like gold and Africa
She’s sweet like pineapples and delicate like daffodils
I still don’t know why her favorite color is yellow
Maybe it has to do with her fascination of Asian men…
I mean! ...with the continent of Asia
She thinks she’s more like pink Japanese cherry blossom trees in the summer
But I know she’s truly yellow petals on Paolo Verde trees blowing in the wind spreading around Tucson
A metaphor for her love
She’s yellow like the color in the middle of my pride rainbow- She supports me
She’s yellow like the big painted sun at the hospital with a big grin
I wonder why nobody smiles at hospitals
The place where life is easily given as taken
Where we are reminded that our health is sometimes taken for granted
Other than that great big yellow sun
She is the only that radiates yellow and smiles
In waiting rooms, she seems like she’s the calmest
Even though she’s the only one going through surgery
She’s so beautiful on the inside her body can’t even take it
She doesn’t deserve scions or scalpels to even be considered touching her bronze skin
I wish instead they would strip down the color yellow from my life
And give it to her to make her smile so bright that even word “cancer” would cease to exist
But still. Even through pain and hardships
She still smiles. Not only is she yellow when she’s happy
She tends to radiate yellow even when she’s gloomy
When I’m upset, her aura has way of rubbing off on mine
And I get insight to why her favorite color is yellow
‘*** she’s the kind of yellow that represents strength
She’s yellow like tall forts made from gold bars
She’s yellow like flames that roll of her tongue when she spits fire
She’s yellow like a crayola-crayon… except she can’t be broken
From her, I’m learning
That even when you’re hurting
You can still shine bright like your favorite color.

A morgue is an unhappy place regardless of time or place.
The somber few that haunt the halls often project the surroundings dreadfully.
While walking the gray tiled rooms it’s known too that we shall one day wear the toe tag.
But mortality gives way to reality and jobs are done with quiet respect for passed souls.

And then there’s the Juarez Morgue...
A hot July day and a drive through Mexican customs brought a meeting with police officials.
A body in their possession, they thought, would bring transportation home.
Calloused officials with shiny gold 45’s aglow, spoke rhythmic Spanish in their police code.

A “******,” said one and this should be fun a ride with those looking more like hit men.
A car loaded with “Madrinas,” in tow and AR 15’s laid in seats in a row.
How odd thought he in a land purportedly free and fright on passerby faces.
Cocky bravado speaking radio slang,
did drive towards the Juarez morgue.

A couple miles out a turn in and out did place them in a neighborhood quiet.
But a familiar smell in a nose did swell, and wonder of how that could be valid.
Putrefaction it was, the odor rose above as the children played gleefully nearby.
How could it be when he could not see the edifice emitting the smell?

A small octagon building, small air conditioners in four windows.
Could it be that this was the morgue?
The desert sun bright and heat overbearing.
My God this is a place of death among many living, what a fright!

The escorts did enter, the detective slowly met the front door.
He was quite pensive when sliding from light to the dark.
His eyes gone black his vision insufficient, as he started to be able to see.
A wet sounding step and a curious glance, did place his feet in crimson water.

Disbelief as the room came into focus, he saw well the visions of what belong in hell.
Bags of bones stacked they were, a femur and skull, the fully decomposed welcomed.
Four porcelain tables and bodies disabled lay upon with nary a stare.
Just shortly behind bodies piled feet high forget a tray or a gurney.

Overcome by it all he began to stall, and try to gather his thoughts.
Rank smell in his nose sent him scrambling for his cigar.
The smoke unable to cover what he did discover, his heart fell hard to his knees.

How inhuman it was to see rampant disregard for the dead.
No scalpels used to cut the Y,
a kitchen knife he could cry.
Sewed up a corpse, with rough twine of course, he regretted where he did stand.
His spine became metal his mind did reel and a new wrinkle appeared on his brow.

On some summer nights when heat fills the air, he does look up to the moon.
His mind travels back to the withering stacks, and the odor still gathers in his nose.
The years have passed by and he doesn’t know why, the memories will not fade.
Restless sleep, fallen heart, many more new wrinkles have taken there place.

A war there has broken out,
and factions viciously ****.
He can’t help but wonder what has happened in Juarez.
The tractors and the bodies they plow.
No building this time a long ditch in the ground scores of people pushed into a long trench.

He walks each day with what he has seen, which cannot be unseen.
Wrestling with himself in the bed, and covering his head.
The dead they do come to visit still.
The Morgue in Juarez left it’s print in the mind of a young fellow.

Indulge the last line if you have some spare time.  Dios bendiga los muertos de Juarez.

We are a deeply entwined vine
Growing ever more far apart,
But still attached at the roots.
He has rooted himself in myself,
And has become a part of me.
I dissected worms in high school,
But I don't feel qualified
To dissect our conjointment.
He has asked me to hand him the scalpel,
And I have become too accustomed
To his requests to decline.
We stare at each other,
Both of us too timid to cut the ties,
And go to bed side by side
With scalpels in hand.

morphine. i found ashes in the pages of the photo albums under
my bed yesterday, leaves turned red pages to the colder chapters
and i thought you could still grow a rose this time of year but then i
remembered when we used to make flower crowns in sixth grade so
i took some morphine;
it helped with the pain

the night is younger than ourselves and we run through breakspears road shattering the lampposts with our bare hands, yes we are the new generation! everybody knows we aren’t scared of losing the pieces in our own, we just want to see the skin pulled off the tips of our fingers! (when you’ve been feeling the blunt edges of scalpels and needles all your life walking on glass starts to feel like heaven)

codeine— hell is getting hotter! she took to the clouds and the glass
shards wrote crimson sonnets on the bottoms of her feet, marietta i
trusted you i really did, i made you promise
that you’d stay; not with me, of course
(some things are more important in the end)
i wanted you to stay here.
but you wanted to see the stars so
i choke down the cough syrup;
one ache distracts me from the other

dear marietta,
the light distorts so strangely here in the water.
this is how i want to leave this place

“El Rabio”

Saturday 6-4
Hello again white pages. I’m writing this on Sunday for Saturday because I came seven hours away from dying yesterday, I was a little busy. I know I need to write this now or I’ll start to forget certain details so, here we go.

