Dedicated to stillborn fetuses, 99 cent Malt Liquor and Existentialism
1.
Nymphomaniac tree huggers
And overweight bisexual vegetarians
Swallowing phentermine poison to stay fit.

2.
Funky fresh *******  
throwing pigs at St. Augustine’s pear tree
and frolicking abortions over Moloch’s philoprogenitiveness,

3.
While sipping barbecue sauce dipped in Lipton tea,
dancing around adhesive bonfires
reciting memories of holocaust, the Kristallnacht nights
and beautiful words suffered by ancestors lost.

4.
Inhale chicken noodle soup, with a side of Lithium,
And prance to Literacy class to combat envisionment
With free association conceptual constructions,

5.
Computerized like Prometheus’ fire burning through SmartBoards
In classrooms where the poison of heterosexual history
Is fed to boys in skirts cursed by Adam’s apple,

6.
Baptized by social norms and locked away in hopeless closets
According to the Tautology of Leviticus…
until they cut their breath by the vein of soteriology;

7.
Misunderstanding of God’s words
Covets the innocent to early graves
In biblical paratactic irony…like God betting Satan for a Job.

8.
Rub fried chicken oil on Bartholomaeus Anglicus’ skin
and soil his white pride with ***** flavor,
for revenge  On the Properties of Things

9.
and howl out in glory of victory
over totes of  lickerish piper methysticum blunts
that beg the conundrum,
'What is the origin of this world?'
'Ether,' he replied.
But it is not ether!
Nor Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
It is Dada. Dada. Dada!
  10.
For this is a record of the life stories of the greatest minds and geniuses of your generation,
written in boys and girls
who mimicked Basquiat’s genius and tagged bathroom walls with abstract philosophies like “Love is a prime number” and “ the weight of Duncan McDougall’s soul can only be found on the 15th of October”
who drank vampirish gulps of Vicodin while consoling themselves with aphorisms such as: “don’t rue the misses, you don’t need a Mrs. when you’re elevated by chemical kisses”
11.
Who stood naked in mirrors, weeping, for they were a mystery to themselves, but a great talent and soon to be legend to some.
Who lit cannabis in loneliness and waltzed naked with their ghosts, fantasizing about ****** tomatoes and Corpus Christi Mexican Jazz.
Who composed psychedelic anthems from dreams that were lost in ghettoes where virginities were lost for loaves of bread, for the hunger of bread.
12.
Who wrote suicide notes on a toilet seat, contemplating the texture of Marshall Mathers’ favorite underwear and whether the color green was an invention of **** Germany.
Who used to love their lovers in darkness and colored the streets of Manhattan with rainbows on June 24, 2011 to mark the date lady liberty finally bought a new pair of glasses.
13.
Who lost musical talents to a Wine-house and ended up in a whine-house where lobotomy was subsequently prescribed by the milligram.
Who indulged in pharmaceutical vices and when asked why replied simply, every recursively enumerable set is Diophantine.
Who diagnosed themselves with “start ****-itis” and self medicated by eating Fifinellas at the stroke of each midnight.
Who rubbed paraprosdokians on their skin and occupied Wall Street in search of a new euphemism for being American.
Who poured Alkalizer on a dead moose and kicked it while feasting on the divine question, “why does Rice play Texas?”
14.
who got bored with conventional relationships and bought the Origin of the World on street corners from vixens nicknamed “Jezebel” and climaxed atop of them screaming  “I’m in Babylon, the great Mother of ******!”
Who attempted suicides upon suicides upon suicides, in Oakland, until they were shipped away to private catholic universities in Rhode Island, where the history of Colossus was being taught.
15.
who serenaded love interests with four letter curse words at open bars where Kubla Khan was read and Tartars kings were licked all over like holy communion *****.
Who drove home with the spirits of wine and crashed on telephone poles where their obituaries were written in their prime, leaving their mothers weeping and calling congress to reconsider Prohibition.
16.
Who mixed Redbull with Propofol and drank the juxtaposition galore only to be woken up the next morning dead in their sleep.
Who tattooed rat poison packages with goodwill messages such as “****** divided by Water =6th day of creation” or “Seroquel + Brett Favre = St. Patrick”,
who went speedballing with Basquiat during autoscopy and woke up wondering the cost of Nautilus in Albuquerque.
17.
who took 33 hallelujah 1800 tequila jello shots and daydreamed about laying on Mithras’ grave, yelling, beetlejuice, beetlejuice…beetlejuice.
who found the truths of the Bible invalid by the miscalculation of Pi in 1 Kings 7, verse 3, and mailed death on anthrax letters to Reagan in protest.
18.
who sat empty bellied at breakfast tables wondering the temperature of satellites at Lagrangian points,  only to soon catch fire in their tongues and speak Labyrinth soliloquies that ended in
19.
Zion,
Where Google knows every answer.
In Zion
Where the youth, tomorrow’s future, quote a ***** named Hova better than they can quote Jehovah.
In Zion
Where *******’s art was used as weapon during the Cold war.
20.
In Zion
Where sartorial geniuses where no pants,
In Zion
Where David Kato Kisule is the secret hero of these words, for he was taken at a time
In Zion
Where we were supposed to be our ancestor’s sci-fi.

