poetry

Stolen Lives

Posted by le garage

 

“For George Floyd: The whole World was watching”*

Shawn Mottram, killed dead on October 12, 1998 by
what Trooper Joseph Stone said was an accidental
shot when he slipped while climbing a chain
link fence with gun in hand. A kill shot.
Stone shoots so well by accident that he can split
a bullet in the air with a second bullet fired
from the same gun. A spokesman for the State
Police, Lieutenant Maloney, that sounds a lot
like baloney, said the shoot was unintended,
an “unintentional discharge”, not to give unwanted
life, but to take that life. Like, he didn’t mean to do it.
Now the officer, a stone of a man, is distraught
and needs counsel so he can go on.
Go on with his life, which he still has.

Fred Mottram, the father of he who was accidentally
direct-kill-shot-dead asks, “Why was the trooper’s gun
out?” Answer. Guns work better when
removed from holster. Shawn, unarmed, shot dead in the
heart through his back, had nothing to say.
The Mass Stated Police will investigate,
giving Officer Stone three days off, with pay.

Joseph Sanchez, 15, killed June 21, 1996 by police
from CRASH unit in Los Angeles. Shot in the back.

Hong Byong Chul, 40, killed May 10, 1996 by LAPD for making
noise, banging on signs, and yelling while
running in the street. After being beaten,
drop-kicked in the neck by police, he died of what a police spokes,
another Public Relations Lieutenant, said was natural causes.

Abner Louima, 30, not dead yet but not for lack
of police effort, had the wooden rod of a toilet
plunger rammed up his rectum by Brooklyn
Police. Everyone denied everything but the shit
was on the plunger.

Antonio “Tony” Gutierrez, 14, killed dead on
July 29, 1995 by one Officer Falvo, shot in
the back. The eternal-omni-present Police
Spokes said the boy pointed a gun
at the police and then threw it away when
the bullets were flying yet there were no finger
prints on the gun and, since he was shot in the back,
it was obvious he was pointing it
at them from over his shoulder, an old
party trick he had learned from hanging with
William Tell, Wild Bill Hickok, and William
Burroughs. Tony was buried, the investigation
was buried; Officer Falvo, after a thorough internal
investigation, was promoted.

Leon Fisher, 23, shot twice and pepper-sprayed
by police while hand-cuffed in Nashville, Tennessee
for running from a traffic stop, died
of his injuries while police stood by and chatted.
Leon, a Black man, spilled his hand-cuffed life
Into the street.
The Nashville mayor denied any racial component to the kill. No cops
were disciplined and the Police Spokes was seen smiling and nodding
as the video tapes were spinning.

There was a man in Baltimore
shot dead while standing still.
There was a man in Springfield, Mass kicked
in the head while cuffed.
There was a woman in Los Angeles shot
twice in the chest and seven times
in the back. Some of the bullets
had mushroomed.
This means those bullets had been fired at her
while she was lying on her face.

There was a man, there was a woman,
there was a man, there was another man,
there was a woman, all dead, all Black, and the police
just walk away and the results of the investigations
are always the same. Always the same.

Spoked Maloney, in Massachusetts, after
Officer Stone killed Shawn Mottram, said
there were other officers nearby. He declined
to say what they saw. There will be

an investigation and then, as usual,
the police will get away with murder.

*published in 2011 in Liberation Poetry, An Anthology edited by Tontongi and Jill Netchinsky—showing this has been going on a long long time.”

Tales Of Inner City: From The Books of The Keepers

Posted by le garage

The Farm is nestled in the hills of scenic Merrimack Valley. It is honeycombed with semi-sealed tunnels where the vicious Merrimack Mongeese are raised. They are tended to by bipedal lizards known as dragons by the population at large.

These dragons are hopelessly addicted to the bone marrow powder of the mongoose. Incisions have been made on their necks into which tubes have been inserted into the main vein. Two liter skin sacs have been surgically grafted on to their scaly shoulders. These sacs contain potent solution of powdered marrow and it is constantly released into their blood flow.

The Dragon Keepers are entrusted with the care and feeding of the Merrimack Mongeese. Their lives are always at risk due to the vicious nature of these animals. The Dragon’s loyalty is insured by their addiction and the potential for them to become Chief Tenders. This is a cosmic state that can be achieved by only 1% of those who ingest the precious solution. More on this later.

“from the books of Tending: Births of Major and Minor Queens—by InsectO-War”

Dreams, Dragon-child of the sinister Insect-O-War, slipped through a minuscule crevice. A faint mewling sound eerily made patterns of fear in his flickering eyes. He widened the gap on his flow tube. The sudden influx of marrow cleared him. He probed with scaled phalanges through the inter dimensional mesh; made contact and gently pulled.

Greenspur tingled with the touch. There was a moment of indecision and then she responded, her scales glowing. As they stared at each other, Dreams motioned for her to raise her flow. Unwittingly, she opened it to maximum. Greenspur swayed with dream punch! Dreams quickly enfolded her as she went deep. He tried desperately to close her flow tube. Too late, too late.

