Tag Archives: cocaine

Billy’s Laura

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Raining hard at the
mouth of the trail
where Shane was
waiting for his ex-wife
umbrella in hand.

“Nice day out. Isn’t it, Laura?”

Laura smiled, “Yes it is, Hon.”

She was already drunk
as usual.

Shane held out his umbrella
and walked holding it over her
letting himself get wet
until they reached Billy’s house.

No lights.
Billy wasn’t up yet.

“I’m sure Billy will be up soon.” He said.

Sometimes it was hours
before Billy got up
and Shane would hold his umbrella
over her as she lay her head in
his lap and slept.

“You still love me, Shane.”
She would say,
“You wouldn’t do this
if you didn’t love me.”

And when it was cold
Shane would put his warm jacket
over her
with nothing for himself
as they both waited until…

“Light’s on, Laura, Billy’s up.”

Billy would open the front door
without looking out and just
leave it open but
only when he had a fix ready for her.

Once Laura was inside
Shane would then go on
down the road to
Tim’s house to
drink himself to sleep.

Tim would see Shane
all wet and cold
and will give him shit
for the same old shit.

They used to be the
toughest around
in town back when it mattered
until there came along
fights that couldn’t be won
like plants shutting down
unpaid debts
miscarriages
divorce
and then there came the bottle
and other things that were worse.

“She’s Billy’s Laura now, Shane, Billy’s Laura!”

“You don’t understand, Tim.”

“I understand that you can’t let go.
That you’re killing yourself
just like she is and
I just can’t
watch it anymore.”

“Come on now, Tim.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Shane. It really wasn’t…”
Tim’s eyes were red, wet and he
slammed the door.

Shane grabbed his coat and
umbrella and headed back.

Maybe Tim finally had the
last of this
but for Shane it was
just another day to get through.

Just another day.

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The Intervention

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Mother stood up first.

“I know the divorce and your father’s passing has been difficult for you and you have your ways to cope…but we feel that we are losing you. You’re the only son I have and I pray everyday that you stop hurting yourself and that you find Jesus.”

She sat down.

Yeah, I found Jesus, Mother. He was hiding underneath my fucking bed right beside the crack pipe.

My uncle stood up next.

“This is all up to you, Peter. If you say (like you said before) that you are done then we’re all behind you. But you have to really be done this time. You have to. Nobody else can do it for you.”

Whatever, put down the doughnut.

After a couple more verbal lashings from the family, Cousin Timmy got up last. This ought to be good.

“You’re a fucking asshole.” He said. There were tears in his eyes.

He sat back down.

As adept as always in handling these kind of situations, Timmy, as adept as always.

I looked around the Tim Horton’s. Everyone was looking at me. I thought I was just coming here for a fucking coffee and a wrap.

That was Monday.

Friday back at it again. The beast needed feeding.

Dan rolled up in his Benz. He held up a bag of pills.

“Wanna get high with me and my girl?” Tina looked over. Smiled.

We made out last time. Felt her up. So hot.

Dan doesn’t know or he knows and doesn’t give a fuck.

“Hell yeah I do.” I got in the car.

When Dreams Become Dried Husks

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It’s always time for the rodeo
now that I’ve firmly accepted
the fetal position
as a way of life.

Because when doubt comes barging in
like a mad cocaine pirate
I welcome it on board
with streamers and balloons.

She says that I used to be somebody
while the mirror lies
in the trash
in her yard

and my dreams
have become dried husks
so much that I pray for
monsters
under my bed.

Crazy Mexican Cocaine Cop Killer

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Fresh from leaving the scene
with bodies all over the floor
staring up at the ceiling fans
with glass eyes.

They looked exactly how Hector said
when he showed me my first:
“See, there’s nothing inside of them anymore.
You’ve got nothing to fear from a dead man
except his kid.”

Soon after the slaughter
I passed this cop on the highway
and he wasn’t looking at me right
something about the big, broad sneer
painted all across his fat, dirty face
really pissed me off

so I spun a 180
hard
half across the road
half across the gravel
fish-tail swinging wide
like her hips in those jean shorts.

Lord have mercy,
what a fucking whore
she was in the end
and it only made me want her more
than life itself.

I came up hard on his cop’s tail,
while throwing my nose into the rest of the bag.

Fuck, that’s primo Mexican!
Everything else they have is shit but
their coke and tacos? Holy fuck!

“Pull over, Pig!” I shouted
until he slowed down on the shoulder
as I picked up the revolver
lying across the
passenger seat.