21.
In Zion,
Where the youth bear the scarlet letter X for they are a problem to tradition and hold no definition for the future, for they have discovered
In Zion
That the origin of this world is in their living eyes, and not in the dictionary of their ancestors who lived
In Zion
when the epitome of the literature of life ended in Revelation of Amen and Shantih shantih shantih;
this is a record of the greatest minds and geniuses there ever was, written
in Zion
where the meaninglessness and nothingness of Dada reigns, and the trinity of life now lives in the Subject, subjective and subjectivity.

When you're alone
And life is making you moan,
I know what you can do.
*******.

When you've got worries,
And your speech get's all slurry
Seems to help, I know,
*******.

Every time you come around you're always causing trouble.
Why can't you be nice and friendly?
More like Betty Rubble.

Vicodin.

You think that it makes you feel good.
But it just ***** your brain up.
You've misunderstood.

So just *******!

Don't be afraid to just *******!
Even Ruben Kincaid says to *******!

It's the best use of your mouth.

*******,
*******



Don't hang around
While scratching your ***** mound,
Unless you're willing to,
*******.

Maybe you know
Some other places to go to
But right now you can,
*******.

Every time you come around you're always causing trouble.
Why can't you be nice and friendly?
More like Betty Rubble.

Vicodin.

You think that it makes you feel good.
But it just ***** your brain up.
You've misunderstood.

So just *******!

Don't be afraid to just *******!
You and your PhD need to SHOW ME!

What you can do with your mouth.

*******,(*******),*******,(*******)

I want to taste jealousy on your lips when you kiss me
I want you to know that I don’t ******* need you
That there’s another guy that lives just down the street that would love to **** me any day
I want to feel like you need me to stay.

When you hold me I want to feel like you’ll never let me go
I want to know that you’re afraid of loosening you grip
Afraid that I might slip into the arm of that man down the road.

I want you to fear me.
Fear the power I have over you
The power to leave you if I ******* wanted to

I want you to know that I’m not tied down to you
And I want that to make your body shake
Like an earthquake
Afraid.
I want to feel like I have the power to make you crumble.

You had that power over me once.
Before I remembered that I was just someone for you to ****
Your own personal Vicodin,
Something to make your heart numb to the pain of her leaving you

But now your growing feelings
Becoming attached
But the time for that is past

I've been hallowed out,
***** you’re my toy now.

vicodin is a long term friend
with a warrent for my liver
and my life.

1:43am
we had an appointment
and god only knows
i could never be late for such
a chalky sense of closure.

and the young paramedic
who burst my vein and scolded me
could only pray his words
meant more than the hum of streetlights
as my body exchanged existence
for the embodiment of thought
and a brittle concept of my phrenic nerve

which was never more at peace than when
my lungs remembered the luxury
of standstill traffic

of weighted morals

of crushing insecurity's release
and the resulted ballooning
as squashed egos cry, and the garage door screams as it's yanked open

horrid sounds and tortured motion on both accounts

spiritual cataracts torn free
commercialized visions now blur

as the orange bottle morphs from
vicodin to paracetamol

equalized views in my bloodstream
as the sheet metal ceiling shifts to plaster tiles

to a TV set

to a bathroom mirror

to an agonized woman next door

to the back windows where my mother cries where no one but the whole world can watch

to a blue plastic mattress and a first floor window covered with bars

to a pale green day room with a caged TV
where there was bleach in the stomach of a nine year old

where the dying took their resurrecting breath between games of spoons

where the hinges screamed and blood pressure was taken three times a day

this where the living came to kiss death goodbye

until next time

Synapses are firing,
The pain is being processed,
Where has it started?
Endorphins are released,
The pain killer is searching for the source.
How silly, this system,
It cannot recognize this kind of pain,
The source is not inside,
but outside,
The source is all around me,
The pain of humanity,
and no amount of vicodin,
or endorphins,
Can stop it,
or calm it.
It is there, infinite,
Consuming me.
I am silent in this moment,
As I use all my senses to quiet the world,
I force myself back into my body.
There, I can believe, in only myself.
There, I can ignore,
The pain.