She became solution, eyes aglow with visionary light. Dreams knew Greenspur had passed the Veil. And just then, a flock of mongoose entered the catacomb. Dreams began the chant of Passing, in the fervent hope that he could prevent their Spirit-loss as the flock approached with malevolent intent. A gentle humming suddenly filled the chamber. The mongeese paused, then stopped. Still standing, they began to croon; they offered their marrow. Dreams stared at Greenspur. She flickered with the White Light. The mongeese lay down in front of her. A new Chief Tender had been birthed!

“The Breech: First Stages—by the Destroyer, Queen sister of Insect-OWar.”

A dense fetid mist rose out of the multiple sewer pipes which extended into the streets of Innner City. Inner City, the final distribution point of the Marrow, was quiet. It was three hours after the midnight.

Tracks, an Inner City trafficker in the powder, was waiting for a major drop. He reduced his flow-tube to a trickle to maintain a state of steady-sickness in order to facilitate flight through dimensional walls, if necessitated by the appearance of the infamous Wart-Hogs.

The Wart-Hogs were the Dream Police whose avowed goal was to rid the world of the Marrow by tracing it to its source and destroying the mongeese. This would alter both time continuum and the entire fabric of space irrevocably. The Dragons would have no more reason to time-slip, which would mean the end of the world, as we now know it, that is.

Molecule movement commenced. There was wind, a shimmering light, and a Keeper stepped into the alley with a sac of powdered Marrow. Tracks handed him the Sacred Meat and 40,000 gold drachmas. Another shimmering, and the Keeper faded.

Tracks moved into shadow with the sac, dimension-slipped into the Cutting Room and, with a sigh of relief, turned up his flow. He began to drift.

“Insect-O-War: Spinning The Wheel”

Dimmer flicked the tracer on as Tracks began to dimension-slip. A gossamer reality thread trailed off and Dimmer clicked his mandibles gleefully, then radioed home base for an assist. His partner, Cold-Shake, immediately pulled up. The motor on his D-cruise, a high tech slipper, was humming. Dimmer slipped the side-rail and they followed the tracer. They homed in on the Cutting Room.

Tracks, unaware of the closing Wart-Hogs, was traversing a heavy drift. Suddenly, the sensor flashed, signifying an unauthorized presence. Before Tracks could react (due to the drift his reaction time was delayed) the D-cruise shattered the Time Wall, entered the Cutting Room and sparkled to a halt. Suddenly, the room was full of airborne Marrow.

Unaware of the drifting powder, Dimmer and Cold-Shake leaped from their vehicle and snapped a collar on Track’s flow-tube. Tracks realized that, if he tried to slip, he would lose his flow-tube. He tried to cool out but the thought of being tubeless was too much for him. He would be a reptile without a solution. He breathed deeply and then it hit him—-Marrow in the air.

Dimmer flicked on the waver to call for a warrant and then—he began to flake. Dimmer and Cold-S. This was a serious and unique situation. A Cutting Room had been probed, which was unusual in itself, but to make things even stranger, two WartHogs had become addicts. Shit happens.

“Kaleidoscope Eye Bar Chronicles: by Insect-O-War”

While Dimmer and Cold-Shake remained in Dream-State, Tracks set the stage for a coup. He made incisions in the Wart-Hogs necks and inserted electronically controlled flow-tubes. He grafted two-liter Marrow sacs onto their shoulders and set the eclectro-monitors on 70% flow. This was the solution to all their problems.

Dreams, a powerful Keeper now, due to his relationship with Chief Tender Greenspur, surveyed Tracks handiwork and was satisfied. He offered Tracks thirty sacs of powdered Marrow and the Inner City trafficker primed his tube. He delayed the flow just long enough to be sick and he slipped back to Inner City for a meet.

The lights were tracing arcs on the walls. The hum of music webbed the atmosphere. The click of flow-tubes was all around him as he entered the Kaleidoscope Eye Bar. Dragons had glued themselves to dimension-blockers to keep from slipping through in Marrow hunger and their eyes came out on stalks when Tracks slipped in and did a heavy flow.

The room came alive with vibrating Dragons as, one by one, they made the connection. The potency was high. Some Dragons would never leave the bar again. No one would complain.

“Tales Of Communion: by the Destroyer, Queen Sister of Insect-O-War”

The blackness lifted and it was clear. Greenspur could feel the raw pulse of thought spinning through the mongoosian mind. She became as one with the flock. She felt their hunger for the Sacred Meat and she understood why their need must be fulfilled.

In the final stages of the addiction the Dragons become catatonic. The only thing they need to sustain life, of a sort, is the solution. They become the Living Meat. Parts of their flesh are sectioned off and become payment for the Marrow. It is the only currency they have left in the end states of the addiction. This meat is then combined with the regular mongoose feed.

Greenspur knew the craving of the meat by the mongeese. She also knew the intense pull of the powder. She knew that only the Chief Tenders were Dragons with mongeesian minds. Only a female could become a Chief Tender.

No male Dragon had ever survived maximum flow. Greenspur was stunned by the symbiosis, the parasitic nature of need on the part of the two species. It was a unique enslavement.

The mongeese sang to her. She hummed and twirled her flow-tube with wild abandon.

