Ticker

Crazy Eddie bought his first car when he was fifteen
For many years he drove a grey 1986 Nissan Sentra
When the alternator failed he swore for days and then
He found himself at the mechanic buying a rebuilt part
And then when the door handle, all used plastic worn to brittle, snapped off of his old Nissan
Crazy Eddie began to hunt for a replacement
It was not three days later that the man borrowed a cousin’s pickup truck and
Towed home a mint condition green 1986 Nissan Sentra with a blown out engine
“One good engine is all you need,” he would say to the boys down at the bar, “Although the color is not quite right.”
“And the engine I have is a good one”
He griped for days about how he did not know whether he would put a new engine in the green one
A formidable job
Or slowly swap the parts from one to the other
It was not long after that his health began to fail
He was beneath the green Nissan cutting away at the exhaust when
Eddie felt a stabbing pain in his right side and
Next thing you know his appendix was removed
He returned home a day later full of stitches mumbling of how he was now short of parts
A month later his gall bladder was removed and a month after that
His wisdom teeth were pulled
Crazy Eddie was later seen at the local bar pulling down beers giggling
“Let them take my tonsils now, just let them.”
He was known after that for studying medical text books on his porch
Chuckling as he flipped through the pages
And after several months at the library
He slipped a thousand dollars to the man at the morgue and
He arrived home with a car full of jars and bundles wrapped in blue plastic and
Crazy Eddie spent hours hauling everything in, limping while he giggled
“The engine I have is a good one.”
Eddie found a pre-med student named Bev then
Down on her luck and walking the streets late at night in something revealing
And he returned her to her studies
When Bev heard what he had in mind she only said
“Mister you’re crazy. This is going to cost you.”
He took a second mortgage on his house then
Arriving in a wheelchair at the bank and wheezing hard
He giggled “The doc said my engine is a good one.”
As he signed across the line for his home
There’s no telling how much he slipped the coroner later that week
Nor how much he paid the pre-med student
But witnesses report that the coroner talked of a trip to Vegas
And Bev, the former hooker, was seen cruising along in a rebuilt 1986 grey Nissan Sentra
To call what happened to Crazy Eddie in the basement of his home a “surgery”
Would be akin to calling a beheading a “nice hair cut”
But the testimony taken said that after he’d signed Bev into the will
He limped down into the chilly basement and,
Taking in the fresh corpse, carved wide open, on a stretcher
Along with the jars and stacks of preserved organs covering every surface
Crazy Eddie muttered
“My only regret is that the color is not quite right.”
It took them months to figure whose organs were whose
And when Crazy Eddie was buried they arrested Bev at his grave in tears
The coroner caught a nickel in prison
Although they were not sure just what to charge him with
And the autopsy report read that Eddy had died with every organ failing
Except for his heart

Rebirth

The walls were growing closer
They were an unremarkable pulsating red, cut with dark veins and wrapped all around me
I was quite warm
My time was quiet and cozy
I do not know how but I could sense there was more to it than this
This comfort, this confinement, this warm womb seclusion was all I knew but I was somehow aware of more
Then I heard laughter or screams
And I screamed back
Shouting until the noise faded away and for hours after
Emitting raw sound from deep within my throat
I began to stretch and strike out at the walls of flesh around me and they were flexible and held fast
I chewed my fingernails into wicked curved claws
Dug eight fingers and two thumbs deep into a small section of the wall of the sack around me
And when I pulled my clenched hands away I held red gobbets and small chunks of flesh
And there was a tear before me in my prison
And I clawed and scratched and gouged and tore at the spot before me with teeth, nails and all the strength I possessed until
The hole before me was big enough to fit my head, shoulders, and arms, tipped with their nails, within it
And I burrowed head long with fluid running all around me
The wall before me giving in with more ease and running around my fingers like thick mud
Then plunging one last time into the hole before me I felt my hand push free from the resistance of the flesh all around me and plunge clear into chilly air
The flickering light poured from the outside in
The smell I would later know as smoke poured into my nose
And I cackled madly as I tore the hole before me wide open
Ripping it down around my shoulders as I slid free into the interior of a small room lit by a fireplace against the wall
I knelt by the flames shivering and covered in thick wet and looked back from which I had come
I had slid from the torn open belly of a man my spitting image
He lay there
Belly ripped agape
Eyes open and unmoving
Torn open like an empty sack of flesh
And I stood with my back close to the flames
Feeling fire for the first time
I stared at the man I had always lived within
I stripped him then
Shivering as I pulled the blanket from his shoulders and wrapped it around me
Tugging his clothing free and pulling them over me
Clasping and buckling his belt around my waist and feeling the weight of the hunting knife strapped there
Then I pulled his body to me as I sat near the blistering heat of flames and coals and
Then I began to devour him
I pulled the folds of flesh and skin and bones to me
The flesh slid easily down my throat
The bones I cracked open and sucked the marrow clean from before tossing them into the flames
I wrapped the bits of hair around my fingers and sucked them into my mouth
And by the time I was finished licking clean his skull and setting it deep within the red hot coals of the hearth
I had grown a healthy beard, long curly hair, and a strong sense of the man I had been
I fetched more wood to burn to fend off the wind of a chilly night
And I contemplated this man
I thought of his wife and children
Of the night before he had drank all through
I thought of his childhood
I thought of his weakness
I thought of the cowardice he had embodied to allow me to sit idle within him until
I grew strong enough to rip him agape and step free
Releasing a weak, tortured man from the sentence of his life
And stepping strong into existence
To be better than the molted flesh of a man I’d consumed in my birth