After we hung up the phone
and after I heard
the ghost in your voice
singing
(its song of wasted abandon
of histories
of your medicinal haze)

I saw a pile of
lavender
I had yanked up from
the man-made soil
in my landscaped yard-
another man-made object

Vicodin or Lavender

I want to feed them to the sea
(it's a song of reckless abandon
of hope
and of better days ahead)

But you always find another
orange bottle to ease your pain
And I always find another
field of man-made flowers
to take my mind off of
letting you go this way.

the glow-in-the-dark stars on my wall
are brighter than
my ambitions,
vicodin washes down with
stone cold fear,
and mercury is in retrograde-
not that we felt the need to communicate.
tiny planets on a string,
we danced in the
orbit that we shared.
you had misgivings,
told me pluto
never made it around the sun,
not even once.
but earth created a moon
with her soulmate.
mercury doesn't return direct
until february 11th;
by then
paracetamol and hydrocodone
will have passed.
opiates and human beings
both sources of anxiety
but i don't mind
drowning in them both.

the pendulum princess taps her pen on the desk
as the dogs whimper in their sleep
and the trees wrap themselves in the witching-hour starlight

the silence suddenly seems so frantic

i swear
i can hear my skin shrinking

the wind slithers over the roof
whispering through the moon beams
in hopes of finding someone to snuggle up with

at least i'm not the only one who's sick of sleeping alone

my body no longer feels like home
my bones creak like splintering floorboards under stubbed toes
my head's busy running in circles of constant contemplation
     am i awake
             or am i dreaming?
        was that a sigh
                or am i screaming?

buzzing like a firefly
trapped between a ***** countertop and a frosted beer mug

three weeks of bed rest
(and counting)
and all that's grown stronger
is my understanding of exhaustion

Life is a sticky
Honey sweet
Mess

Rotten
Yellow teeth
Haunting me
But not from ****

Powdered dreams
Snorting sinus cleaning
I never did that line

But I was still a ******
Getting high
On time

Pill popping
Pain pusher
In prose and poetry

I tapped that vein
Till no blood remained
Till the **** stains
Claimed my pain

Private person
Open window
The cold wind
Would not let me go

A hundred ephedrine pills
To **** my heart
Cold sweats
Anxiousness
And I could not ***

But worse of all
I could not go
Could not sleep
Could not rest
Could not die
Though I did my best

Teeth chipped
Broken calcium
Black cavity
Shallow but painful

And Vicodin
And Vicodin
Till I had to sell them
To my suicidal friend

And Monster drinks
And five hour energy
To write
To work
To stay alert

But the worse addiction
I ever knew
Was pain

Waking every day
Never knew withdrawal
Every day a brand new pain
Every night a brand new poem

I never killed the ******
He just rode me from one high
To the next

I never killed the ******
Even though I wanted to
I never had the gun
Or the ******
The rope or razor blade
Or the ****

I never killed the ******
Even though I wanted
That son of ***** dead

The triazolam is draining out.
Seeping down a peptic route.
Antacids disintegrate the lining.
Pain leaves me pinning.
Drowning on pink.
Spat up in the sink.
This sickness is wearing me thin.
Unsafe in my own skin.

Prescribed relief in the form of cold sweats.
Unapproved medicine tested on pets.
The rainbow pillbox comes in a set.
Getting wealthy off of the net.

Anemic royalty.
Sipping on Pennyroyal Tea.
Taking a drive to San Andres.
Dinning on mixed sangrias.
Bummed for a hit.
Blown…spit.
Complexion grows yellow.
The cost of my mellow.

Prescribed relief in a hospital bed.
Deaf to kind words said.
Can’t escape the notion in my head.
Telling me I’m already dead.