“Fixing The Beasts: by Insect-O-War”

The smell was rank. The two mascot mongeese were snarling and slavering. Their leashes were pulled taut. The green sinews of Greenspur’s forearm rippled with the strain of holding them back. Dreams slithered along beside her, nervously playing with his flow-tube. Tracks moved on ahead of them all, time and again apprehensively glancing back at the mongeese. The mongeese were in Meat Rage. If they broke loose, the closest Dragon would be the food for their habits.

A yellow-tinged Dragon stepped out of a darkened building and waved them on. Their pace quickened. Tracks disappeared into the doorway. Greenspur and Dreams waited. Tracks reappeared and waved them in.

The smell overpowered them all. The mongeese murmured with need.

The yellow-tinged Dragon turned his flow-tube to maximum and held his arm out to the mongeese. As they savaged the pure Meat of his arm, his eyes pinned and he smiled with the satisfaction of need meeting need. He had become the Meat.

Six other Dragons with yellow skin lay about the room. Dreams moved about, turning all flow-tubes to maximum-flow and slipped everyone in the room to the caverns of the mongeese. Their eyes were glowing in the darkness. The caverns hummed with animal sound. The Keepers moved back as the mongeese came forward to feed.

“A Direct Communique from Insect-O-War: In The Solution”

Here I sit under the influence of the mother-lode-mind-flaker. I see twisted spiders dripping green ooze from the walls of Abbey West. There are unidentifiable small creatures spinning helplessly in the webs, the sinister webs of their incommunicable reality.

Listen. Listen. I can hear these tiny trapped creatures cry out into the cavernous reaches of the tunnels while being sucked dry by the between dimension beings that spin lysergic acid webs. These creatures have no eyes yet they can see things that a reptile like me, the simple savage Insect-O-War, can never even begin to comprehend.

Are we not all strange scaly reptilian creatures spinning webs of our own making at warp-light speed while looking for our fatal connection, who sits, no doubt, in a quiet celestial barroom counting his gold drachmas from his last sale of the bitter-sweet solution to the problem which plagues us all. Feelings. Ah, yes, feelings.

I rotate my flow-tube counter-clockwise seeking the lethargic dream state that the powdered bone Marrow of the vicious Merrimack Mongeese produces. I ponder the after effects of the stuff whereby the walls of the dimensions become sticky and penetrable and reptiles like myself must purchase more and more to maintain a solid base within the dream world of Powers beyond. It is a one-way journey to the world of Under-Soil, the home of that great shifting galactic structuring of what is commonly misconceived as the real and known throughout the cosmos as Inner City.

Inner City. The home of the cosmic connection. The final distribution point for the powdered Marrow solution.

Listen. You can hear the clink of coins as the connection counts his gold drachmas. Watch! There is a reptile slithering his way. Look closely. Can you see the packet of Merrimack Mongeese powder in the connection’s hand? Can it be? It seems to shimmer in the glowing dusk light of evening.

Watch! Don’t even blink. They are making the exchange. Marrow flows to its object. Its object becomes its subject. We are all subject to the call. See the reptile. See him run. He is embarking on an endless journey. No beginning. Never-ending. For the reptile, the powder is the solution. It is the only solution. There are many ways to ingest it. There are many ways to die.

Welcome to Inner City.

One Of The Tough Guys

Posted by le garage

R.I.P. Bill “Casey” Case

The forest all around us
as we smoked the joint
back in the way back

and Casey was yelling
into the ether, “Yahoo,
Mountain Dew” because

he was a mountain man
born into the wrong time.
Too late, too late the birds

sang; they knew he was out
of time. Casey was a big
man, muscled to the core,

worked as a house painter
when he worked, drank like
thirsty ground no matter

what bar he was in. “you don’t
tug on superman’s cape, you don’t
piss into the wind,” but he could

and did. If you stepped on his
toes at the bar, he would put
you through the window, if there

was one; flagged from every bar
with a window he was. There
were other tales of Casey

I could tell you; he messed with
the devil drugs; do I have to
name them? We were in

my car, his strong arm on the
back of the seat, probing with
the needle to find the elusive

vein; the police parked down
the street and we all scattered
like the wind; Casey was gone

and now he’s really gone. Casey
was older than me; wasn’t afraid
of anything. But when age catches

up and the scars of the old life
take their toll; who can blame him
for deciding to opt out? Swollen with

Hep-C, with warrants to send him to
steel and stone for six months in
the heat of Florida with a body

that he could no longer control and
a mind that knew the truth. No one
can cast the stone unless you were

in his soul to feel his pain. So he
took it upon himself to decide his
fate and when the police came to

take him away, Casey was already gone
and no one could bring him back
unless God gave him another chance

in a new body, in a new place, in
a new time, raised up by new spirits.

Pissing In The Wind: The Search For A Public Restroom In the Boston Area*

Posted by le garage


I felt my bladder tweak me as I hit the second escalator going down. Too late to turn back. I was getting deeper by the minute into the Porter Square T Station. This sucks big time. Have you ever wondered why there are so few elderly people on the subway? You know, the older one gets, the less holding capacity one has. Urinary holding capacity. And it hit me. How come there are no bathrooms in the underground T-stops? I mean, frack this. I think the cities in the United States of Generica have something against people going to the bathroom. Anyway, the pain circled around my left testicle and traveled to my knee in about one minute. I had to find a bathroom. I didn’t know whether to ride to my destination or leave the T and come back in. And would the guy in the token booth let me go out and come back in?