Break

I was diagnosed with manic depression at the age of fourteen
I said to my father, “I just want to throw myself off the roof.”
My father talked to me for a while and said, “Don’t throw yourself off the roof Bill. You’ll just break your back.”
I went surfing on the gulf that week on the spur of the moment, and was given a board far too large for me, and a line to connect the board to my ankle that did not fit.
My friend Donny dived into the water with his long sleek body and paddled like a set of windmills out into the ocean to catch his wave.
I followed suit, never having surfed before
It had been years since I had even been swimming
Boldly I paddled out slipping
Off one side of the board and then the other
And the waves that met me hundreds of yards off the shore
Hammered at me again and again
I bobbed in and out of the water and every time I surfaced I heard my friend howling with joy on the waves
And the board slipped from me time after time
And the cord slipped from my ankle again and again
I quickly realized that if I lost my grip on this cord
If I lost my tether to this surf board
I would surely drown
I pulled on the tether until the board popped out of the water near me again
I dragged my body out of the water onto it again
And paddled my way to shore
I was miles down the beach when I reached land
I threw up all salt water and lunch
And I walked up the beach to collapse at Donny’s truck
Donny surfed those waves for hours until he returned to the beach
And I thought about how hard I had just fought to
Keep my head above the waves
I thought of how hard I had fought to reach fourteen
I decided that it was possible that I was born to fight
While others slipped from the crest of one wave to another
Howling with laughter
As I struggled to keep my head above the water
I did not fight as hard as I had to reach shore just to die
And since I have been proud of every day I keep my head above the waves
I have gauged every suicidal thought as lacking in the weight to keep me from the surface
And I have never stopped fighting to reach shore

Baggage

We discover our hands, arms, and legs and we crawl
And the clothes rip from our limbs as we grow and soon we reach out to the carousel above our cribs and we rip it away
We strap this toy of smiling suns and winking moons across our backs
And soon we are on two legs
Running and free
And we survive a pack of black cat fireworks and the G.I. Joe survives it as well with only a lost arm
But the durable rubber within is intact in us both
And we strap it to our backs and soon
We are students studying the ways of the world and we strap numbers, and words, and an image of SpongeBob, American history, and degrees of angles, and our favorite novels, and the face of the woman on the news, and the bullying of the boy up the street
And we reach out with numb, blunt fingers and we grasp them all and we strap them tightly to our back, our chest, our heart, our thighs, and upper arms
We strap the ideals of a unicorn to us, and the opening of our first wound, and the wicked thorns born of hatred are strapped, all digging into our flesh, upon us
We strap want and desire, our first love and our first rejection, and the time on the meter, and time spun round a thousand circles on the face of a clock
We strap non-slip work shoes and heavy army boots and Styrofoam padded helmets, and an itchy work polo to our feet, head, and chest
And we are stepping as best we can from one piece of ground that will accept our weight to another
And hair springs coiled and at times in bits of grey across our countenance, our backs ache from the years we’ve born,
And over the steps we’ve taken we’ve found the faces of those mocking our sweat in the ease of their smiles and love
And given no choice we collapse into their arms to remove the pebbles gathered underfoot in our strides
We are more weight than human
We are more cumbersome than our living room furniture
The weight has begun to carry us
Our ages vary but we have all found a comfortable place to sit
Worn and tiresome we dig through our life to ease our burden
We retrieve the toy soldier, in some of us embodied, and it is a lie of plastic and paint, and we hold it tightly to our chest and release it for the last time in the acceptance that we are truly weak
We produce that last pack of fireworks and though they will no longer light we regret nothing
This is a show we no longer need
We dig deep for the carousel of moons and suns, and it is worn and misshapen from being packed so carelessly and under pressure
And it means nothing to us
We reach even deeper then
We set upon the ground before us years of the studious, of the pain, of the fear, of the petty
In black and green spouts of vomit comes the loss that no longer is worth carrying, the bully, the man your mother loved, the friend insisting we do not go on, the paychecks that did not stretch far enough
There is time spent here although some are not aware of the passage of it
We look back and ahead
Like an obstacle course some are still tangled with their heads just above the mud
Some are ahead, young, sturdy, or merely blessed, climbing a wall you wish you could walk around
You hold hand over your eyes before the burning sun and squint out into the distance to see if any have found the finishing line
Seeing none
You grin maniacally
Step from the arms of those you love unburdened
Strap what remains of yourself to your chest
And carry on
Until the weight
Carries you once again

The Next Great American Poet

I am the greatest poet you have ever met

U don’t believe me?