Loss of focus.
These drugs are bogus.
Light gradually fades away.
Soiled underwear, the thing to stay.
Soul ripped and torn apart.
Taken away on a crash cart.
Transfusion first, dialysis later.
Lack of a pulse, huge deflator.

Prescribed relief in the form of cremation.
Ceremony held, not a single relation.
No will left as a last proclamation.
Assets absorbed by a forfeiture corporation.

(In some semblance of order)

(1967 to 1975)

kittens
carpet burns
fear
WGN presents “One-Eyed Jacks” starring Marlon Brando
my grandmother’s basement
slaps from my mother
fear
kicks from my father
fear
Nerf basketball
10CC “I'm Not in Love”
fear

(1976 to 1980)

sunny, cool, fall days
the woods on Sundays
tall green grass
raised red seams on a baseball
fear
Tickle Pink wine
the smell of hashish
the buzz of high tension wires
Stroh's beer, pull tab tall boys
the woods at night
the breeze through the car window
her breath in my ear
fear

(1981 to 1988)

“Footloose” starring Kevin Bacon
Michelob Light in bottles
extra spicy guacamole
fear
“Members Only” black jacket
para mutual wagering
*******
4 seam fastball
fear
the garlic taste of Dimethyl Sulfoxide (DMSO)
a 91 mph fastball
Feldene dissolved in Dimethyl Sulfoxide and applied to my skin via a tongue depressor
my 93.5 mph fastball
the roar of the crowd
fear
October
the swirling light and sound of a west Texas freight train at night in fog
Jesus Christ
fear

(1989 to 1999)

the anticipation of child #1
the birth of child #2
6 hours of uninterrupted sleep after child #3
an 8mm obstructed kidney stone
fear
morphine
fear
Vicodin
fear
sunny, cool, fall days
“The Road Less Traveled” by M Scott Peck
hydrocodone
fear
the woods in fall
thunder
******
fear
the woods in winter
the rumble of Niagara Falls
******
fear
Oxycontin
shame
******
fear
“Ruthless Trust” by Brennan Manning
the woods in spring
The Stanley Cup
fear

(2000 to 2004)

detox
nostalgia of my youth
photos of my children as children
hydrocodone
detox
fear
Jose Cuervo silver tequila
sunny, cool, spring days
Major League Baseball opening day
Jose Cuervo Gold tequila
fear
Chinaco Reposado tequila
the stench of pavement
Gran Patron tequila
the heat of pavement
Herradura Anejo tequila
detox
hydrocodone
fear
Marca Negra Mezcal
detox
AA meetings
Oxycontin
fear
Alice in Chains “Down in a Hole”
detox
nostalgia for opiates
fear

(2005 to 2007)

AA meetings
Camel 99's
her infidelity
fear
photos of my children as children
Camel 99's
the sweet, sweet voice of Martin Sexton
AA meetings
shame
regret
fear
Suboxone
regret
shame
fear

(2008 to 2010)

the tenderness of your touch
a king size memory foam mattress
the tenderness of your touch
Amerique Verte Absinthe
fear
discussions with the dead
the tenderness of your touch
Ray Lamontagne “Winter Birds”
the tenderness of your touch
ablution by Amerique Verte Absinthe
fear
visions of the dead
fear
visits from the dead

(2011 to 2014)

their forgiveness
AA meetings
Camel 99's
my inability to sleep
fear
www.hellopoetry.com
the tenderness of your touch
the tenderness of your touch
the tenderness of your touch
the tenderness of your touch
fear
Centenario Reposado tequila
regret
Tramadol in large amounts
regret
thoughts of you leaving me
thoughts of me being left alone
thoughts of you being left alone
regret

nothing
nothing
nothing

the words I have just written

darkness

fear

There lived a man in Shady Hills,
sits home all day, popping pills.
Morning, noon and night,
not any real food in sight.
Drinks water from the tap,
too wired to take a nap.
Percocets all **** day,
Vicodin is the only way.
Xanax in the night time,
****** he buys for a dime.
Oxycontin, he keeps hidden,
his hiding spot is forbidden.
Takes Abilify for his mood swings,
taking Amphetamines gives him wings.
More skinny than a rail,
in life he sure did fail.
Ecstasy, he keeps under lock and key,
he doesn't give away any pills for free.
At thirty he ended up with cirrhosis of the liver,
he didn't care about his new founded quiver.
Popped pills til his death,
at least he never smoked ****.
Died at the age of thirty two,
in his stomach was pill stew.
Just another sad lost soul,
popping pills will someday take a toll.