I decided to chance the ride. It would only be a short hop to Harvard Square Station. The new computer-run train slithered to a stop and I got in. Sleek. Nice red material seats. Soft soothing machine voice mercilessly hissing at me. No place to urinate. We slid down the tracks while I tried to distract myself out of my discomfort. I felt like I was a blocked fire hose about to swing wild like a decapitated snake. Only one stop. Soon. The train was coming to a stop. I stood up and winced to the door but it was still dark outside the train. Damn! We had stopped before reaching the station. I sat down and crossed my legs in the futile hope that this would prevent leakage if things got out of control. I gritted my teeth. I peered about the train with yellow eyes. Everyone in the car knew. They could tell. I knew they could tell. The train started with a sibilant hiss. I silently thanked the god of my misunderstanding. We pulled into the station and I limped out of the train. Gently. Gently but quickly. Walked the ramp to the escalator. Frack! The escalator was shut off. I didn’t know if I could live through the jolt of climbing up the stairs. Was I peeing myself yet? Finally, out of that damned T-stop. Over to the faithful Au Bon Pain bathroom and — lo and behold, there was a damned attendant there asking me if I had the token to get in. Holy flying frackin’ ruckin’ piece of excrement! What next?

Did they mean I had to buy a coffee to go and take a piss? What if I didn’t have the money for the coffee? What then? And if it was a matter of life and death (and by this time I felt that it was) was I a dead man walking or just someone who was about to be arrested for pissing in public? Should I just whip it out and tell them to open it up or I would shoot? But what would I do if I was a homeless woman? Well, I don’t know, but at this precise moment, I did not have the luxury of pondering about equality or the disadvantages of being one gender or another. This was it! The chips were down. The lines were drawn. The bathrooms were locked. It was time for action. Faith without works is dead. I hobbled to the coffee counter and croaked my request for a small coffee.

Okay, now give me a goddamn bathroom token. I held my small coffee at the ready in case he hesitated. The counterperson must have seen the desperation in my eyes (or maybe the yellow staining the whites). He dropped the token in my trembling hand. I walked (hobbled) to the bathroom, tokened the door, and I was in. Good Frith, all this to take a piss. I had waited so long that I stood at the urinal and ——I was in pain but nothing was happening. My whole body was shaking. I had to go into the stall. Dropped my drawers and sat down. Shit! My ass was all wet. I was hurting too badly to be angry and quite possibly the wetness of the seat was going to help me pee! Then——relief! Imagine! A natural act reduced to futility, degradation and desperation. The cities have become chambers of torture for those of us who find themselves needing to eliminate our own waste. Is this the end-product of our civilization? Have we become so fully evolved that we can no longer recognize the need to cleanse ourselves of the by-products of the energy sources that keep us alive?

Is the human animal above the natural laws? Do we treat our bodies and our neighbor’s bodies the same way we treat the rivers, oceans, and land masses of our planet Earth? What the hell am I talking about?

The philosophy, the ecology, the ethology of what? We’ll save the heavy cosmic discourse for the next animal or being to inherit the Earth. After we’re extinct from Global Warming! You know what I’m talking about. Really, all I want is to find a public bathroom. Or am I just going to be pissing in the wind?

*In response to last issue’s great article “Bathrooms For Customer’s Only.”

Getting Fixed

Posted by le garage

 

The South Carolina night settled in on us. I drained the last of the thick liquid hydrocodone and realized that it was not enough. The fingers of dopesickness probed at me. I looked at Bonnie. The cigarette was burning down between her fingers. She did not move. I plucked the cigarette out of her hand and dropped it into the ashtray. Five days and it was all gone. This was one hungry monkey. It was chattering in my mind. I did not decide to go out and cop some dope. The dope decided to go out. I was just going along for the ride.

Bonnie opened her eyes. “Where’s my cigarette?” “I had to take it out of your hand. It was burning your fingers.” She looked at her hand. She closed her eyes. Her head started to droop down like a sunflower getting bigger on a small stalk. She opened her eyes. “Where’s my cigarette?” “In the ashtray,” I said. “Oh,” she said and reached out to her pack on the coffee table. She took one out. Put it in her mouth. Picked up the lighter and flicked it lit. She sucked on the cigarette and then sat back as the smoke drifted out of her mouth and nose. She closed her eyes and sat still. The cigarette burned slowly down to her fingers.

I took the cigarette out of her hand and dropped it into the ashtray. I made a cup of coffee. Smoked a cigarette. Went to the bathroom. Tried to urinate. It wouldn’t come out. I always go to the bathroom before I get high because sometimes I can’t urinate for hours. I’ll feel like I have to go but then I just stand over the toilet and try. Sometimes I sit down on the toilet because I get tired of standing. If I close my eyes I’m fucked. I could be there for hours. I did not sit down this time. I didn’t urinate either. I was just ready to walk out the front door when Bonnie opened her eyes.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “To get some dope,” I said. “But you don’t know the city. Wait till morning.” “I’ll be sick in the morning.” “Please don’t go. I have a bad feeling.” “I’ll be all right,” I said. “You don’t know the city.” “I’ll be right back. If things don’t look good, I won’t keep trying,” was what I said to her. My disease always lies to me too. Addiction only remembers what it needs.