I woke up at 5:30 for my 6:00 breakfast. The air in Lima is always wet and sharp in the morning; it is incomparable to any type of Alabama morning mist. The morning mist in Lima is tainted from the 8 billion people who live here and curse it with their waking breath, it curses them back with sharp gray stings of water on their, our, faces as we leave the shelter of the tin roofs and adobe walls. As I walked into the kitchen, Madre Tula scolded me, again, “¡Estás tan flaco como un frijole mi amor! Ven. Ven aqui. ¡Comé!” Which, if you forget your Spanish years from now when you are reading this basically means she thinks I’m too skinny and need more meat on my bones. Madre accomplishes this by feeding me, every single morning, a piece of torta, a bowl of cualquier con fruta, and a ham and quail egg sandwich. It’s always delicious and yesterday was no exception. The NesCafe coffee yesterday burnt my tongue. I gulped it down in a heated hurry because of how tired I was. I gave Madre un besito and left to walk down the street to get the girl interns, Dylan and Lindsay, from their house so we could catch a combi (bus) to Salamanca to work the yard sale for our church with our missionary leaders, Mike and Lauren Ferry.

We made it to the yard sale safe and got straight to work. There was already a huge line of locals waiting to be the first ones in the gates to buy what the American missionaries were selling. After setting up tables and moving hundreds of boxes for about an hour Lauren came sprinting up to me and said, “You got bit by a dog?” I tried to laugh and make a joke about it being just my luck but she interrupted, “This is really serious, Cyril. This is a dang big deal.” I was instantly immersed into a stage of cold adrenaline as she continued, “Cyril, you need to go to the hospital. NOW. People die from this. We’ve had to send interns home for the rest of the summer for scratches from dogs in Salamanca.” She continued to tell me that I needed to catch a combi and find the nearest hospital immediately. The sides of my vision were clouding black and I sat down, I was suddenly very cold.

I think I was in shock and my brain was trying to refuse what it was being forced to process. Rabies. Rabies? Really? That **** dog. It was foaming and all the locals ran from it. I don’t know why I thought if I just stood still it would run past me. I remember the locals screaming Spanish, Quechua, or Aymaraat at me that I was helpless to translate with my two semester of Spanish at Auburn. That **** dog was brown and its lips were foaming. After I kicked it off me and climbed up on a wall of someone’s house I remember wiping the foam off my bloodied legs. Why the hell did I not think, “Oh, that’s probably a bad thing, right?” No. I was just too embarrassed by having made a ****** spectacle of myself in front of the locals to even think about the inherent dangers of rabies.

“Cyril?” I remember looking up from my racing thoughts. Somehow I had ended up sitting on the ground with my head in my hands. I was shaking as I looked up and saw Mike, Lauren’s husband, offering me a hand. He asked me to try and remember exactly what time I got to Salamanca yesterday and when I was attacked. I thought about it and remembered I was running late so I kept checking my watch. It was around 3pm. “****,” Mike said. When you hear a missionary cuss is when you know you’re totally ******. “Stand up, come on.” He helped me to my feet. “Cyril, listen. If you don’t get the first booster shot within 24 hours you die. There is nothing anyone can do. You have about seven hours left. You need to hurry, don’t be scared.” When he said that I remember laughing. Mike gave me a concerned eyebrow furrow as he led me, by the arm, over to one of the other missionaries working the yard sale, Mrs. Sarah. He explained the situation to her and I watched the Peruanos spilling in the gates and milling through the rows of tables and missionaries selling old books and trinkets. One lady that walked in had a monkey with yellow ears on her shoulders. I remember worrying it could be rabid too.

“Cyril?” Mrs. Sarah smiled at me, “You’re going to be okay honey. Lets go.” We left the yard sale. I remember anxiously watching the monkey sitting on the ladies shoulder and as we walked past it, it **** all over her and started to rub it in her hair. I swear it was smiling at me. Mrs. Sarah hailed a combi and we headed for Clinica Anglo-Americana. The taxi driver asked if we were okay and Mrs. Sarah told him about my situation. He fingered the rosary hanging from his rear view mirror and said over and over again, “Dios mio…pobre, pobrecito.” I understood that much Spanish. Even my taxi driver thought I was going to die.

We pulled up to the hospital and told the guard with the AK-47 why we were there and he waved us in past the spiked metal gates. Inside the hospital looked more like a bed and breakfast than the place where I would be given a second chance at life after rabies. The walls were whitewashed and the Untied States, Peruvian, and British flags draped down from three golden flagpoles by the front door. There were beautiful pink and yellow flowers everywhere that scared away the painful Peruvian morning fog that permeated my memory of the rest of that morning. We paid the taxi driver; he patted my hand and drove off.

Inside, I was encouraged to explain why I was there—in Spanish of course— to the friendly nurse waiting in the entrance. I was furious. Time was wasting; it was not the time for me to practice subjuntivo or pluscuamperfecto. I mangled out a few awkward sentences and the nurse’s jaw dropped. Mrs. Sarah erupted into belly bursting alto laughter. The rest of the waiting room was empty. I was so confused, terrified, and angry I didn’t know what else to do except sit. So, I sat on the closest wooden bench and felt a tear peer over one of my eyelids. Mrs. Sarah and the nurse were twittering in rapid Spanish and I kept thinking, “Six hours. I have six hours left to live by now.” Mrs. Sarah walked over, put her arms around me and explained that I had told the nurse the reason I was in the hospital was because I killed a dog in the streets yesterday. I smiled.

“Señor Blythe?” A doctor appeared and frantically motioned for us to come into his room. I walked in and it looked just like any other doctors office except the tray of scalpels, huge needles, tweezers, and vials of purple medicine beside the bed that he motioned for me to lay down on, “Acostarse.” Mrs. Sarah told me to relax. Humorous. The doctor and his two nurses wiped down the bite marks on each of my legs with three pungent and strangely colored gels in quick succession. I swear I hear a sizzling noise. The doctor picked up the scissors and I winced, but he only used them to open up a white packet from which he pulled out a huge thick roll of rough, wet gauze, which he used to wipe my legs clean. It numbed my legs. Then, of course, he grabbed the biggest needle on the table and used it to stab both legs; directly into the bite marks. If he hadn’t already scrubbed them so hard they were scab-less the needle would have cracked the crusted scabs back to flowing red. Rabies vaccines are not fun.