I remove my shoes beside my bed;
Morning comes,
I trip and fall
And bust my head.
What a terrible place for shoes!

Evening comes and I sit down in my room
After working like a ******* idiot slave.
I remove my shoes,
But I feel the pain...
So I throw my shoes across the room.
Morning comes again;
I make my way to the bathroom
And before I know anything
I'm on the ground.
What a terrible place for shoes!

The day drags on as
Headaches and embarrassment
Follow me around throughout my daily adventures.
They laugh at me and grind my cells
So I take a few vicodin.
The day comes to an end and
In my opiated stupor
I remove my shoes and
Leave them by my bedside
Once again.
Morning comes
And I'm on the ground
For the third time.

This is it.
I've had enough.
No more ******* shoes
In the house.
I train myself to leave
All shoes in the front hall.
This should do the trick.
I wake up the next morning
And all the shoes are gone!
Christ... I must have forgotten to
Lock the front door.
**** kids...

Day One:
A voice speaks to me.
When you realize that being lost is so close to being found, you see a sea of family members plagued within the lineage of licentious newborns and hospital beds. You become yourself, a lisp.

Day Two:
Long ago in a city left unscorned he was torn, from the cokeheads and colorful regimes, angels sing long songs of separation anxiety and **** withdrawal.  I was torn from the deadbeats of supposed society and three day vicodin trips into my mind. So can you let me know when I get there? ‘Cause I left there running…I wonder, did someone ever tell you that two strangers could twist around your neck at beck and that three parked cars and seventeen lonely nights could haunt you for the rest of your faces.

Day Three:
Tell me of your drug induced hallucinations.

Day Four:
Wait. Hear. Can’t you listen to the relapse? Stop, think. No. gone. Left. Love. Return. My curious addiction. Go back into yourself and listen. Can’t you hear your soul call to me? It’s loud.

Day Five:
I remember prizes at the bottoms of cereal boxes, right before the net broke. Will you be first? Snap back to reality.
It’s dark in here. Wretch from me… I am crying, screaming,
haha! I’m melting inside!

Day Six:
By plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the flower, but the seed inside
Caked over in grief, we are not plates that match. But fools of folly caught in a sea of coke and disillusioned discord. Speed stands between directing and orders to death’s soldiers.

Day Seven:
The difference between God and his counterpart is that he makes exceptions!
Except me.

Day Eight:
Accept me!
Please.  
Wait.
No.
don’t slow,
speed.
I can only take so much forgiveness,
is a decision, and I cannot make it.
I am without it, leave me breathless.

Day Nine:
The angel of death waits
He comes for me, but I am running, finding, hiding my inner Nemo in the hands of oxycodon, privileged in the amenities of amphetamines.
I am tired of running!
Haggard.
Take away my hands, my restraints.
Let me feel
again.
Please.

Day Ten:
I am awake.
There is an apple in my field of vision.
Kiss it. Love it.
Take it to hedonism and back again.
But it knows too much.
So tell it everything will be ok.
It lives in epilepsy.
So placate it.
Resurrect my apocalypse.

I’m trapped in a room where the door is open but I can’t get out,

I’m screaming my head off but no one can hear me shout,

I’m struggling to breathe but there’s plenty of oxygen,

I crave an escape from this concrete metropolitan,

Blinded by this plastic smile they can’t see I’m stuck in my own personal hell,

I’m walking around frantically trying to get someone to notice that I’m an empty shell,

Tragically, I’m physically heathy with food to eat and a family yet I can’t seem to stop thinking about ending myself,

What’s wrong me, that I can’t be happy when I literally have nothing to be sad about?

But that’s the thing the numbness, you can’t stop it, it doesn’t discriminate,

It doesn’t care whether your a man, a women, a criminal, or a saint,

It just wants to fill you up till you can’t get out of bed,

It makes you a prisoner inside your own head,

Who could I tell? How would I explain it so someone could understand when I don’t even understand,

When I’ve succumbed to the madness who will lend me their hand ?

So I don’t tell anyone & suffer in silence, when the thoughts start creeping up again,

I smother them in cigarette smoke wishing I had prescription for Xanax or Vicodin.