“Hey Piggy, Pig Pig Pig…” I chanted,
“It’s your turn to pull over now.”

I fumbled the door but it opened anyway.

I got out of the car
raised my pistol
and bullets went flying
as I laughed.

20 Years Later & Still The Fuck-up Deadbeat Alcoholic Father Of The Year

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I knew that I fucked up
as soon as the money was gone
and I finally came crawling back to the motel
hours later
wasted

There she was standing
outside of the door -my baby
my little girl my
sweet strong sentinel.

She was crying she was so
furious that it made me want to
cry
and take everything back
all of it
ever.

“You said you were going to change…”
She shoved me and I
stumbled back and over a parking curb.
It might have been slapstick funny if it
wasn’t so damn pathetic.

“But look at you, same as always. The funny thing is
that I wanted so badly to believe in you. It’s all that
I ever wanted and you couldn’t even give me that and I
can’t do this anymore.

I just simply can’t
so if you want to keep drinking and killing yourself,
well here.”

She lifted the half-empty bottle of vodka I had stashed under the bed
and threw it at the ground.
It smashed so close that I felt shards of the
broken glass
sting my face.

“There you fucking go.” She said
and then her back was turned and she was walking off
toward the night highway-
my baby girl,
my sweet strong angel.

I tried to get up but the gravity of everything
was all off and I had to crawl over to the wall
and once I was finally up I started hoofing
the door to my room.

“FUUUUCK!” I screamed, kicked it harder.
“FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!”

Some asshole opened the door beside me
spit out his cigarette and said,
“Christ, Old Timer, keep it down.
She was too young for you anyway.”

“Oh, go to fuck.” I replied.
“That’s my daughter.”

I stumbled into the room
slammed the door
and started looking through my bag
hoping that she didn’t find those little
airplane mini bottles of booze I had
wrapped in my underwear.

There might also be some left
in the baggie I shoved
behind the toilet.

I hoped to God there was some.

I wasn’t anywhere near
sober enough
to handle this.

And I wasn’t sober at all.

The Ghost of the Bottle Lingering Around Like a Bad Spirit in an Empty House

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Right now my tongue
is an insufferable monstrosity
fattened
and trapped
inside of a dry cave.

The shooting pain between
my ears
doesn’t know where to go
so it just expands
outward
into a Godless oblivion.

I can feel every inch of my slow death
like a man clawing
at the door to Hell
to escape the cold.

I didn’t realize
that bottle of wine
was this much
my enemy.

So I must spend some time
lying face down
upon the ground
to let the Earth
continue to mercilessly
roll over my petulant body
as my foot hits the leg
of a rickety table that
creaks skeletal laughter
echoing with
surprising acoustic
across the cement walls
of this endless garage.

“Hey Little Birdy, come and make an old man happy.” (Dweller Chapter 14)

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“Hey little birdy, come and make an old man happy. Remember that? I’ll bet you do.” I was glad that finally I could unleash that saying so that maybe, just maybe, it’ll finally stop playing back like a broken record inside of a broken person. It wasn’t going to go away on its own. I had realized that by now. I needed to stop hearing it. I would do anything to stop hearing it.
Father chuckled dryly. “I didn’t think that you would remember. It was just the one time, well, that you saw anyways. How the Hell…”
“I didn’t have to remember. I still hear it. At first it drove me nuts because I didn’t know what it was or what it meant. I tried to shut it out but it just wouldn’t leave me alone and now I know why. It took me a long time to piece it together amidst everything else that was happening around me but I finally came around and understood what it was and you know what that is?”
“What?” Father was studying his fingernails, feigning disinterest.
“The final straw. That’s when everything inside of me decided to shut down because of what I saw that one day. I didn’t know it then. Fuck, I didn’t know it until now but yeah, that’s what did it. It wasn’t enough to lose my mother and to have a father that beat me senselessly when he wasn’t playing with the shadows in the cellar. It wasn’t enough that everyone in the fucking world despised me. But that did it. I felt that you should know that.”
Father looked at me nervously then went back to tending his nails. “Hmph.”
“Funny thing,” I continued, stepping closer to him, “that now that I can remember her back then it didn’t seem like she had any pain, that she suffered in any way. She hid it well, she didn’t want me to know what was really going on but you should see her now. And what just fucking kills me is that she could have been an angel, you know…right? You may not think about it or even remember but she could have been, oh yeah, just like mother. But no…not now…not after you had trashed her fucking soul. She was a flower of a girl and you peeled all of her away, pedal by pedal. And now she sleeps with the fucking devil.”
“What the fuck do you want from me, huh?” Father asked, arms spread. “I gave you answers. I gave you everything. What’s done is done. It’s gone. Forget about it.”
I stepped even closer, enough to make him start to step back. “She still follows me, comes to me. You probably already knew that always hiding in the bushes watching me maybe watching her too. But she is not the same girl and I am not the same guy and I don’t need to think about it to know that it was all because of you and it was that part of me that knew this day would come that haunted me by replaying that one time again and again.”
Father sighed. “The day that….that…”
“AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN!” I shouted as I moved forward, forcing my father back again down the walkway. He looked behind him to make sure that he still had space to move back. “Yes, that must have been the final straw. That’s when the wall came up, just like in the cellar, the black wall in my mind. And now there is only one thing that will make it go away.”
“You already know everything.”
“I need to hear it from you, from your voice, face to face, right now. You owe it to her. You owe it to me. For all the things that you have done, I don’t think that it’s asking for much at all. I need you to tell me that you’re fucking sorry.”

