Late night at the bar.
I walked out of the bathroom
and there were bodies
all over the floor
moaning and
bleeding.
Smashed bottles lay everywhere.
Every table was overturned.
Somebody was trying to crawl
off the pool table and
the bartender was crying.
A man on the floor
on his stomach
was trying to reach out for me
holding his jaw.
There was a pool cue
sticking out of his back.
As I leaned down to
yank it out
I said to him,
“Well,
that’s one piss
that I’m glad I’ve taken.”
I open doors for hipsters
when they’re on a bike
and I’m in a car.
You had to get it just right.
Timing was everything.
It wasn’t easy.
I don’t think that most people would
appreciate how much of an art form
it really is.
The hardest part was getting close enough
to be effective
without them noticing.
First off,
you had to drive an unassuming car.
It couldn’t have looked like anything from Mad Max
or something equally as menacing.
The doors had to have heft
but not enough to lag when attempting to open it quickly
and the longer the door the better.
That’s why two door coupes always worked the best.
Routes were easy to pick.
Universities and downtown areas
were always abundant.
Otherwise anywhere with coffee would do.
Targeting them was even easier.
Visual assessment was Fast and Furious (Vin)
thanks to the beard
the absurdly large sunglasses
the sweater vest
the knitted cap
the legs rotating the pedals like an
awkward malnourished chicken.
The key was that
you needed two people
that were able to really work well together.
Team spirit, you know.
“Look, look, look! There’s one there, see him?”
“Short ginger fuck that dresses like Kanye west? Yeah, I got this.”
“He’s gonna get it good.”
“Fucker’s going sailing without a ship.”
You rev up beside him
closer…closer
maybe just a little closer
and then WHAM!
You had to really lean into it
against the wind and
manage to close it afterwards
with you still inside
but it was worth it
every time.
It didn’t take much
as we weren’t trying to murder anybody here
a slight little light maiming would do.
Feeling the impact of the door,
the vibration, the moment of reaching out
and connecting on so personally a level
even the little squeak the hipster FUCK made
as they flew off the bike towards an unforgiving curb
was absolutely enthralling
so rapturous that
everything was hushed afterwards
like the crowd before erupting to a winning goal.
It felt like God was watching.
“Right into the fire hydrant, Damn!”
“Fuck yeah! Blame the media, Hipster, blame your MOTHER!”
There was nothing quite like it.
It gave you shivers down your spine
and made you want to do it again
immediately
but most times you couldn’t as
once they caught on
the fun would be over
so you waited
until the time was right
and you always knew when that was.
You just knew…
and when it came
you picked up the phone
and called your buddy
giving them a pick-up point
with the advice:
make sure you aren’t followed.
Then you get behind the wheel.
You slide on the leather gloves
turn on the engine
listen to it purr with eyes closed
feel the rhythm the heartbeat of the car
feel one with the car
your doors will connect today
they will…
then crank up the Insane Clown Posse.
Now you’re ready to start hunting
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This poem is not intended to offend anybody but Chad.
“Here’s your new phone.”
“It’s looking at me funny!”
“That’s probably your own reflection.”
“Where are all the buttons?”
“It doesn’t have any.”
“What kind of witch-magic is this?!”
I gave the phone a shake.
Nothing happened.
Nothing came out.
All the witches must still be inside.
I shook it harder
then stuffed it down my pants.
The store clerk was looking at me
like I just murdered his Chihuahua
with a sledgehammer
and then ate it.
Her face is stark white like a fresh sheet
sailing happy blank eyes summer sky blue
white pearls packed together everywhere
between her balloon watermelon lips.
It’s mesmerizing,
you become captivated
and start to writhe about like a charmed snake.
That’s the lady that works the Sobeys wine store
by far one of the most jovial
perpetually rapturously excited
overwhelmingly joyous
Hallelujah’s
that I have ever encountered.
Her moon face is always lit up
brighter than a solar flare
streaking across the midnight of my existence.
I quickly snatch my box
away from her smile but not before
checking my hair in her teeth.
I growl
and rush out of the store
peering at everybody suspiciously.
They want my wine.
Even though there are boxes of boxes
stacked everywhere in plain sight
where I just came from
they want mine.
Those fuckers
are not getting shit from me.
I hold it tight against my chest
right beside my heartbeat
and make for the door.
mmmyyyy wwwwiinnnne.