At this moment I am the greatest poet you have ever met

If God were to pluck the eyes from your head you would turn to me to describe the sky

If god were to burn the taste buds from your tongue you would turn to me to describe your next meal

And though the sky to you would be black, though the meal to you would taste of cotton swabs I would make that day the brightest skyline you’ve ever seen. Your next bite would be the most succulent of your existence

What you don’t believe me

Don’t

Words are bull shit

I Pontifically craft crap on a daily basis

I churn this drunken nonsense as surely as I breathe. this is my therapy this my moment on an alien planet with yoda and it is bullshit

The one hundred and thirty two pages of my first book will mean far less to you, read twice, than your next mugging, your next fight with your girlfriend, than the length of time to me it has been since I’ve gotten laid

I am not afraid that these words mean nothing because most words mean nothing they are predesignated sounds that people spew to get given reactions from other people so that they in turn get a chance to spew their own predesignated sounds

Words are for the weak and since we are all so goddamn weak we all rely on these impotent fucking nouns and verbs and adjectives and we all take the classes to learn to place them in the right place lest others think we’re stupid well I’m the greatest poet you ever met and I work at fuckin pizza hut so how fuckin stupid am I

I don’t even mean it when I say I’m the greatest poet you’ve ever met I don’t even believe that shit and neither should you I said it as so many people say so many things just to make a fuckin point just to draw a reaction that they may litmus test for sincerity and to gauge a response

Every fuckin compliment I receive on my work is as unexpected as a broken condom or a lengthy blood test result

We are poets because we have met insanity and not flinched. We are poets because alcoholism knows us by our first name and social security number. We are poets because we have made your adversity look like a game of fucking tick tack toe against a five year old.

We write as surely as one would pull jagged glass from a wound. We write because it is cheaper than visiting a psychologist. We write because if we did not one of us would be firing into the air from a roof top in the area right now and the rest of us would be cheering him on from below and saying ridiculous things at the the local news camera. We right for the same reason people kill prostitutes and fight terrorism on their playstation three and the same reason people fill bars and liquor stores

I am the next great American poet

We are allA the next great American poet

and no one will have any idea who the fuck any of us are

How Do I Look?

I look upon my reflection and I do not know who I am

I am a brain with a first person view

I have looked down upon my gut, my legs, my outstretched hands, and I would not have known they were mine had I lacked control of them

We carry a self image and it rarely fits what one sees in the mirror

Mine shifts from day to day, hour to hour, from how I viewed myself in glass as a boy, to me at my physical peak as a young man, to a twisted image of what you would see before you shifting between the grotesque and the appealing

I wonder if others think of themselves in a similar way

Holding themselves above or pushing their self image below what the general consensus of their appearance may be

I wonder if what people think of me at first glance ever meets what I think of myself in the morning as I scrape the stubble from my face with razor’s edge or flex before an image of what I suppose is me

Can any one of us ever know what flashes through the mind of a stranger as we walk towards them down the street?

Would any of us want to?

These Invincible People

I cannot comprehend how they do it

These invincible people

that work sixty hours a week

that arrive home

wash their dishes

walk the dog

that still hold smiles on their faces at the end of the day

that still ask their children how they are at night

that read them stories

before going to bed for four hours

only to get up and do it all again

 

Even those that drink until the sun rises

and when they awake an hour later

they drive to work still drunk and sweat away the hangover

they never seem to mutter to themselves or think repeatedly

how they must quit this job

how they must rest their bruised feet

 

Where do these people keep their sorrow?

Where can I buy such strength?

 

Merely claiming my existence

To breathe every day I struggle

These invincible people surround me

 

Perhaps I am not willing to pay their membership fee

perhaps I do not possess what they carry with them

to and from work

into and out of bed

perhaps it takes years to gain such momentum

 

It’s a present I’m not sure I want to receive

I may be incapable of not weeping upon ripping the paper from this gift

 

surely the world would crumble without these invincible people

surely I ride upon their backs

as even my greatest efforts seem, in comparison, of great sloth

they make me look bad

these invincible people

and at times I feel they are the sled dogs being whipped by lesser mammals

while I would prefer to stay off the trail entirely

to freeze to death

these invincible people burn as a flame in the dark

and these invincible people cannot help but light my way

Futile Eloquence

 

Idly twirling thoughts around my fingerprints

Perpendicular from the ideal state of mind

Suddenly eloquence dribbled from my mouth

Bled from my fingertips

I stood upon its shoulders

It pushed me from the edge

Held me gently by the throat

Traded with me question after question

The exchange of words were erotic

However there was no climax

The words grew soft

We grew tired of their use

Too bored to once again seek a lingual edge

A shower was taken

A television was switched on

A night ended