The Dust Of Long Dead Sheep

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It’s always time for the rodeo
when I’ve accepted the fetal position
as a way of life for fear
of putting on the clown suit.

Doubt comes barging in
like a mad cocaine pirate
that I welcome on-board
with streamers, ribbons and balloons
as my dreams vacuously congeal
into dried husks so often that I pray
for monsters under my bed
with dollars in my teeth.

It’s all relative to whatever
disaster I touch and mold into shape
using the clay that mother gave me.

I almost feel like begging
for the knife in these alleyways
filled with uncertain strangers with
cartoon lives
but all they do is
kill me with conversation until
I trip on slumber wondering
why the pen is so heavy
when everything seems so much like air
on which floats the dust
of long dead sheep.

Maria! Maria! Oh, God no…Maria!

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We were driving back home on the freeway
doing about 180
both drunk killing tall cans by the minute
trunk stuffed with crushed empties.

Fuck the world
is what he said when he picked me up.

He had just gotten divorced
by some Maria down in Cuba and it was fresh
so often throughout the day
as we laid back on the beach
he would raise his bottle and shout
“Maria!” but it was more than that
it was more like: “Maria! Maria! Oh God no…Mariiiaaaa!”

I suppose those were tears leaking out of his eyes
filled with pain
but I couldn’t see straight by noon
and when we actually left six hours later
he was too drunk to not completely burn out
of the parking lot tires spinning
right in front of a cop who
immediately pulled us over.

“Maria!” He cried. “I’m so fucked.”
“Just be cool and we’ll be fine.” I lied
and got out of the car to start casual small talk
with a cop that was curt
no nonsense all business
what a bore
but he did let us go with just a warning
and my friend started driving away
while I was still half out of the car.

To this day I am completely amazed
that we didn’t get nailed for that
as before we even got out of the cop’s sight
he was already driving like a seasoned maniac
off his meds
with complete disregard for law or life
as I continued to swig back tall cans
wondering why I did this to myself
one maniac after another
because I was a maniac magnet
they come in all forms
cute and cuddly
marauding and malicious
doesn’t matter
they will find me
and turn everything into
what the fuck
in a matter of minutes.

I’m not surprised anymore
I just drink
and the last thing I recall
before arriving home somehow
was pissing in the middle of a busy intersection
with the car idling across somebody’s lawn.

Six months ago
he sent me a photo of himself
all sketched out on blow
surrounded by monkeys
with a terrified look on his face
when I asked him how he was doing.

lately I had received another photo
of him clasping the hearty tits of an
old five-dollar hooker from behind
with the message:
“Merry Christmas from Cuba, Motherfucker!”

Yeah, well Merry Christmas
to you too,
motherfucker.

Maria!

It’s Like You’re Not Even Here Even When You Are

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She pushed me off her on the bed
and I had just started to dig right in.
“What, Baby, what’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong? There was no foreplay, no kissing, nothing.
What the fuck do I look like to you?
You’ve been so distant to me lately.
It’s like you’re not even here anymore
even when you are.
I don’t know what’s going on
and that scares me.”

I climbed out of bed and threw my pants on.
“Fuck you, Man. I don’t fucking need this.
Not from you. Not from anybody.”

I slammed the bathroom door
closed behind me
and threw my hands through my hair
several times.

And then I did another line of cocaine.