Mee luuuuuvvvss meee wwiiinnnee.
Sooo preccciious.
In anticipation
I tear open the box
and crack the seal on the spout
in the car
making strange mewling noises.
No, there’s nothing wrong with me
at all.
I get home kick open the door
slam the box on the counter and
quickly check out some bondage action on my phone.
Grabbing a glass from the cupboard
is always an exercise in delicate judgement
it has to be the right one
but since I only have two types to choose from
forget that I fucking said anything.
Then…THEN…
there’s the first pour.
The first pour is always the best.
It doesn’t just stream out,
It GUSHES out like a CANON or
like water BLASTING from a CRACK in a DAM!!
It’s like a MIRACLE of GOD!
A freshly spread VIRGIN!
A volcano in the soul erupting loud colours
across the cement hue of stubborn February.
Makes you just want to
spray it up into your face while laughing maniacally
spray it out into eternity
while laughing at your own nothingness
shoot it out into the streets
let the people dance when not murdering
each other’s spirit
as trumpets blared
angels sang
and midgets danced.
As it comes out straight from a heaven
that you will never see
you just want to pour it
all over your
fucking soul.
My Russian neighbour’s wife,
she has a lot of heft to her and she wields it like
a battle-axe in a field full of dead Scotsman.
She likes to spend her time shovelling the snow
and for reasons beyond my mortal grasp
she will shovel the holy flying fuck
out of everything in sight
for hours at a time.
Because I hear it from my window
all day long
day after day
when it’s not even snowing
and hasn’t for days.
First she’ll do the driveway
then the adjoining neghbour’s
then the sidewalk
the edges all around
twice
and finally the front lawn
all with this look of rage darkening her pale face
turning it red
while she pushes that shovel hard in deep as though
she were killing a small furry animal
or destroying the lives of the innocent.
I know that there’s something wrong with her.
Some people wear crazy
all over their face.
You could see it.
You could smell it.
So while I was out salting my driveway
the other day
as she shoveled away
I began to dance
because in being a
stand up stand straight standout guy
I thought it would bring some levity
to her existential angst
as she furiously drove the shovel in
cracking large chunks of ice
like they were the backs of the weak.
She most likely hated her reality,
despised her kids,
hated Canada and Canadians.
Americans, them too.
Probably hated her husband most of all
and when she was done here
she was going to go back inside
and beat him half to death
or worse, fuck him.
I could picture his face grimacing
as she enveloped him in the folds of her flesh
screaming out as she thrust angrily,
screaming something about the good old days of Stalin.
He probably didn’t like it. I know I wouldn’t. Christ.
I was on the road now
shaking my two cups full of road-salt
in each hand
like they were maracas
feet like Usher, like Beiber, like Timberlake
all rolled into one Godless pointless fuck
as she continued to pound the handle
deeper into China.
She hated sunlight and music,
ice cream and happiness.
She hated not being in chains.
She wished that unicorns existed
just so she could stab one to death
with its own horn.
I was dancing. I was really shaking it.
I was a giraffe. I was a lion.
I was a monkey.
She plowed away at grass now
throwing chunks of frozen earth
onto the road.
She hated Ghandi and Bambi.
She hated things that slept peacefully.
She hated things that tried to crawl away
from the merciless hammer of industrialization.
I was doing the robot, the running man.
I was hustling into another dimension.
She thrust her shovel deep into an embankment of ice
and started heaving pieces of it
over towards me.
I danced out of the way,
thank you, Mr. Timberlake.
Her husband peeked his head out the door
and asked her something.
Face flushed, she turned and started screaming at him
in Russian most likely telling him
to go to Hell in a really creative way.
Overall, my dancing had little effect
as she still seemed as angry
as Hitler giving a speech
so all that effort was for naught.
She still hated God, the government, gravity.
She hated words, shapes and colours.
She wished that everything was at the bottom
of the Black Sea and from the looks of things
she intended to dig us all there
right now.
In fact, she was out there
as I was typing up this little ditty.
Scrape scrape scraping away.
I turned up the Bach
so that I didn’t have to hear her anger
in my living room.
There is just something
about classical music
that moves the soul
into sunlight.
Don’t you think?
Maybe she should try it.
I was in an apartment building
I still have bad dreams about
at the west end of Cambridge
on the tail-end of being high for two days
but I wasn’t even sure on what.