Hey kid, you've been dead a few weeks and I'd just like to say hello. The ground has its first December coat of fragile snow over your dead body and I know you can't feel the cold but I'll tell you right now, I can see my frozen toes, just barely move them, breathe up into the sky, Id be lying if I said I still cry every day. But, I'm lying to myself if I said that I'm not trying to take back your pain every day in a way that won't make your heart start beating again.

I wonder if those butterflies ever drank up the nectar from your blood, probed their soft tongues into the velvet of your cuts, those razor blade ribbons, oh holy romantic, how you bleed like Mozart and bleed like ballads of classic rock stars, how they whip your face with sour sweat and drugs and drugs and drugs until you find yourself half asleep, brain swept under the rug.

Did you know only 1.5% of drug overdose related suicide attempts are successful? Beautiful blonde martyr for an ugly catholic high school in an ugly state in the ugliest of its hearts, how does it feel to be 1 in 100? How does it feel to be a rarity, carbon pressed into diamond? How does it feel to be cry for a week, left in the grass to roll like waves, buried without a name and a face and a grave?

In the latest of solemn sleep deprived nights I press my ear to the chest of the 100th depressed boy I come across and don't feel Vicodin climbing up his arteries, don't feel Klonopin, OxyContin, Ibuprofen. I can't seem to find the one, who knows, maybe you were it and all my efforts really were wasted. All those nights I've stayed up late did nothing. All those knives I stole, all that blood I wiped away with t-shirt sleeves, all the blankets I've put around stupid shaking shoulders, all the bittersweet will this be the last time your skin is this warm hugs, God did they mean nothing at all?

I lock my jaw into a permanent silence, buy back time by putting my money where your knife is. I take bets on when someone will die next. I read the label on every bottle of Xanax. I roll over in my bed again and again, and try to put you to rest again.

Amen.

And my body has ceased to act in the way I want it to.
My legs feel like rubber
and it's hard to concentrate
and my fingers move slowly.

But hey,
my constant headache is gone
and all the worries that clouded my mind are gone
and my back isn't sore.

Maybe
three more won't hurt.

I squeeze the white flesh on the underside on my arms,
gently, I account for bruises, counting each one by one.

like spilled ink congealing,
under my thin skin, purple,
yellowing, blue, and green,
= the colors in nature found

I stretch like a cat, testing my arms for reach,
and I wince, tears brimming in my eyes, hard

something has been pinched, broken, or ripped
inside, some muscle is not connected to another

some tick, hair-thin mark
graces my red colored rib

ripped muscle lies against,
some useless dying muscle

I want to go home
I want to go to sleep
I want to go home

to sleep, to heal, to die,
wherever home may be

Strange to be a few barstools down from you at O'Brien's. Yet, a decade away from you in time. Tim is handsome. I doubt that means anything coming from me, but I didn't exactly talk to him. Not much else I can say. You're still out of his league. Always dating down. Thank you.

When Tim went to the bathroom, I wanted to cut through the smoke and tell you I love you. Not in a gesture of romance. Not in an act of heartbreaking bravery. Really just to say it. I haven't said it to anyone in such a long time. I love you.

Before I saw you, I went to visit my sister at the hospital. Jessica switched to the night shift last week. She gets the pleasure of telling cranky old men no more Vicodin, and in act of mercy, God grants her a week of sunrises to be viewed from the wide windows of the 13th floor.

The nurse tending the desk told me Jess was making the rounds. I creeped into four or five dark rooms before I found her. Might've even woken a bald woman in an iron lung. Do they make iron lungs anymore? Looked like an iron lung.

Anyways, I found her in a room grabbing a meal tray and putting on its "kosher" lid to be trashed. "Hey, man. Henri, this is my brother Josh. Josh this is Henri," Jess introduced. I shook his hand.

He looked up at me through black, thick-framed glasses. Henri had one silvery capped tooth that became visible when he smiled. The smile crumpled and wrinkled his face like an old newspaper.

"If you want you can just stay in here," my sister said. "Henri's a cool guy and I need to go grab his sleeping medication."

I told her sure. Sat down next to Henri. He looked to be in his early sixties. Very lean. Sharp jaw. Large knuckles. If he ever stepped in a ring, I bet he made a hell of a fighter.

Henri removed his glasses. Placed them in his lap next to a collection of Chekov stories.  I told him I really liked Russian literature. No matter a person's class they always seem to have servants. A butler to tell them their molding slice of bread was ready, and a maid to serve it.