After a few more vials of life were shot into me the doctor wrapped up my legs in weird smelling gauze I was told not to shower and that I had to return to the US within 3 days to receive a “monohemoglobin shot” that they didn’t have in the hospitals in Lima at the time. I sat up on the bed and asked Mrs. Sarah, “So, am I going to live?” She smiled and nodded her head and the nurse answered, *“Si, mi amor, por supuesto.”

From a fifth storey bachelor’s window
pondering shadows in the car park below,
Johnny opens another can.
I stuff another pipe.

We talk about our trip to Brazil
and how great it would’ve been had we gone;
Johnny turns up the radio.
I take the first drag.

Old girlfriends swing by in our conversation,
most of them giving us the finger, mind you;
Johnny dabs at his tears.
I pass him the pipe.

Dusk-scalpels are slicing through the curtains now,
they scrape over coffee table dust,
through Irish coffee stains,
cut open Johnny’s frown:

The neighbours are at it again, arguing;
he accuses her of seeing someone else,
she tells him correct,
it’s your ****** sister.

Johnny taps out the pipe in the ashtray,
says he has to do someone a favour;
throws on his jacket,
says take it easy.

Johnny’s shadow tiptoes into evening,
a car alarm screams and a gunshot cries.
I convince myself
this is Brazil.

Consciousness,
mindfulness,
philosophical enlightenment -
Live for the **** of it.
Camus was right to breathe in spite of the tide of crushing emptiness.
The boulder gets heavy,
the bones grow weary,
the mountain is steep and we are steeped in irony.
For life can be deadly and death's rows of gravestones mark homes for freed slaves,
their crossed arms hiding scars
left by the teeth of nihilistic grief beatings and
surgery scalpels set to carve by
frequent false
alarms.

Sisyphus took but one break,
to hear the chains rattled from the gates,
hellish obsidian, vermilion flames licking lumps of silica grains
mixed with ash and a black tar splash.

And Orpheus sighed on the lyre and brought tears to the eyes of the most vile,
while Sisyphus
paused -
not long,
but a lifetime for those still free to subside
to dust, from blood and guts,
when their time arrives.

The trials of life,
the striving rites and lavish gifts of light to defy
the black and empty dusk still fail.
Eurydice grows pale as Orpheus turns to see her cheeks
losing every trace of peach hue,
eyes emptying,
lungs leaking their
last gale.

Struggling again, Sisyphus is sent
tumbling down the face of the great mountain,
grabbing gravel and sand and gashing gaps in his hard leather hands.
Bleeding ash,
not blood,
hot red mud dripping from the thick lacerations,
mixing with the sickening avalanche of wasted effort and waylaid plans.
Repeating the climb up the steep peak,
bones creaking like a clock's gears,
rattling off the seconds,
minutes,
hours,
years
until the watch stops its
panicked hands.

Until then we will toil unswayed
as we wear stones to clay,
carving winding paths in spirals up the mountain's waist.
No calm for those with breath,
no rest for beating hearts.
We must live in spite of life,
and then sink silent
to the earth.

Your words cut like scalpels
Through hair skull and scalp
Culling the cunning thoughts
My Foolish heart has bought

But your blade is truth
No anesthetic
Can dull, numb or soothe
Unsympathetic

It removes the lie
Like a tumor
Until my life's
A rumor

So many spiderwebs
each with individual suction cups
******* blood and injecting poison....

a collapse lung....
withered and black....
festering in the hot sun
kissing silver scalpels
and ******* yellow pus
into crunchy white tarp....

capsules that release toxins
into a parched mouth

spiderwebs.... make love to my arm

Raw flesh drenched in alcohol
Burning numbing till paralyzed, keeps me still
                         Power you have over my being, keeps me fearing

             Your presence destroys me, shatters me
Feeling naked, inadequate when my eyes see
My reflection's negation in you
Cannot hide anything when you expose all of me

Wounded animal beaten without avail
Knowing, proprietor of my pain
               You don't understand my whimper, wail?
My blood being diluted by the sweat of your laborious efforts
Precociously tactful, inhumanly strangling my will

Ever-becoming antithesis to facades, fears, farces in me
Facing scalpels and clamps to my insecurities, my tactics, my pride
Leaving me open not caring if I'll die from exposure
                    Caring only that you're exposing the real me

I-nvoluntarily l-acerated, o-n the v-erge of e-nding u-ndone
Somberly Always Unsettling Leaving me bare

Poets, like doctors, know the anatomy of suffering... tearing the paper with rusty carving knives...

We see scarlet scratches and eggplant colored bruises on every square inch of foolscap... we open scars with words... stainless steel scalpels which we never sanitize...

We perform open heart surgery with blunt instruments... We cauterize the wounds with coals of Fire...

We are civil war sawbones, removing the gangrenous leg to save the body... Carrying out our task with whiskey bottle anaesthesia.

So have a care... The Doctor Is In.


SoulSurvivor
(C) 5/30/2016

Relationships are not easy-peasy,,
Some take work, some, self-sacrifice.

Some must overcome defects congenital,
Obstacles so great that the Roman Gods
Are asked to intervene,
Send down those hotties, the fiery Furies,
who punished crimes at the instigation
of the soon to be frozen victims

So to the chase,
let's cut,
My woman's has true blood,
H2O
In solid state.

Her body is icy, permanent frosty,
And requires regular de-icing
Before Take Off.
This condition being true of her
Every part except, her prima facie.

Even the bed complains,
Whining creeks and groans,
Sometimes it even screams,
When she get in sans pajamas.

I,
A bastion of extra human warmth,
As my poems bear witness,
Normal temp is 102,
I am the joy of her life,
For love, I make the
Ultimate sacrifice.

Her feet, medieval torture instruments,
Her bare hands, have
Killed lesser men and folkloric-ly,
Reputedly, she has flash froze and keeps
Some vampires in the basement fridge,
Suitable for reheating in the microwave.