Then Bonnie saw the helmet in my hand. “Oh no, don’t take the bike,” she said. “Please.” I didn’t want to waste time talking. It was getting late and Charleston was a strange city to me. “I’m going.” “Don’t get beat. Make sure the dope is good,” she said. “I’ll wait up for you.” She was lighting another cigarette as I walked out the door. The heat had been beating on the blacktop all day. I could feel the softness of the tar as I wheeled my motorcycle into the street. I popped a tar bubble with my shoe, climbed on the bike. Turned the gas petcock to on. Tweaked the throttle once and then kicked it. It coughed and then roared to life. The straight pipes talked internal combustion at me. I popped down into first gear and headed into town. The light at the entrance to the highway was read. I stopped for a minute. I could feel the sun rising from the street in the dark southern night. Friday night traffic.

In and out. Six exits to go. Bonnie and I had taken a cruise through Charleston the other day. A junkie is like a dowsing rod when it comes to heroin territory. I crossed into a certain area and I could feel it down to my bent cells. The streets had that slowbusy of dope areas. People clustered on the corners. Bars, candy stores, check cashing places, package stores. Some people in New York had told us about copping in Charleston. They said the dope trade was controlled by the Blacks there. In the Big Apple the New Yoricans have the best stuff. In Lowell, Massachusetts the Dominicans control the coke and spillover into the junk. If you cop from a Black person there you stand a good chance of getting beat. If you cop from a white junkie you will get beat unless you know him. Maybe you’ll get beat whether you know him or not.

In Boston the Puerto Ricans have the fair street stuff. The Orientals have the real mother-lode mind-fucker but it’s hard to get an Oriental connection. They only deal to a select few. The Blacks are down a couple of rungs on the dope ladder in Boston. The feet of the ladder stands on the white junkies. That’s how some of the stories go. You can’t believe anything you hear or read when it comes to the racial stuff. They say that dope is the great equalizer. Brings us all down to the same manure pile. Life is like that. Somewhere in the hidden zone are the dealers who don’t use the product. Some junkies meet one of them once in a while. Some junkies disappear. Some are found in bathrooms or condemned tenements with blood filled syringes connected to their veins.

Nowadays every dealer stamps their bag with a name. So it can have a reputation that stands on its own. There are times w and in the newspapers. Every junkie zeroes in on that bag and area. Junk is only a stepping stone to the big high. That’s how it is. Don’t just take my word for it. Ask any junkie. Down the exit ramp. Into the city. Cross into Blacktown. Busy streets. Flashing teeth from night-face as I cruise slow down dope-street. Waving me over. Neon lights flicker, hurt my eyes. “What’s up?” he says. “Lookin’ for the ‘boy’” I say back. “You a cop, white boy?” he smiles in sound at me. I laugh and pull up the sleeve of my shirt. Those railroad tracks running up my veins are great convincers. “I’m not holding but I’ll take you to someone who is,” he says. I jerk my thumb back. “Hop on,” The motorcycle shocks creak as the big man gets on. I feel his hands on my waist as I take off. I try to remember his face but I am at a loss. Black mustache. Teeth flashing. That’s all.

I wonder how many people he has passed dope to in the dark summer nights. I wonder if he remembers any of their faces. Addiction only remembers what it needs. We move through the city streets. There are dragons moving in my mind. I kick the motorcycle through the gears. We’re moving and the red lights don’t mean a thing. The mission is the only thing that counts and there is no stopping us now. My addiction is talking to me. It whispers sweet shit into my ear and I know this monkey is a liar. He motions me out to the highway. I look back at him.

“House connection on the outskirts of the city,” he hisses at me. I throttle down and the dope man’s hands tighten up on my waist. I lean into the back highway curve hard and scrape the footpads on the cement. Sparks kick off like shooting stars and wink out into the night. Just like young men on dope-city streets dancing to deadly drive-by rhythms, the sparks become dark spots devoid of life.. “What the fuck,” says the dope man as suddenly my engine is freewheeling. It screams into the night and the road pressure is gone. The pounding pistons are freed from the confining transmission and I pull the clutch lever in and hit the shifter over and over. I know that the cylinders are frying in boiling oil and I snap the throttle back to idle. I pull the clutch lever in again and tap the shifter; nothing and the dope man is shouting in my ear. My head is with the engine. They both howl in anguish as nothing is happening. I shut the engine down and my addiction is screaming in my ear in multiple voices. My head is a dark and dangerous neighborhood. I hate to be in it alone at times like this. The dope man hops off and I roll my machine to the shoulder of the road.

The night is hot and dark. I am sick and sweaty. I wipe my face and the road dirt grits into my skin. The dope man is asking me questions. He wants to go. He wants to stay. I have the money. He has the connection. We are trapped together by our addictions. I need a flashlight. The clutch cable has broken loose My disease has broken out in my mind like a chattering monkey. It beats on the existential bars of a prison of its own making. The man wants to go. The man wants to stay. I want a fix. I need a flashlight. There is a car slowing down. They ask if they can help. Flashlight. I ask for a flashlight. “This will be quick,” I lie to the Black man from the city. I wonder if he knows I am lying. The dope keeps him locked to me and my money as sure as it sends me out into strange streets to do things that scare me down to my dying soul.

