father had a big room
all to himself

he called it the study

No other fathers
she knew of
had this privilege
but hers was an artist, a writer,
a poet

And the last time she
entered his study
he turned from his massive
desk to face her and
spat in her face and slapped
her hard and cursed her
plenty

You do not disturb an
artist when
he is in the state of flow,
was the lesson there

Well, it was learned so well
that twenty years
have passed and it was not forgotten
Its greatest benefit
standing in
preventing her from marrying
a writer

It led to happiness

Today she was a
happy housewife
who prepared pear puree
for her three-year-old girl
who would one day have
to learn the most important
lesson of her life
Don't you dare become an artist's wife!

But there'd be time
enough for education. Today
she'd have to
deliver the monthly payment
to the nursing home for taking care
of some mad old fool who
wrote poems with his
own shit on the bathroom walls

They were all
about some daughter who won't
visit him and wouldn't
acknowledge his existence
or something like that

you can’t unlock the door
when there’s a key
inside the lock
from the other side

right,
all you can do now is
to plead with your kid to
let you in

it’s 12:47 AM
and kid’s got school in the morning
He’s not asleep
because there was no one to tell him
to go to sleep
There was no one home all day
and this late into the night
and he’s pissed
and very hungry, tired and
full of rage

Where have you been all this
time, mom?

Indeed, where have you been?

Better leave the answer
for tomorrow
when the spirits will sizzle
a bit less

Until then
take off your high heels
and the glitter from your face
and the semen from your hair
and lie down on the
doormat and
maybe pray yourself to sleep

It’ll get better. One day
you know it will

It is known
You can never hold on to
an adventurer

and she was one

And she was gone

and he stood by the window
and smelled the
guitar she left behind,
not knowing how to play it

A girl like her
travels around the world
like a sailor and
loves many boys and men
and they never forget her

The one mistake
they all share is
trying to lock her in their
world

It’s like trying to
capture the sun’s light in
a bag and take it
into your dark house

Women like her
are responsible for
men who call themselves
romantics and write love poems
and dream

He struck the cords
of the guitar
once. Looked out
the window. Warm, sunny day.
Streets busy with children
running fast, passing by
adults who walked slow

from the violet cloud above
God stretched a
hand and passed down to him
the dagger with
a blade made of frozen shit

“Take this,” said God, “and pose
yourself at the
gates of the school. Offer to
clean the
students under the fingernails
and toenails with it.
Now go.”

He woke up when
the mongrel dog whose tail he grabbed
and squeezed and pulled
started to cry and bark
and turn to bite at his hand

He screamed and backed away from
the poor thing
and watched it run away

He looked at himself

Naked and smeared with soot
and mud and whatnot

He looked around him

The landfill
just outside town

He fell to his knees

Damn, those were some good mushrooms

He stood and walked
back towards the town

it was a charming night
She really
liked a man who could
drive her from
the restaurant after having
quite some glasses
to drink
and he was that man

He drove her to
his house
and helped her out of the
car like a
gentleman
and even held her hand
all the way to
the door

Her heart was pounding
and her brain too. A voice
kept saying
'He's the one. He's the one!'

It was silenced
when she saw two small
animal heads on his
doorstep. A cat's and
a bunny's. The doormat
was soaked with
their blood

She froze and
the gentleman said, “Oh crap,
not this shit again.”
And he walked up to
them and kicked them
to the side like mini soccer balls

“My ex-wife,” he said with a shrug. “Just
another one of
her antics. You get used
after a while.”
He opened the door and
motioned her in

She hesitated

he declared himself insane
before the world

and the world did worse
than not to
believe or ridicule him

The world
ignored him

He was an old writer
with a body
rotting from the inside
A cancer in his lungs, right
around the heart

Effort made him faint
Oftentimes the effort of sitting
on the toilet and pushing

But when he wasn't on the
toilet he
was at his desk

writing

And smoking. There was
a candle on the corner of his desk
always burning

The rule was that for every
seven minutes spent
not writing he'd hold his hand
above the flame for
seven seconds

His hands looked like decomposing
carcasses of mole-rats

but they could
still hold
the pen

He would go on writing
for the rest of
his life

all seven
hours of it

She followed him home from
the casino
because he
swore he was a gambling addict

A true gambler

he lived only to gamble

Never missed a chance to declare it

"I like gamblers," she
said. "Love 'em to death."

He was all
smiles

and then she continued, "Say, what
about a little gamble
of our own? You down for that?"

"Baby," he said, "long as it's a
gamble I'm down to hells
and below, haha."

Once in the room
she climbed on the bed
and removed her clothes
and shuffled through her purse
and pulled out about a dozen
hypodermic needles

"What you doin' with those?"
he asked

She grinned at him
and spread her
legs and pointed between them
"I'll stick some of 'em
here in these lips. Your part
of the gamble is to
turn off the lights and slide
your way between 'em. Let's go, gambler.
Oh, and no fingers. It's
an all-or-nothing gamble."

she had long
dark
metallic looking nails

and black lips on a very
pale face

the clothes too
were designed to make her look
cold and dead

but she was quite lovely
to her new boyfriend, the mortician

She was an artist, she'd told him
And she'd also
told him that she'd like
to learn more about
human anatomy for her drawings

"That one!" she said on
their sixth date in the morgue
"I want that one! Cut his head
open from forehead
to nape. I need to see
how the brain's
kept in there."

He sighed and prepared the
electric saw. There
wasn't much for him
to complain. He'd done
pretty well
at 47, hooking up with this
22-year-old

The last time they visited him
in the hospital,
mother made the big
announcement

She was once more
pregnant

at 44

Hoping for a second son
of course

Because the first son
aged 21
was such a failure, of course

He will never become
anything worthwhile
Not from this hospital bed
with a broken hip
and spine

It wouldn’t have happened
if his dream
wasn’t to make it big
in the gang

But his dream was to
make it big in the 
local street gang
Serving the cocaine goddess and
hustling his way to the top

Well it was all fine
until that one deal that
went horribly wrong

People die when they stop
dreaming

Now he dreamed to just
die already

Surely his brother will choose
a better dream. He
had to