"I feel just as lucky. Your sister has treated me like I just walked in from Hollywood Boulevard." I asked him what he was in for -- like it was prison.

"Fractured hip. The most cliche of old-timer injuries. Not proud of it," he laughed softly. "I have been biking across the country and a little white sedan didn't take much notice of me -- well, until after they hit me."

****. I asked why he was making the journey. His wife died in the summer. His life stopped. "Life is measured in the stops," he told me. "When your job, your hobbies, sometimes even your friends all become irrelevant and time doesn't matter -- you've stopped. I locked myself in our house for a month. Told the kids I didn't want them to visit. I got the best woman on the planet. I don't feel guilty for taking her. Because believe me, I had to earn her," he looked to the side for a moment. Staring at the black television screen.

Then he told me that life may be measured in stops, but greatness is measured in starts. Journeys. I thought you'd like that, Ms. Anna. Henri then asked me that terrible question, "got a wife?" as if to make sure the conversation didn't center on him.

I told him I had gotten a divorce three years ago. He asked if I had moved on. I confessed, I've hobbled. His heavy brow grew heavier. His hands pulled the bed table to the middle. He asked me to hand him a pen off the dresser. He uncapped it. "What year were you born?" 1986.

"Okay, and you were divorced in 2009?" Yep. "And you haven't started over?" Nope. Henri wrote something on the napkin and pushed the bed table to me. With a shiver, a weight passed through me -- going upwards. The napkin read,

"Josh
1986-2009, 2012-"

"Don't waste three years of your life again."

I only went to the hospital because Jess has a friend she wanted to introduce me to. Her name is Macie, I think. Macie called in sick. I'll call it a fair trade. I've written too much again. I hope you read this late at night, and when you awake, I hope the coffee tastes new. Your newspaper isn't wet with rain. I hope your journey starts or restarts. You deserve the same unknown energy that seems to be coming from under the concrete.

Empty asphalt parking meter,
Suburban drop out,
Accidental, half baked,
She-really-didn't-mean-to-
Love story of the empty
Alleyways and crowded
Cross streets, full of sober promises
And five day old
Chewing gum
Wadded up and discarded
On the faded, cement floor.
Blood pulsating
Through fifteen dollar
Cheap leather combat boots.
The almost cold, October air
Wheezes through halfway parted
Lips and abstract fleece jackets,
Stained by yesterday
And the subtle scent of pizza sauce
Evaporated grease and
Paper thin
Apologies.
Nothing grows here,
As worn out tires skid to a stop
In front of fluorescent bank signs,
Illuminating the way
To a safe ride home
Along with a three dollar waiting fee.
Heavy upon our translucent veins,
The world pushes down onto
Our vulnerable skin:
Hold your breath,
And one-two-three,
You won't even know what hit you.
Pulsating rhythms of life
Of something like Vicodin,
But with a stronger kick-
Bloodshot,
Our eyes dart back and
Forth, until eventually they lose track
Of everything alive enough to feel it.
Vibrant shades of yellow and red,
Lose their faces within
The fogged glass of the department store
Refrigerator. Who is there
To see the transparency of
The off-brand seven up
And diet doctor pepper?
Momma, I have shied away  
From life:
A coward too preoccupied with
Monday.
Death and damsels
Pull at my indifferent coat strings,
Until all I hear is the muffled sigh
Of yesterday
And that of the tomorrow
I will never see.
Oh, twisted fate,
Don't fail me now:
Palms up, I mindlessly surrender:
Who I was
For who I will never be,
Amen to amen,
Crammed up against the scratched,
Metal lining of a transit bus
Between the middle and end
Of a crowded route-
Nothing breathes here:
Hold your seconds until
Reality pushes up and
You can heave in the polluted
Scent of half past five
And missed doctor appointments.
Neck arched back,
Life flows down my esophagus
In the vessel
Of a Benadryl
And vitamin C. It's all the same
When you've bottled up your
Emotions, and sold them for
A pretty price
To anyone poor enough to buy
Them. Leaving you with a penchant
For emptiness, and a stomach full
Of vacant ambition
Sealed to the brim by an
Extended hand, not quite close enough
To feel it.
Bang, bang,
The sound of closure haunts my every move,
Driving me closer to my final hour
And away from the one before it.
I'm no longer with you:
Practiced, proposed, rehearsed and perfected.
Life after death is an encore-
A standing ovation,
So loud
That it drowns out reality.