You may think this charming,
This poem, an amuse-bouche,
But it ain't funny when I go to the
Emergency room for first degree burns.

Remember when Ralph's friend
Got his tongue stuck to the metal pole,
In "A Christmas Story"?
That was me, that was her!

But our together,
Approaching near five years,
Is a Survivor.
Two hurricanes, ******* named
Irene and Sandy,
A divorce from a mean spirited wbitch
That took so long
The Matrimonial Lawyers ***-ociation
Had my portrait painted over their fireplace.

Even the icicles otherwise know correctly as
Her Extremities,
Have not come between us

When my lips kiss her neck,
Surgically remove heart with poetic scalpels,
Hold it, fluttering and with both hands, warm.

Her eyes close, and neuronic messages
Commence firing, telegraphed, messengered,
To the far corners of every Purim Persian province,
Let the wicked witch melting begin,
Commence the holiday of
Her Festivities.

If you think any man,
Could perform said feat of endurance,
You better checkout again the name of the
Man who authored this story,
For his name, with special powers, endowed.

if you want to know how it sounds... well a former girlfriend of mine had siblings younger than her, two boys and a girl... i started smoking when i was 21... after years of adamant protest against smoking, i remember times when smoking cigarettes was still legal in england in pubs and clubs, i'd come home after a night out and aired my clothes because of the stink... now i'm a steam-engine myself... goes like: puff puff choo choo! aged rock stars are the funniest people around, post-hedonism and they're all dieticians and healthy-life experts... anyway, if you're wondering how it sounds: a former girlfriend of mine siblings used to imitate jokingly the baritone of my voice... a darth vader sort of gimmick... now add the cigarette thick phlegm lining my larynx... you get the picture.*

i can attest with bukowski the problem of writing
into excess, there's a certain melancholy
surrounding writing prolifically,
all your best poems are lost,
well, "lost", in that there's so much
clutter, and esp. if you don't
keep personal copies, but shove
them all into a public domain
without a care, you don't have a chance
to rekindle reading some of
the poems you really enjoyed, or would
like to re-enjoy, i.e. re-read after you
re-read most of them to do the editorial
bits of revising a spelling mistake
or a faulty grammatical sequencing,
and then akin to nietzsche, who was taught
the laws of grammar like the laws of
physics (throw something up, it falls),
i was never taught grammar, my education
in language was based upon the method
that: if you can speak and write coherently,
you don't need the grammatical arithmetic
drilled into you - the principle of a good
education i guess: get a feel for it, mess around
with it, become a pioneering chemist or something;
and never, ever, write poetry conscious of
technique and identifiers like metaphors,
that's for the critics to spot, with their scalpels
of rhyme:

bay (a)
say (a)
bottom (b)
***** (b)
                         flay (a)
sanctity (c)
evidently (c)
                        common (b)               etc.

but still the melancholy, i sometimes wish i
could reread some of the poems i wrote,
but since i didn't keep any to myself, i don't
have any copies for myself, none stored in a darkened
place like a drawer, stacked pieces of paper or something,
and in an age of constant cyber warfare with
everyone hacking everyone, not keeping copies for
yourself seems rather mad, i'd hardly say it's daring,
i once lost a whole stash of poetry because
i simply asked a girl where she was from to get
a feel for her poetry, she reported me to the site's
administrators, and without a chance to explain
got erased, a little holocaust of never actually existing,
not as big a holocaust of what darwinism is doing
to us reaching far back into prehistory and the platonic
theory of forms of that mirror: man | monkey -
well, honestly, no, not from a theological point of
argumentation, the aesthetics aren't working on this one,
maybe that's why once the naked form of man
adorned by painters has become a pornographic jest
of mandible parts - and why does western society
sincerely make a fetish out of ****? horrid scenario...
anyway... it's mad that i don't keep any of the poems
for myself, i just throw them all into the public domain
because i feel they can be safe there,
and perhaps it's because i love the actual work of writing
poetry, more the love of the work than the end product,
even though i'd like to relive some of these poems
in my head, re-read them and see their optical correlations
leaving the blank plateau without hill or groove or
canyon... but then there's that sadness of some of
these poems becoming orphans... it's almost like they
don't know who bore them.

I am tired of being scared to walk home in the dark-
to step outside once the sun has faded and yellow lights are barely bright enough to
light the way.
I am tired of being scared that every time I look
down or away
it will be the last time.
That every rustle in the bushes is a predator stalking their prey-
that every set of footsteps behind me is bigger sounding,
louder with every intake of breath,
and it will be the last thing I hear.
I am tired of having to carry myself with less dignity than I have,
of being stared at with less respect than I deserve,
because a man has decided that
because I have
*******
and
wide hips
it is my duty to be objectified and sexualized
like I am less than
human.
I am tired of holding my breath until I am behind my locked door,
of being afraid to take the bus when there is only one other human on it besides the bus driver and
he stares at me
the whole time, gets off at the same stop I do, tries to
walk into my building behind me,
until I tell him
with steel in my voice and iron in my spine,
"you need to leave. I haven't seen you before".
And when he looks startled,
like a deer caught in my headlights,
I get angry
because he was expecting a
scared little girl
but instead he got a
strong, resilient woman.
Because I am nothing if not
strong.
When you're a size
14
and the other girls laugh at you
when they think you
can't
see them,
when they whisper about you in the bathroom when they don't know you're there-
when you're a little girl, all of
10
and crying because you'll never be a
size 4
and those other girls,
the ones you played with on the playground not a year before
have turned against you,
laughing
and
pointing
because you hit puberty before any of them and you have
body parts
that they don't-
you have to learn to build yourself a backbone.
To build yourself a
spine of iron
and
a mouth of steel.
When the entire world has bet
against you
and the house has the game rigged,
you must stand for yourself because no one else will.
You must walk in the night
anyways,
you must keep your chin held high
and your mouth set with
defiance.
You were not built like other girls.
You were never
soft
and
pliable.
Because you were forced to forge your own path to succeed.
You do not have the luxury of being built
to fit the mold.
When they made you into what you are,
when they shaped your confidence with their
words,
sharper than scalpels and hurting
just as much,
they tried to
break
you.
But you-me-
we are not easily broken.
Because we have a
mouth made of steel
and a backbone made of iron
and though their words still sting,
their words still hurt,
you have built yourself an armor
to defend.
It is coated in wax so their words slide right off,
it is made of titanium so their weapons will never hit their marks.
Even still,
my heart races when I walk alone at night,
my mind whirls and my world tilts when I see
a man
walking towards me in the dark.
It does not matter, in this moment, that I was
reborn
through trial by fire,
It does not matter that I
survived
against all odds.
That fear sits like a stone in my stomach,
weighing me down and freezing my muscles.
It does not stop when he walks by and nothing happens.
It is the fear that keeps me rooted to the spot.
I should not be
paralyzed
by this irrational fear.
This fear, with such a wicked face-
not born by experience,
but born by
statistics
and the fact that I am a
woman.
Why is it that we are trained to
throw stones
against each other?
Why is it that even as
children
we feel a primal desire to shove one another down
and hold each other by the throat,
as if we are
feral wolves
poised to attack?
We are the only thing standing between the world we live in now,
and
change.
It is only if we stop stabbing each other in the
back
that anything will happen.
It is only when we truly
believe
in each other that the world will
believe
in us too.
And maybe, if we do that?
Our little girls will not feel
my fear
when they walk alone in the dark.
Maybe our little girls will never be
paralyzed
when a man walks past them on a dimly lit sidewalk.
Maybe our little girls will not need to build such extreme
armors to keep the
hurt
out.
Maybe our little girls
will have a chance that they do not need to
fight
to be given.