“We’ll go up ahead and make a call for you. Keep the flashlight,” the guy in the car tells us. I nod and they pull away. The man wants to go. The man wants to stay. My addiction wants hime to stay and reassures him with things that might never happen. It knows he is the stellar connection to blisters, pus, disease and denial. Riding high on a dead white horse, I am a knight chasing dragons that whisper lies to me in the middle of the night. I believe everything like a child knowing his parents are lying again but how can the world shake like that. The man from the city leans down to see how I am doing. My fingers are working. The cable seems to slip back into place. I can’t picture the man’s face and I wonder if I should look up to see what he really looks like. My addiction bends me to my task. The man wants to go. The man wants to stay. And his addiction makes him wait. And wait. And wait. My fingers bleed from the fury of the quiet clutch cable. The bike bleeds oil into the street. I need to call my wife. I need to hurry up. I need to get some dope. I need to hook this up. Why does this always happen to me? I need to lie to the dope man. He wants to go. He wants to stay.

I hear the dope man yell but my addiction is talking to me and I do not understand what is happening. Suddenly I am lifted into the air. It is a bluntingfeeling. The air is out of me. I fly. I bounce on the road. My body is remembering something it forgot long ago. Metal sounds crashing. There is a bird bouncing on the road. I am the bird. There are sounds that defy my ears and then—-all is still. In the heat’s silence dead engines and deactivated metal ticks time backwards. I smell the grass and the earth bleeding under me. It is freshly torn and wounded. As I lay there I know. This is how death comes. Like lights in the night bearing tidings of metal pumped by oil and gasoline and misruled by blood beings.

I am afraid to move. I am afraid to think. I am afraid to die. I am afraid to breathe. I am afraid not to breathe. My body feels alien to me and the smell of grass is sweet as my breath comes back to me in shuddering gasps. I think of dead animals crushed on the side of the road and the fear twists my mind into shapes that it cannot sustain. Stop! The thinking. Just breathe. That is all I have to do right now. I remember about punctured lungs. There is no hiss of air whispering through shattered ribs. I laugh and cut it off quick as the pain spits through me. The voices! I hear voices! “Tell them you were driving.” A man’s voice. “No. Not this time.” A woman’s voice. “Please. The goddamn motorcycle is sticking through the engine block. We can’t get out of here.” “No. NO! I’m not going to say I was driving this time. There is too much involved here. This man is dead. That man is dying. No. Not this time.” She said.

Sometimes someone says something that changes the way you look at things. Anger. I want to rise to this occasion. Shake them. Tell them. Kill them! For caring so much. They don’t want to get in trouble. I don’t want to die. Not right now. But they are in trouble. And I know that things are a little worse than that for me and the dope man. Just then I notice that something is different. The voice in my head. The chattering monkey. Quiet. My addiction is wanting me to know that I am in this one all by myself. When I was in prison it would leave me alone in my cell. Up. I want to get up. I try to move my legs. Something is wrong with them and they will not work. And deep within myself I know that there are other things that are not working well.

There is a man and a woman standing by a truck that has parts of a motorcycle embedded in the radiator and engine block. He is drunk. She is well on her way. There is a man lying in the middle of the road. Blood spills from his body and his head is twisted at such a crazy angle that, just by looking at him, I know he will never rise again. I am in a prone position on the grass by the side of the road. I want a cigarette but I cannot move well enough to reach them. Cars are stopping and people are standing around me. None of them seem to know what to do, But they’re not leaving just now. Sometimes I wonder about whether we are sort of psychic and emotional parasites. What draws us in, like visual vultures, to an accident scene to stare at the dead and the dying? I am drifting and try to will myself back. I know that the only will that will work here is God’s will, whatever that may be. There is a woman leaning over me. Her eyes are beautiful.

A man comes running up and says to me, “The ambulance is on the way. Everything is going to be all right.” I know that what he is saying is not exactly true. My addiction always fed me bullshit too, but she had a more convincing argument. I never liked to be confused by facts anyhow. The man ran away. He probably wanted to tell the dope man that the hearse was coming and everything will be all right. Who the fuck knows? The beautiful lady was still there. “Is there anything I can do for you?” she asked.

I thought of a number of things but I just wasn’t up for it at the moment. I could hear the man who had been driving the pick-up truck that had turned me and the dope man into road kill tell the police that we were broken down in the middle of the road. That wasn’t quite right either. I thought it would be a good idea to smoke a cigarette while I waited for the ambulance ——or to die—-whichever came first. After all, my lungs were okay.

“Smokes. In my pocket. Could you light one for me?” The beautiful woman didn’t give me any shit about it being bad for my health. Pulled them out of my pocket. Put it in my mouth. Lit it. I sucked in the smoke.

The dope man was dead. I did not remember what he looked like. The man who hit us was drunk. His girlfriend would not say that she was driving and he was worried about the trouble he was in. My motorcycle was wrecked. My wife was at home waiting for me to bring in the dope. I remembered that I had been dope-sick and I had been in a big hurry. I realized that I was not in a hurry anymore. I took another drag. This was the best cigarette I had ever smoked.