People liked me so they always gave me things
and when I’m drunk I’ll drop whatever
like a champ
because I’m the Pacman
of human garbage receptacles.
For some bizarre reason I sat in a chair
in the middle of the living room
facing the front door
with some broad in my lap.
Seen her around but
never really got her name
just knew that she was trouble and
wondered if she thought the same of me.
Her ass felt good there.
There was enough of it to really make an impression.
I squeezed her breast and kissed her neck.
I didn’t give a fuck who was watching.
The front door opened and some
bald scary motherfucker
drunk out of his mind barged in.
From word on the street
he was bad-ass crazy and addicted to aerosol cans
and as he smashed his half-full beer
against the wall
got on his knees
raised his scarred arms and screamed
something in Japanese
-I believed it.
In fact,
I believed that this man could
start a fight
in an empty house.
The host
a grizzly chain-smoking native
in an torn Iron Maiden shirt
and Hello-Kitty sunglasses
calmly strolled over and started
feeding him uppercuts
like they were half-price at Walmart.
This was all happening right in front of me
so I was about to get up when the girl
wiggled around in excitement.
Sick bitch. I got hard.
I stayed.
Wham!
They were on the floor to the left of us
Wham! Wham!
Now to the right.
How they avoided hitting my chair
and us hitting the floor
to involuntarily join them in this orgy of violence
was an absolute miracle of God
(there is no God here).
Despite all the action
I started to close my eyes
wondering if I would wake up in Mexico
buried in a crate of oranges
when her cool, calm, soft, compelling
voice whispered into my ear
“You’re exhausted, Sweets. Let’s get you to bed.”
I couldn’t talk. I merely nodded.
Wham! Wham! Wham!
Yeah, that shit was still going on.
She got me on the mattress and undressed me
with the proficiency of a
hospital emergency ward
climbed on top of me and started kissing me
or more like trying to stab my tongue to death
with hers.
Her breath was terrible.
Did she ever fucking brush those things?
She seemed so nice, so cool and collective
up until now but this was what it was like
in the snake pit where everyone was vicious
if you gave them time or opportunity.
She turned beast…Dragon!
I felt trapped beneath her fire.
I didn’t want this. Maybe tomorrow.
Probably never.
She was started to make me sick.
Her smell, her weight on me, her tongue, her raspy laugh
-all of it
“Baby, no. I don’t think I can do this. I feel like
my soul is dying. There’s lots of gusto in the other room.
Go find one of them.”
“Fuck that! You’re the prettiest thing here. If you
don’t like it then just shut the fuck up and lie there.”
This was abuse. I was sure of it
because it wasn’t the first time
and I just wanted to turn her over
pin her down, smile and say,
‘So what if I said that to you, huh?
What if I fucking did this to you?’
“Christ, okay.” I replied sheepishly instead.
I was weak as a kitten and this girl
was going to get what she wanted
whether I liked it or not
because at the bottom of the snake pit
it was hard to push off
what slithered all over top of you
and sometimes you couldn’t
see the dragon
until the clothes came off.
So I closed my eyes
as she began to rock
back and forth
back and forth
back and…
It was only -17C this morning but still I had to scrape off and warm up the car hopefully without stumbling this time and helplessly sliding down the sloped driveway screaming towards the merciless blade of the gigantic plow that marauds our street in these ridiculous hours because I once again forgot to purchase road-salt at the beer store.
So after I quickly threw on multiple layers of clothes, scarves, duct-tape, old newspaper and my jacket before stuffing pillows into every available space I then set myself on fire, opened the front door and charged towards my car with the ice-scraper in hand like a war-crazed native from a dense jungle wall.
As I was viciously scraping the impenetrable ice from my windshield my next door neighbor casually strolled out of his garage whistling Niel Young with his hands shoved deep into his pockets as if it were a calm spring morning. I scraped faster trying to avoid eye contact which was an exercise in futility because he was standing right beside me.
“Hey Neighbor! Nice crisp morning, ain’t it?”
“Crisp.” I said. “Like lettuce.”
I scraped even faster. You could barely see the scraper by this point it was moving so fast. He started wandering around my car.
“You get any letters from the city?”
“no…lettt..tt..err…s..s.” My teeth were chattering and starting to crack. Please go away, please please go away and I’ll never jerk off again. I thought.