All estuaries flow eastbound, and the subterranean rail tracks keep forcing against the estuaries’ grain and dust foundations perpendicularly to them.*



How can a sane proposition -- a quantification of syntax execution (those squirming cuticles through bonds of regression)— an excessive reflection, reflexive inspection,

Prove its sanity through continued suggestion?



Deductive insurrections stirred in memory,

A rumble, causing sediments to crumble,

Wineglasses balanced atop countertops tumble.

Spilling contents upon the grained wooden, elitists' floors.



"Anesthetic, onsetting tuberculosis in breath patterns,

Gavels ringing on rigged tolling tongs in caverns,

Dark tolerances to Copernican astronomy in shadows,

And the handle grinds as boxcar wheels' flints and steels catch and spark in addled locks," I mumbled from a half-nap.



It was surgery, the smooth procedures on the moving trains,

The gains and plectrums scraped against the brains' spider veins,

To reorganize the sane, to bridge the broken definitions changed,

To prevent arguments' bone structure from fractures and sprains.



"Use gavels against the scalpels, sculpt with their judgment," a corona dream's habitant corrugated.

He pounded the gavel's end against the knife to chisel at the pituitary gland pulsing in his subject,

And her arms flailed like a horse's legs in heat-induced convulsion.
I thought it was done.



The Canson Merue train screamed in the night under earth to Yellowknife to meet Canadian soil as the Heavy Breather pounded his gavel.

i.

a girl once told me that sad people close their eyes
so they do not see the world anymore,
and that i should count sheep when i cannot fall
asleep and that her favourite flowers were azaleas.


she also told me that she keeps scabs
on her knees, and on sundays
she comes to me with bleeding wrists.


another girl paints artifice out
of artlessness and human flesh. she
has scalpels for arms and a tempest on
her thighs and she lives in the
mirror and when i blow



ii.


on her i understand, through air condensation
and self- anathema, that i am the girl that she  
de-fleshed maliciously herself, slit out of the cardboard
and painted out in artifice and artlessness and


i am the girl that once told another girl to ******* cut
her arm off and i meant it so she would not hurt herself
again because


i am the kind of the girl with scabs on the bone
of her halo, because i believe halos are made of
nothing but cartilage and helium bones, and a heart
as transparent as a vampire and its split opened like a monarch
butterfly, ******* off


azaleas or malarias or other pathogens
giving infants cancerous proclivities and my eyes are
swollen in mauve from divestiture because i know too well


those sheep won't jump over the fence
anymore because they have been ****** raw
in the *** by inhumane prospensity and i understand that


sad people close their eyes because it reminds them of death.




iii.


death is a scientist that theorises the
duality of elusive particles in artificial marrows
and mediocre decolourised melancholia in discordance,
it is the finger forced into our tiny vein and
it is nothing but a dream within a dream


but i could care less and this poem
is not about death, it is about how i
like ugly girls and how i'm just sorry
that i do not taste as corrosive
as the bleach in her mouth.




iv.


when people are dying, they almost sound poetic.




v.


i am the girl humanised by ribbons of
flesh and bile and atrocity, and i am the girl who
understands that a 'broken heart' is
nothing but a metaphor for utter
disappointment.  



i am the sleep that dreams long for,
hope for, phlebotomise for
  
and i am bitter.




vi.


i am bitter because i will not believe in sundays
unless one day, fortuitously, the sun osscilates,
in the most serene of all mannerisms, down the earth
and kills us all.


i am bitter because semantics does not authenticate
the abiding human apathy towards death
and all the flowers in her hair.


i am bitter because people only read my poetry
because they think it is about them.


i am bitter because of other horrible
reasons that words can simply not express.


vii.

ugly girls are always prettier
because god loves ugly
girls, because he ***** them harder than the
rest,  and because they know how to
make others feel ugly.

what is a telescope
-a tyrannosaurus skeleton
-a reluctant birthright
what are *****
-a state line
-an obsolete receipt
what is a wave
-grandmother says: she will never forget as long as she lives
-a forest trail in thick fog
what is sea sick
-he ran over a dog
-wettest March of the century
what is an hour
-no smoking allowed
-the fuming face of a buffalo
what is sunburn
-inedible black toast
-I think she slanders me
what is wine
-overnight contact lens solution
-a humble canal
what is a mirror
(child | beluga)
~(ham):o + ¥ineapple
what is travel
-a last minute thing
-warmth within a windshield
what is revision
-a slow explode
-milk in coffee
what is antacid/calcium supplement
-a bottle cap
-handy clutter
what is a fist
-something to try eating when in circles
-flour, 1-to-20 eggs, some ennui, expiration dates
what is a sigh
-a fresh seismograph sheet
-sound mechanical in early morning
what is skin
-a shoelace
-child labor
what is a workshop
-scalpels, piñata bats
-a lunar module
what is that shiny dead thing in the green eyed river
-New Year’s Eve ball drop
-otherworldly return to beginning

The foggy harbor buries itself into the bricks,
misty fingers make their way into thick brain threads,
causing invisible skyscrapers to erupt from natural terrain.