All of me

Posted by le garage

On the day I had been
released from prison it was
over 12 weeks since I had used
heroin. I was waiting for a ride
to a halfway house when a couple
of guys from the tier strolled out.

“Where you guys going?” I asked,
and they said, “Great Brook Valley
Projects.” Where the dope is. Where
this dope wanted to go, and then their
ride pulled up. “Got room for one

more?” I asked. “Hop in,” they answered.
I got into the car and the cramps of dope-
sickness hit my stomach. I gagged and
almost threw up, my joints ached, my gut
flipped upside-inside. Junk sickness.

A junkie’s body never forgets. If it was
just physical, I would never use dope
again. It is not my body, it is me, all
of me, my body, my soul, my mind
interlocked in heroin hypnosis, even

clean I will never be free again. This revelation
hit me many years later, post-millennium
junk-yen rocked my being, I had everything
a man might want yet still I yearned
to trade my kingdom for a pile of dust.

Ask me about power, I will begin to tell you,
my breath will stink of death.

First published in Bad Ass, The Boston Poet Journal, Vol. 2, Issue 1, 2007.

Why I Still Go To Meetings: Two Pieces

Posted by le garage

She Haunts Me

She haunts me. When the hunger is in me, I think of her.
The other day I saw a man with the hunger in his eyes. I was standing
outside the Bank of America, selling the Spare Change News. Two men came
up quickly, one man Black, one man white. The white man went into the bank
while the Black man stood outside and paced. At times he muttered to himself.
I could not make out much of the words. He was in a hurry and on his way even
while he was waiting.

The white man reappeared with a sheaf of twenties in his hand and
counted two or three off into the Black man’s hand. The hunger was beaming
from his eyes as the money hit his hand. He clutched it tightly and ran across
the street. I watched him disappear into the subway. I knew where he was
going.

Those of us with the hunger recognize each other.
I see her almost every day. I can tell you where she hangs out, which bar
she frequents. She always catches my eye.

Does she know that I watch her? Maybe, maybe not. People hand her
money, she disappears into the subway. She comes back and goes to the
saloon where they wait.

The relapse is in me. It waits for me, whispering into the ear of my mind,
and it wants to catch me in a weak moment.

She? She is tall, skin color of mixed blood, wears jeans, sometimes a
dress, sometimes a kerchief on her head. Short hair. There are freckles on her
face and she is almost pretty.

I once saw her drop two packets into the hands of a friend.
There are many things that I forget. Names. I hear them, suddenly they
are gone. Appointment times. I must write them on the calendar otherwise they
disappear. I will forget to stop at the store to pick up juice. My memory is
flawed.

My addiction is genius. Never forgets. This woman has stayed in my
memory since the summer of 1995, when she dropped two packets into the
hand of a friend, yet we have never spoken. She stands out in the crowd. I
watch her move down the street.

Suddenly, when she appears, all thoughts disappear from my mind. Only
the hunger remains. Sweet pestilence that rages through the ghettoes of my
mind. Sometimes I get so hungry that my bones ache. I taste the heroin in the
back of my throat, my body memory slaps my recovery down the street.
She haunts me. When the hunger is in me, I think of her.

What Brings Me Back To Hell

She haunts the dusty eye of my
mind swirling down the streets of Central
Square dope in her empty pockets she
can bring me nothing arching her
back like a cat she is one of us has
never left my sight closer than
I want she will always be
everywhere the only running is the option
of suicide who can tell the future relapse
is too close to think of it like
a vise it encircles my being there
will be no coming back she
sits in the bar and waits for me to
come to her it will not be long
until I am gone.

Talk to me of shadows I will
show you who
I was the light
will not shine through me when
I touch her hand.

What brings me back to hell
is the memory of heaven all
the gods are liars.

The Dangerous Ones

Posted by le garage

I was one of the dangerous ones.
Believed in love, that flowers
in the barrel of a gun would stop the bullets.
Believed that Peyote would sit
me down with Mescalito, that acid
was the frontier beyond dark
airless space, would breathe me
a new consciousness, that opium
dreams would water the desert of my
aching, bring flowers to my soul, rest
me when the asteroid storms would cloud
the interstellar space of the mind. There
was a time when any pad was home, we sat and smoked
marijuana on the seats
of our souls, only violence
was turned away at every door, anyone
else was welcome.

I was one of the dangerous
ones, sharing hope, drugs, gonorrhea,
needles with one and all, hepatitis
was only one by-product of hope. Believed
in costume, poetry, dancing on
moon-light beaches, Olatunji’s
drums of passion, flowers
growing in the dark. I heard
them all.

I was one of the dangerous
ones, believed down to
the splinters of my shaking
heart that peace was catching, it
would leap from soul to soul; all
we had to do was join hands, pass
the pipe, the only shotgun
we used was mouth to mouth
intimate smoke. We danced
as the barbed wire went up
around us, we knew that rust was real.

I was one, a dangerous
one, stumbled, took the wrong
yellow brick road, wandered
into the poppy fields of Oz, fell
dangerous sleep, thought dreams
were doom, lost in the television
land of heroin, situation horrors, dropped
my danger in the land of nod. Had a
hard return, held in the hand
of miracles, came to believe
that a power, a hope fiend, the right
word in place is a flower
in the barrel of. How do I
change the world, I begin
with me, found my danger
in the pocket of myself. Whipped
it out, dropped it on you
like I was Sandoz Pharmaceuticals
or Owsley Blue.

