dog eared treats of questionable origins

hey you should interview me for your online zine i’ve been drinking since 2 and watching the light change coming through my blinds

you can see my ribs and i’m what you might consider pretty as far as dudes go run my poem with my photograph and watch the traffic jump

my short term memory is shot and i can’t remember if yesterday happened or if i dreamt it but can’t you relate to the pretty pictures i paint

i’ll let you editorialize start my own salacious rumors about famous sons and daughters i’ve tasted in the apartments of successful acquaintances

they all start the same
 some poor little shit with suffocating embers in his eyes trying for a glimmer but they won’t ignite

it’s the never ending question right? what did that look mean did she intend to do that do you think she knows what she was doing

yes

a brushing of the breast against the arm even if as faint as a breeze’s kiss can send many men into an episode of madness

and so we sit around telling stories about who we nailed where bathrooms, apartments maybe even in the park each one of us making up even more outlandish details

until someone has enough and breaks the cardinal rule of calling bullshit on one of our tales of conquest a riot could begin at any moment

someone flags down the waitress (you see the way she looked at me?) (i think she wants it) and orders up another round for all of us

there's something they don't tell you

about horror

it's not monsters or sounds

so vague that you can't

trust your ears

it isn't your whole family

disintegrating in a car crash

and no one answering

your phone calls

horror is not

being kidnapped

or acts of terrorism

no

it's being able

to accurately predict

every single day

from the moment you wake

to the instant you give yourself

over to dreams

you can't quite remember

but you do know

that in them

nothing is different from

she said to me “hey what’s a good catholic boy like you doing in an outfit like that” and i laughed because anything that isn’t obvious has a way of charming me

i said something witty back but i won’t repeat it here because i don’t quite remember what it was i just know what it accomplished and two drinks later we were gone

she brought me back to her place because her roommate was out of town so the empty bottles of heaven hill sat on the floor like decorations “she’d give me so much shit for this” i was told as i was placed on the couch with a packed bowl

i thought ok i know this routine and while some of the pages of the script had already been lost i figured i could improv my way through as my mouth got benched and my body had to do all the talking

it’s the usual you know lips start at hers and go to the neck and then on down to the breasts but then she stopped me and said “can i call you by another name” and i said ok

whatever gets a stranger off who am i to take offense because when it’s over and she feels an obligation to sneak under my arm i will pull it away like i always do and stare at the ceiling until i’m asked to leave

in the middle of the night during some winter weekend a girl called me michael and worked out some things while i just so happened to be underneath her and anyway shouldn’t i just be happy to be there

when it was over she didn’t use my real name and didn’t even try to sit near me on the couch i asked her who michael was but she didn’t say all she did was take the bowl and walk away finding my clothes by television light never gets any easier but i managed

and as i went to go find her to say goodbye she appeared from around the corner and told me it was important to know that you can’t fuck loneliness away so i stopped being charmed and reached for the front door but she continued

sick sick always sick

what color was it did you notice the smell always sick

how would you describe your mood any changes in your diet always sick

has this been happening for two weeks or longer and have you ever experienced this before always sick

sick sick always sick

try talking to someone try reaching out to a passing hand give me your sick

no really hand it over i'll eat it in big bites give me your sick

i make enough of my own and can always take more give me your sick

sick sick always sick

the priest, the sin eater, the therapist i play one on tv i need to be sick

you have one problem, i have ten let me have my eleven i need to be sick

a cold place to sleep, don't even need pillows just the least you can do i need to be sick

the warnings were there from the start at least i would like to believe that as if foresight and premonitions were ever a strength of mine

crackle and pop what was it you said no there is no one else unless you count my affair with myself

pattern recognition it works in video games and standardized tests but i thought things could be different with you some pity for a fool

and so how could i blame you for choosing this exact moment to cut the head off this time suck while i lay immobile on this couch quite literally waiting for the shit to come out

carrying on three different text conversations at once in the middle of the day with people at work trying to do their jobs to talk about my new pair of boots

two stop responding so i replace them with four and now there are many voices chiming in and overwhelming me while i try to talk about my new pair of boots

who did this and where did they go and why sending responses to the wrong people but i'm laughing and apologizing while i keep talking about my new pair of boots

eventually they all go quiet so i make calls but all i get is voicemails so i try to read a book but can't go past page 6 because i keep thinking about my boots

i bought them on a whim and don't even like them much but there they were at the right time it was a tuesday you know and wednesday would come so i got the boots

hoping that they would get me through to thursday by giving me something to talk about during another long afternoon while i try to picture friday with my new pair of boots

next week it might be a coat and i'll talk about it some maybe even make plans to wear it out a coat would look good with my new pair of boots if i keep finding things to buy and i keep telling people i'll see them in a few days or a week i'll have a use for my new pair of boots

you're as good a place as any to hide in certainly better than the bottle and today the edge of the blade meet me in the middle and i'll tell you a few things one of which might be true

here's a free one so take my word i just want to get in touch it's simple i'll crash my car and run up some bills climb telephone poles with a knife between my teeth

who do you want dead? myself excluded consider it done and we'll bathe in his entrails because it of course is a he a he that is not me

it’s a curious thing fancying yourself a writer (oh you precious little dilettante) and then taking stock of your bookshelf to see that all your favorites are dead

rimbaud is dead and carroll is dead and berryman is dead and don’t forget hank he’s dead too (yeah some people read them when they were breathing) but it’s their books that are still being sold how many living writers on that shelf, man?

the gutters have been jammed with leaves cigarette butts and used condoms

so when the rain comes down on the avenue it gathers like god’s judgment

"gonna wash you all away" he says the fornicators and the pill heads it’s true

all the boys with the boys being boys in the alley behind the bar and the neighbors watch pretending not to notice from their premium real estate balconies and flick their ashes down

while the professor lectures on degradation and his ex girlfriend is showing some bridge and tunneler what degradation means to her in a bathroom somewhere on st. mark’s

and this kid on his laptop in this shithole high rise in a neighborhood they’ve given a new name is running out of tissues watching women his mom’s age while he listens for her footsteps

the water pools under the feet of people wandering to and from places where they think they’ll meet other people who just want to be told “i think that all the time” and tongues trade mouths

but there are those who know that this is more than just some weather

they raise their mouths to the sky and wait until their lungs are full of black

when the quiet overwhelms when you hate your body when the bell in your tower breaks when i put my face through the wall when i speak in snarls and spit when the whole year is one december when your friends drag you through their muck when you wonder if this is forever when i communicate with the lash when i wonder why gravity fails me when 3am seems like the only time anymore when you ask if any of it is worth the effort when you spend all of today dreading tomorrow when i greet an attempt to help with hatred when my certainty is reduced to sand i try to hold when the desire to hit eject becomes too strong when i try to force you to take it away from me

remember

when did i become so nervous that even pausing to read made me wary of the icy hand and when did i need the tv on constantly to reassure me that there are people out there pretending to laugh at one another i’m not who i said i was the artifice is me and now i’m just a character in one of my poems that i shit out while waiting for the gas man

maybe i’ll ask him about his wife when he gets here and hope he corrects me and says he has a boyfriend so i can flirt with him for fun like i do to the old men for faster service and stronger drinks i never claimed to be good so at least i’m not a liar