“Well, welly well well…I got a couple.” He exclaimed as though the very idea of it aroused him. “One for my truck being a couple inches out onto the sidewalk overnight and another for the sidewalk not being cleared.”
“That’s horribb..bb..bb..le.” By this point there were icicles forming in my esophagus and my eyes were crystalizing.
He obviously didn’t share my pain because he was a polar bear of a man and had a lot more blubber encasing his bones than my South American ass. But I couldn’t be anything but nice to him because he was always kind and plowed our driveway whenever it snowed so I occasionally cut the eternally joyous fuck’s lawn in the summer.
I was just about done and he was strolling towards the road where his wife was calmly seated in their nice warm minivan when he turned to me and began talking about the weather just as I was about to scurry back inside like a cockroach when the lights came on.
I thought about killing him to end my misery. Sometimes certain things had to be done and this was why people turned on each other. I could lunge forward and ram the scraper into his throat, thus rendering it futile for him to breathe. I could picture his huge head turning beet-red as he helplessly clutched at his crushed larynx until he fell lifelessly backwards to thud against the pavement.
But then there was his wife that had witnessed it. Would have to take care of her too and then ditch the minivan. Fuck, that might make me late for work.
Yes, when you are talking to someone who is quickly turning into a snowman this is what is rolling through their head. Be kind to your neighbors who are not whale-seals like your complacent couch-eating selves and just let them scrape for God’s sake or maybe next time you’ll end up garbage-bagged under a foundation of the housing project across the field wondering what was going to happen on the next episode of Duck Dynasty.
Slide.
It’s hard to look back
when you are running through a night forest
without a light when you are sure that there is
something coming after you but you are not sure
what it is.
As the branches whip mercilessly across your wounded face
as you scramble to find footing knowing that
if you were to stumble and fall just once
whatever was mere steps behind you
would embrace that opportunity
to completely tear you apart.
As your heart thumps hard against your chest
as your breath aches but still you recklessly plant
one foot before the next and struggle to keep pace
you run and you run and you continue to run when
you don’t even know where it is that you are going
but it doesn’t matter as long as you endure
as long as you keep going and stay ahead
of whatever it is
that is chasing you.
It’s hard to look back
when you don’t know what you’re looking at.
It’s hard to look back
when all that you know is fear.
The man at the end of the table
laughs at a joke
I unintentionally made
as I stick my fork into
something that I cannot pronounce.
It was -26C out.
I had turned the key twice but my car wouldn’t start.
It would just growl a little then die.
I gave it a dirty look.
It started.
I drove across a city
covered in ice as brittle as glass
and snow turned hard as stone
screaming along to a rap song I hated
but knew the words to anyways.
I passed a kid who had his tongue stuck to a pole.
His was frantically waving his arms about.
I gave him the finger and hit the gas.
I laughed. He looked like a penguin
except that he was holding a cellphone.
There you go, Buddy. Don’t need your tongue to
text your way out of this one.
Text, Motherfucker, text!
I got to her house and barged in wearing a squirrel.
Putting beers in the fridge I wondered why
it was cold as my ex’s dead heart inside
when she came down wearing a parka without pants
because nothing about her made sense
except her legs.
“I have baseboard heating. It’s too expensive.” She said.
I turned on the sink
hoping for some hot water to splash into my numbed face
but the pilot light must have been off because
it came out colder than glacier run-off in Alaska.
North Alaska.
I thought that it could have been
another money saving device.
What the fuck, was she a penguin too?
Penguins, they were everywhere…they were watching me.
I knew her for ten years.
We’ve only fucked twice
and that made me inexplicably sad
all of a sudden
so I cracked open a tall can.
“Really?” She said. “It’s 10AM.”
“Best to get an early start.”
“Why do you always drink?”
“It helps me face the absolute terror of every day.”
“So, you’re a coward is what you’re saying.”
Women were always on the attack with me.
They hated me secretly and used everything about me
against me with relative ease and the reason
that I hung out with them more than other guys
was because I was the biggest fucking masochist on the planet.
“Jesus, is EVERYTHING cold around here?” I shouted
then gulped the thing down.
‘Oh, that’s nice.” I said.
She laughed. “At least your beer is cold.”
“Yes, it is.” I said. “You are so maddeningly beautiful when you’re disappointed in me. Do you have any perks?”
She smiled, turned around and opened a cupboard.