I’m dangerous as hell, I believe we
can change the world, bloom you
dangerous too; all flowers in the
barrel of a gun.

The Mistake

Posted by le garage

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and each time expecting a different result.” — Common saying in the recovery community.

When I woke up I didn’t know what time it was, what day it was or what city I was in. A police officer is knocking on the window of my car. I startled and realize that I am sitting in the middle of a town road at a traffic light. His rapping increases in fury and his mouth is moving, flecks of saliva spray out on the window of my car. Then I hear him yelling. It is like my senses are coming back to me one by one. I move my hand and start to unroll the window and he reaches in, yanks the door handle and pulls me out of the car. “But wait,” I shout and he kicks me to the ground and one of my teeth chips off on the asphalt beneath me. I can feel the blood running out of my lip as my hands are pinned behind my back and the cold metal cuffs click into place.

I know I am under arrest for something; the charges would unfold later. I wonder where the drugs are, if I have any left, or if I will get a chance to do any before they are found. As two other police cars whine to a stop the cop jerks me to my feet, pushes me against a police car and pats me down. The dark of the early morning beats against the sky. Only maniacs, beasts, thieves and drug addicts (who are composites of the previous three) are up at this time of day. And of course, police, whose job it is to protect people like you from people like me. One of the police takes my keys from the ignition while I watch and opens the trunk and that is when I remember where I was going. The expression on his face changes when he sees the body in the trunk. “But I can explain,” I scream and one of the officers turns to me and says, “I’ll bet you can,” and suddenly the facts seem bizarre even to me and Mickey was too stiff to tell the tale.

When Mickey’s heart exploded the stem of the crack pipe was still wedged between his lips. He hit the floor and never went so far or to no place at all. That’s what they told me. I came flying into the dope house hot to fix with the monkey screaming my name backwards and they were shoving Mickey into the refrigerator because they didn’t have a clue as to what to do with the body and the pipe was still going around and no one wanted to stop to figure it out because, let’s face it, priority one is, when the pipe is going around — whether your lips are on it or your eyes are on it and fuck anything else. The good side of this was that there was nothing in the fridge. The bad side of it was that the electric was shut off and the body wouldn’t keep for long. Anyway, I didn’t think those thoughts until later because my mind was on the primary, that is getting this dope into my vein where it belonged because this monkey had its hand on my balls. I spit some bile into the sink, filled a glass half full of water and went into the bathroom to fix. I would have fixed right in the kitchen but the on button for my asshole was on monkey-time and I yanked my pants down just in time.

That’s the only reason I wear jockey shorts, so I don’t have to throw away my trousers every day.

Anyway I fixed and then, I’m not sure how much time had passed, I heard some asshole asking me for my cotton shot. I looked into the watery eyes of Mike da Leech and didn’t want to put up with two hours of whining and pleading so I just pushed the cooker over to him. “Uh, can I use your works too?” he asked. I rolled my eyes and pushed the water glass with the blood-filled rig sitting in it over to him. I left the bathroom and went back to the kitchen where a discussion was in progress as to what to do with what once was Mickey who was not referred to as “the body in the fridge.”

That was when someone came up with the bright idea to let me take it because I was the only one there at the time with a car. “Hey, forget about it, the fucker was dead when I walked in.” I was adamant about not wanting to take on the burden and then I went into the living room to catch a nod.

Three days later, out of dope, with the monkey tickling my sphincter with a soddering iron, it seemed like a good idea to take the body because all the SSI checks had come in and everyone had chipped in to score me a brick of dope to take the body. They agreed that having a body in the refrigerator that didn’t work in a dope house was a bad idea. The only thing I wanted to do was fix a right proper amount before I took the body and I might have taken a little too much to stay awake behind the wheel and that’s why I nodded off at the traffic light at 4 in the morning. Which brings me back to this spot, cuffed and stuffed into the back of a Judas car and charged with possession of heroin, hypodermics, and the body of what was once a crackhead named Mickey.

First let me tell you the good news. The police were so excited about the body that they didn’t find the heroin that was in the seam of my shirt and when they put me in the holding cell I snorted three bags before they came running in. The bad news was I forgot about the goddamn suicide cameras that they installed in all the holding cells and they had me as the star of my own Saturday Night Live tv show.

I don’t regret snorting the bags. My mistake was that I should have waited until they moved me out into population. Maybe my mistake was doing so much before I left the dope house. Maybe I shouldn’t have decided to take the body after all. But hey, I was dopesick. Fifty bags for moving a body from one place to another isn’t bad payment. What the fuck, wouldn’t you have done it too?

After all was said and done I took two, 2 and 1/2 year bids, to run on and after, which means consecutively instead of concurrently, but I made parole after doing just three years. I learned a lot from my mistakes and my whole attitude has changed. I’m going to get a straight job. No more hustling, maybe find a good woman and settle down. I’m never going to go back to jail again. I’ll get started on my new life right away. But first I’m going to go out and cop just one good high. After doing three years on chump charges, I owe it to myself, don’t I? I’m just going to do it differently this time. You’ll see.