Lackadaisical loneliness producing nothing but infertile hands;
You are wasting the precious prayer of earths' life in your lungs,
while saltwater slips into the crevice of your sorrowful joy.

The masks begins to bleed and life carves itself into your skin.

Nothing can be done to stop this carpenter of time,
for even if mortal scalpels disguise,
the knowledge of dying will coat your soul.

Oh, sweet calico
You flittered and you fluttered
Before the cruel men
Pinned your wings, and held you
Under
Examining, every colour
And stripe, on your surface
Comparing, every pattern
You made
To a control they deemed
Ordinary
Their tongues were as rough
As their calloused hands
Yet their minds were like sharp knives
Or scalpels
Dissecting your
Entirety
Three green dots
You were marked with, before they placed you
Into a four by four
Box
And promptly
Forgotten about

creating invisible lines
across my scalp
grinding dead fingernails
down to the living skin
slowing peeling the cells
trying to reach my brain
performing surgery
my bed the operating table
pulling and yanking
blindly putting nerves
back in their places
feeling with sore fingers
struggling
to find the bad spot
the chunk of my mind
containing you
aiming and seeking
to yank from my thoughts
the fragment
that makes my blood boil
and
forces me to text you
when my ten scalpels tire
and i finally fatigue
no molecule, particle, or
flaw
can i find
you have infected my brain
down to the core
and every atom in between
but still
the capacity of my conscious surgery
can find no defect
sensing sanity return
i put back every nerve and neutron
and use my ten tired needles
to stitch back my scalp
hiding my work
beneath many blood hairs
deeming myself rational
sound and levelheaded
i use electricity to connect
my disorganize mind to yours
ten tired tools helping me along
and when I'm done
when the message has left
...i question my health
and the process begins again

This ******* heart beats thrice per second
Pumping in and pumping out the black tar from my lungs.
If the body is a temple,
Then I have abandoned mine
No one now kneels in this void.
Baptized in whiskey,
Circumcised with a machete.
It’s no coincidence that,
I was born on the full moon
In the midst of a hurricane.
Learning how to eat with no spoon
But this is who I am.
We each have a cross to bare
Mine’s just covered in scalpels
Sharpened bread knives,
That draw wrinkles on my face.

take rain from sky
take the way tall men straighten your stance
take the students of dance
see the little ballerina stretch her toes
see her mother warm with the floodlight

take your plea to the judiciary
take your eye to the statue of David
smear on the dust of Somalia
rub raw the frost of Croatia
refresh your aim in the heights of Angola
but do not stop only at this

breathe every impediment
trust every promise of clemency
stumble if you will
fall under cease-fire
take it all

take the watchmaker
bent over time
with fine tools
clasp each second

take the sculptor who
chisels and scalpels for the grandiose

later in your armchair
fold creases in your newspaper with care

be with every nourishment
be with the cloth of your nakedness
make sail for your harbour of origin

remember the milk of your mothe?r
warm or cold or sweet if it is so
appease hunger
with the ambidextrous mouth
of a soldier
fed with death in his jungle

be the bystander, be the bi-partisan,
the *******, the timeless,
the dancer
be it all

breathe each increment
do it now
measure the infinite
the possible


MChallis © 2015

Translucent, red traffic light
Belongs so comfortably
No one made a fuss over its colour
Just an instinct for the shade
The perfect pigment
No hustle, no alarm
Being the man who ponders this
Am I not allowed the breeze or the brevity?
Are we blessed to fidget the cigarette?
Cursed to be tense
I imagine a mellow, white man
Prancing on a set of traffic lights
Naturally pristine and silky
He plays in an explorative band
Rock and roll on scalpels
So smooth, that breathing
Not a single itch
I’m going to achieve such a feat
One day
I’ll be a queen *****

His Grindr profile is a pictureless profile
He is 20 years old
5’ 10”
He is looking to experiment
This scientist
Questioning, questioning, questioning
I convince myself to volunteer for this experimental group
To be affected by the variable he is to control
I send him a ****

I drive to his house
And the scientist leads me to his laboratory
His room decorated with sports players and female swimsuit models
I sit on his bed, the examination table
He says he’s never done this before
Yet I know he’s still the one in control
He says he’s always been into ***** stuff as he caresses my knee
And I can’t help but take this all as a compliment
So I let my lips thank his
Holding his secret with gentle care between our faces
He is now my master

He’s rough
As if he’s battling a beast
He no longer speaks for the remainder of the experiment
He is silent
Silently observing my every move, my every expression, my every reaction
I am used to this
Years of ***** looks stabbing ****** into my skin
Feels bandaged in the arms of my master
I feel the history of gay men solidify in my throat
Centuries of experimenting on us, homosexuals
Has prepared me for this
I feel accepted

His lips
Like suction cup electrodes on my skin
His nails
like surgical scalpels digging into my flesh
His hands pinning down my wrists
Like binds to restrain my animalistic reflexes
The scientist
Dissecting every inch of my being
Transforming “making love” to “constructing lust”
Turning dehumanization into a beautiful art form
Elevating this gay man to “almost a person”
And I can’t help but feel thankful

The experiment is over
He sits there and calculates his results
He says we should do this again some time
And I can’t ******* help but take this straight boy scientist’s kink
As a compliment
As a medal, as an award
Made from masculine hands that once beat me up in the locker room
And I watch the monster creep back into the closet
And the scientist just stares

Their eyes met in perfect alignment
as he place a single finger upon her breast
and he pushed,
not so hard that she would notice
but he pushed and he pushed
until he could reach through her.

Though she had not felt his hand
as it sink into her skin and out her back,
she certainly felt it when he withdrew.
Each inch of his arm stabbing
like a thousand pin ******,
his fingertips cutting like scalpels
along the innards of her chest
until there was nothing left
but a hole where her heart once lay.