an escape is much needed
an escape i do see
speckled all over in white and red
easing my pain and biting down deep
a feeling im used to, my legs get weak.
my thoughts become scrambled
my mind unpure
synthesis and happiness
a similar bore
distracting me from the fracture i've bore
10 pills then 20, but wait there's no more
the end of this road
the end of this path
the end of this trail
the end of this cliff
the end of this.

anxiety: my heart wakes me up, tattooing irregular beats against
my ribs, pulse racing, breath shaking.  i cannot tell
if this is real or psychosomatic.  these days,
i think about death all the time,
no longer by suicide.  now, i am
an accident waiting to happen,
fragile from years of misuse &
neglect.  the shallow inhales
of my lungs tell me
i am not okay.

depression:  this is a gray day.  i swallow my meds even though
they take away my mania.  so i drink black coffee until my mind
races itself in circles, chasing its tail like a rabid dog.
i keep the razors hidden in my sock drawer,
just in case.  

anorexia: my ribs ****** forward from my skin again, the sharp
protrusion of my bones beginning to show through.  i am eating
but drinking my weight in water
& mainlining caffeine to keep my metabolism high & my weight
low.  i am still child-sized & i don't want to grow.  
they lift me easily with their arms & marvel
at my featherweight body.  
the compliments i get only make me
eat less.

self-harm: on the days when i am low, i trace
the silver stretch of scars scattered over my skin
with a yearning for a blade between my fingers
just one last time.  i swear to you, the bleeding is over,
but i need to know
i am still brave
enough
to hold a sharp edge against my flesh
& press down,
hard.

addiction: a month ago,
i downed four adderall in one sitting,
luxuriating in the heady rush & lack of pain,
the quiet & the calm.
when i lived at home, i stole
my mother's vicodin & took the whole bottle.
i'm not sorry.  
when the boy who only cared about ******* me
offered mdma for free,
i accepted, but i shouldn't have trusted him
to keep me safe,
blacking out on his kitchen
floor.
drink red wine to forget
my insecurity, inhale
thick, sweet smoke to feel
some semblance of happy,
drag on cigarettes
down to their filters
until i feel properly
alive.

all i want is to be better, but
where to begin?

She thinks of nobody but herself
But still her bedrooms filled with nails she falls
And always seems to land on her wrist
Gashes a centimeter wide she needs stitches she needs to call an ambulance
She'll bleed out! God ****** she'll bleed out!

But she's not ready to die yet so she stitches herself back up
Hoping she hasn't drained too much
Because she loves the sting the reason she lives is for the sting
And the DRUGS
PILLS: Oxy, Percocet, Vicodin, Demerol
She sniffs them she snorts them she even ******* chews them!
She'll do anything as long as she can float

She won't admit it but she loves life she loves the drugs
And pain and abuse that come with life
She loves the pain, oh *******, she loves the pain
So she stitches herself back up she doesn't want to die
Repeat repeat she does it again
Dripping on the kitchen tile but this time is different

This time she's forgotten about the drugs and the pain
She's focused on her wrist and her wrist and her wrist and her blade
Too deep, she's gone too deep again
But she doesn't care  she's not stitching herself back up
She's ready to die with not enough drugs and
Too much pain
She's ready to leave this world behind
Ready to leave the pills

Don't leave me don't leave me
I love you I love you
Grab the needle, please get the thread
Please just stitch yourself back up stitch yourself back up

A is for Almost, how much I tried
B is for Barely, how I survived

C is for Clearly I'm feeling worn thin
D is I'm Dying inside of this skin

E is for Every, the days that feel worst
F is for Fear, the unbearable curse

G is for Guttural, forth from which sorrow boasts
H is for Happy, what I long for the most

I is for how I am screaming Inside
J for how I long to feel Justified

K is for Knowing that none of it's real
L is the Love that I no longer feel

M is Misanthropic, Macabre, Morose
N is I'm Not okay, Not even close

O for the thoughts that become Obfuscated
P is for all of the People I've hated

Q is for the always unanswered Question
R, from the ones I hold dearest, Rejection

S is the Solitary Silence I Seek
T is Trying to fight when I'm weak

U, feeling Ugly, outside and in
V is the whole bottle of Vicodin

W is Working through Panic attacks
X is the whole bottle of Xanax

Y is for You, the only light that I see
Z is the Zeal for life you've brought back to me