She looked down at her wound
and expected to see red, but there was none.
I guess for all she had suffered at his hands
she imagined there would be more blood

my mouth is full of silence
it runs down my neck
and hides inside my shirt

i walk the ruins and find my words
tied to train tracks, try though
i might i cannot free them

the city drags me to the river’s edge
i want to weave a raft of words
but my mouth is full of silence

the city too is full of silence
choking suits and skyscrapers
only words are sharp enough scalpels

for the tracheotomy but the world is full
of silence and my mouth is full
of silence until you

open yours
and say

mine, too

If you take a stethoscope to a patch of dirt in a trailer park hidden somewhere in South Carolina, you will hear the arguments of a young couple, and the muffled sobs of a young boy as he cries himself to sleep in his pillow

In Maine there is a second story apartment where a mother who struggles to pay the rent, still finds the extra dollars to cover the cracks on the walls with paintings and photography to teach her daughter how rugged beauty can be

They teach you in Oklahoma that if you cover yourself in dirt and calluses, the gunpowder under your fingernails will taste like determination

Texas is the sole beneficiary to the piece of a 19 year olds heart that he himself carved out of his chest to wrap in a green reflective belt and give to a woman he thought he'd never find. Only to think he may never see her again.

Couple airplane windows with loneliness and you will be taught that country sides become galaxies after sunset, each star screaming to implode with the energy of rebellious eyeliner and Invader Zim sweatshirts

In Las Vegas there is 22 year old who belongs to her own army, her thighs and wrists covered in permanent war paint to show the battles she has fought in

Somewhere in America there is a homeless man who travels from town to town asking for nickels to feed the demon in his liver, yet still finds the time to tell teenagers with sunken heads and knives in their hearts during thunderstorms that everything will be okay

In the abandoned underground rap scenes of Detroit, the chipped paint on the walls still hold the words of a drug using man with grace tattooed on his neck, who since has long recovered to turn around and inspire the youth to use their words as amplified band-aids

This is my America
She is broken and battered
She writes in the back a green oxidized copper book the words that she hopes no will ever see
No one takes the time to look for the emotional damage behind the crack in a bell that's supposed to stand for liberty, but screams to the mothers of teenagers that it needs to see a therapist

Doctors and Psychologists funded by cigar smoking politicians can take scalpels to each teenager who has committed suicide, only to find nothing because the feeling of being an outcast cannot be found in the left upper quadrant of the abdomen, it's hidden in the part of the brain that is permanently bruised by the kids whose parents never taught them that it's okay if someone else can't choose to like the opposite ***

Those politicians won't listen to the kid sobbing into his pillow
Their walls aren't cracked and their kids don't die in deserts
They don't define love by green reflection, but by green paper
The concept of war paint is dressed in negative ad campaigns
I have yet to meet a suit and tie who will try to put a man with a ***** beard and a winter Carrhartt in an ****** apartment
They do ******* because they can afford to get away with it, not to hide the pains that they want to forget

This is my America
She shakes her fist at foreign passerby cruise ships while eagles perch on her shoulders with screeches of liberty
She is broken
She is ignored
On her island alone during thunderstorms you can see her crying
There is no drunken optimistic homeless man to tell her that she too will be okay
The claps of thunder radiating from her island are those of her sobs
She has no pillow to muffle her loneliness
I will ask her to read me what’s in the back of her oxidized copper book because I’ll be dammed if I have to watch another woman cry as these passerby’s do nothing about it
I will find that it reads but one word
"Help"

Prison is a germ.
Infections and ****** hand towels,
place it over your mouth and breath.

He talked about a place and described the images he's seen.
Then he admitted he didn't think of me.
I've been ripped from his memory.

He cut me out with their dulling scalpels.
He poured liquor over the wound and
he stitched it at the seams.

I've dream't of a father,
sons and ghosts; it's all the same to me.
I've been scrubbing your genes off my skin,
it's the only way to stay clean.

it's january and we're at the lake.
i wonder how long a person can survive under the ice you say.
you look at me expectantly.
last-night.jpg: bathroom stall/shaky hands/stinging eyes;
last-year.jpg: crowded room/mangled words/tight lips;
untitled.jpg: laughter heard through the wall/you feel sick.
the water runs cold while i peel bandaids from my fingers,
sodden gauze and skin.the wind blows my hair down your throat.
you squint like youre staring at the sun, you say all you want is sleep,
you rub dust from your eyes you say
this was a mistake.
youre soft and spent im
wrapping hair round my fingers like straightjackets,
im pretending im not scared.shaky hands/stinging eyes.
i tried to make this a comedy but blood is still blood
no matter how loud you laugh.
I TRIED TO KISS YOU BUT I JUST BROKE YOUR ******* JAW I CARRY A ******* PLAGUE I ***** AND THE GRASS DIES I AM BURNING IM BURNING I BURN scraping through my skin psychosomatic gore, ego and id
a ****** mess on the floor.im not right for me.
i was never meant to be here, superego screaming my sins in my ear LOVE IN ARMORED BOOTS, LOVE IN SURGICAL MASKS AND SCALPELS, love in shed bandaids
clogging the shower drain.my mother told me i was cursed and now i know she was right.
my heart as the sound of an opening blade. my heart as a child too stupid to know
bravery is a trap.fever dreams and you told me they were visions,
me tied to the stake and you tossing the match, im not dead yet but im SURE ******* TRYING, FIVE FINGER FILLET WITH MY GRANDFATHERS HUNTING KNIFE SCARING OFF THE GHOSTS WHO LAY THEIR HANDS ON TOP OF MINE DONT ******* TOUCH ME WITH YOUR GREEDY PALMS WHO SAID YOU DESERVED MY BODY HEAT WHO SAID YOU DESERVE ME, A COMMUNICABLE DISEASE DONT KISS ME IM SICK IM A PLAGUERAT, LIPS OR BLOOD BLISTERS WAS THERE EVER A ******* DIFFERENCE DONT BITE SO HARD ILL ******* BURST **** THE VOICE IN YOUR HEAD THAT SAYS YOU ARE WEAK **** THE THING IN THE MIRROR THAT IS NOT YOU

take it back.i take my words back.i push you down, tear them from your ears like piercings
in a ***** fight.im crying and youre bleeding. see what youve done you say,
see what a mess youve made of me, its not so easy to untell secrets you say.
i think youre smiling but its hard to tell.
to all mammals but us, teeth are a threat.mangled words/tight lips. the doctor says i have three years at best. i wake, sweating in a cold office. the doctor says i have three years at best. i wake, sweating in a cold office. the stiff gown scratches my *******. the  doctor says i have three years at best. i wake, blood on the pillow.my lip hurts.
i try not to touch the ice when i lower myself in the lake.

Chapter 1

“I killed your mother.” Those words slipped off his tongue like the foul scent of a decade of filth. I cursed him. I wanted vengeance for what he had done. Not because I loved my mother but because I was the one who wanted to rip her throat out. Feel the adrenaline as I plunged the knife deep into her chest 52 times. I wanted the taste of disgust in my mouth as I looked into the vacant eyes of her corpse. I wanted to watch as her blood scattered across the ceiling and the walls as I pulled the knife in and out of her. I wanted to hear her screams of horror as the son she abandoned so many years ago returned to **** her. I started to resent her killer for stripping me of my one true desire. Killing my mother seemed so easy. I had every detail planned from how I was going to do it to the way I was going to get away with it. Yet in the instance of walking up to her door, I see him walking out. I asked if my mother was home. He looked into my eyes and saw the hunger for ****** and he simply replied “I killed your mother. “ As I walked in I saw so much blood. I saw the knife in her throat. I saw the gun on the floor next to her. I called 911 because I knew if they could catch him I could **** him. Sure it wouldn’t be the same as killing her. I wanted to end this curse. The very curse she bestowed upon me when she walked away from me at 13 months. Yet, that ******* took it all away, and I’m going to seek vengeance for the continuation of my curse. Not her ******. So began the plan to **** him. I knew there were other ways to end my curse but I wanted to get used to the idea of killing. So I grabbed the pistol and looked for him. I knew he had to live in the alley ways of Los Angeles. This place wasn’t “The City of Angels”. It was more like “The City of Broken Souls”. This city would and could drag you into the deepest parts of a world still unknown to so many. You had to grow up here to understand the culture, the way of life, and the language the people here spoke. I was born two blocks from the place I grew up. I moved around a lot but always stayed in LA. People called me crazy when I came back. If only they knew my intentions for coming back. I knew better to tell anybody why I was here. Everybody was against you. A lot of people would sell their reputation for drugs, alcohol, and food. I knew a couple people that would most likely knew the man I was looking for. So I headed their way. I kept to the shadows so I wouldn’t attract a lot of attention. Best if nobody really knew I was back from the grave. That’s a term we used to say around here when you just come out of an asylum. I served 6 years in the asylum for brutally murdering a guy because he rapped and killed my best friend. She was so fragile and weak. She never had a chance against the guy. So when I found out what happened and who had done it. I tracked him down and began to dismantle his body. I let some AIDs infested homosexual I knew **** him but I killed him too. I cut his head off, made his legs his arms, and his arms his legs. Even cut off his **** and shoved it up his ***. I thought he would have enjoyed that part, but he was already dead. He died from the blood loss. Stupid ******* couldn’t hold my interest. So I went back and finished what I started. I stayed next to the corpse and the cops came rushing in. They saw the bodies and the blood. They were so quick to arrest me. I pleaded guilty. The judge figured I had some mental illness due to the way I was raised and grew up. So I found another guy and he started begging for his life, said he had kids, and started apologizing for whatever he did to me. I looked him in the eyes and told him what he did. “You lied to me six years ago. Remember when you beat that little girl to death? You smashed her head in. That was an innocent girl. She was 22 years old. What did she ever do to you?”  He said he “I’m sorry.” I told him “Stop bullshitting me!”  He said “Salvezar hired me to do it. I couldn’t refuse. I needed the money for my daughter. She has cancer. Please forgive me. I did what I had to do for her. Salvezar said she stole from him almost eight grand. Have mercy, please?” I replied “Only god has mercy. If only he existed, he could save you from the monster that I am.” He started to cry, knowing he was about to die. So I said “Shhh. Close your eyes. This will only hurt for a minute.” Like a fool he closed his eyes. He wanted it to be swift. So I pulled out all the knifes, needles, and scalpels. He opened his eyes and saw all the instruments. I told him “They’re not for you. They’re for another person in the other room. I promised you I would **** you quickly. That it would only hurt for a minute. I intend to keep that promise.” He replied “You know better than anybody that you can’t trust anyone in LA. This place is full of killers, ******, thieves, homeless, weak, broken, and pathetic people. What makes you think I would trust you?” So I said this: “I’m the only person that can bring down Salvezar. I need your help and if you die before I get more information of his whereabouts then everything will be over. I won’t be able to avenge my friend’s death and you get to watch from the heavens you so hopelessly believe in as he rapes and kills your family. So what is it going to be? Work with me or die now?”  He replied “For my family, I will help you.” I replied “Good. Wise decision.” He could tell I meant what I said, and if I said I was going to **** you, I was going to **** you. He sensed I wasn’t the normal kind of person in LA. He started calling me something in Spanish, but he mumbled it under his breath so I couldn’t hear it. It sounded like “suicidio demonio”, but I couldn’t understand it. I kind of liked the name. After all I was on a suicide mission. Nobody went up against Salvezar. He was the number one person in the drug trade. He owned LA. I was basically an intruder on his land. I had a plan to tear him down. To bring LA crumbling under my power and I had a feeling Salvezar knew who killed my mother. She owed him money and that’s something you just don’t do. You owe, you pay, and you usually end up dead. I knew Salvezar since he came into power. I know all his tricks. I worked as an assassin for him for three years till I brutally killed that one guy that I forgot his name. Poor ******* though. He made mistakes. Salvezar was a clean killer. He hired people to do it for him, and he never left a trail. Salvezar was the most dangerous, powerful, sneaky criminal that walked the streets of LA. I wasn’t a cop so I could **** him more easily. My reason if he asked why I came back was “I’m coming home.” I was getting ready for it. I was going to war with LA.