Crazy 8's

my deal.

Prologue

Okay here's the scoop captain kangaroo; you, me, and the lonesome cadaver who was once Elvis Presley are gonna amble on over real slow-like into this continental. Driver’s gonna take us over to the grave of Sammy Davis jr so the corpse king can knock a few back with his old pal.

This is gonna be a bit of an operation so let's get a few things straight.

He's gonna sit between us and we can't let him fall or else he might break somethin. Poor guys' tibias and tongue blew away in a strong gust the other day.

When we get there, we gotta kick down a ten-spot to whoever's working the door sos the paparazzi don't hear about it. Sammy's all the way at the top, and he oughta be waiting there for us cause the office called out ahead of time.

Of course the poor fella can't actually do any of the drinking himself, so we're gonna have to help him out-

I'm gonna bust his jaw open with a prybar and you pour the booze down his throat. When I say take em up I mean get it off the table. As long as we keep 'em together they aint gonna rot, as long as we complete all the necessary steps in the necessary order we’re gonna be just fine okay? Were gonna be fine.

We just show up, shut up, and get paid.

You’ll meet me tomorrow in the same spot and were gonna run it all over again over and over until we split okay?

when I need some light don't get it in my fucking eyes.

All That Effort

It's hard not to be resentful

names I’ve been taught to love but so distant from me:

Paris, Prague, London,

In the songs I listen to the birds call “Berlin”.

These entities only live in my mind.

Far off and away,

I'm excluded from them.

Finances run over my hands and through my finger slits

callusing them from the estuaries garner and slippage

and for what?

Integrity?

I spend on my box spring in my garage

I spend on food for myself and my dog

I spend for comforting nights in the presence of serial boarding pass butcherers

and for what?

To be left unresolved and unhappy in their back room chemtrail opium dens

to want for champagne socialism from the bottom

of talk boy and soft packs.

Have little and want for nothing

they tell me that happiness can't be bought from the comfort of their 747s

I’ve worn holes in all of my socks.

For What?

God damn

full of piss and vinegar

beat feet,

kick rocks,

make tracks

fast as your own two legs will carry you down this fat ass hill.

Blow through the intersection with cars blazing on either side of you blasting the greatest hits of Hall and Oates or Butterfly by Crazy Town with no in between (christ as my witness).

Make it barely to the stop

by the buttons on your shirt,

plaque on your teeth

and skin on your ass only to be backstabbed by your bootlaces and laid out like an I-D-I-O-T as the 9 blows by you without a care in the world.

Techie on his robot longboard stops and starts laughin. Fuckin zoomers, if I had a nickel for every grain of sense or droplet of the milk of human kindness contained therein I could probably play one or two games of Ms. Pac-Man tops.

Hey Bud, Got a Minute?

Nobody told me that my bones and ligaments would hurt from this lack of rotation. California has never shied itself away from cruel and unneighborly behavior

but this is reaching a new height.

It never had a care to give about you or I,

it never stopped eating itself at the edges with whitewash and crude and peaches and grapes

I keep looking at the window

at ‘it’ from inside

not really able to tell if I'm comforted or disconcerted as it collectively gazes back.

Drool

Those postured as awake are often somnambulant

Don't disturb them with noise,

don't try and reason with them

they don't hear you

and even if they did

they are overcome either by ignorance or lack of empathy

and don't wish to be woken up

They leak incessantly

dripping dreary doleful lamentations borne of boredom.

A declaration of mistrust:

of misplaced faith

of mortality.

There is loss

but how many more are you comfortable burying?

There is loss

The cruel and unneighborly rouse at each other

and when their common disdain vaporizes

there is loss

And the sky will open up

And from the schism there will be a deluge

And a wic will be lit

And a wicked weapon of an unwelcome guest will arrive

And there will be no option but to let them in

And Someone Said

The house on the corner of Negley and Margaretta caught fire in the snow,

and descending the steps with the tendrils of inferno at their back was

one (1) elderly couple sauntering down the fire escape as if it were any other inconvenience.

Entirely at their own pace

unbothered

pristine against the wail of the sinners

graceful against the groans of the beleaguered structure begging to collapse

silent against the violent orange light licking out of stairwell windows.

Her steps sounded like swan lake and everyone thought

“HURRY THE FUCK UP”

Peering

Drop me here

a block away

I want to

I want out

I'm going to run down the hounds

full gallop

kicking up dust in a fray.

I'm going to sharpen myself against them.

They thought they lost me back when I was a tight-lipped mophead with a nosebleed

when I approached all smooth and coy

my feelings loaded like a ball-peen in a back pocket

then reaching into their gullet

to pull out oil offal filth and rot

Not because I want to not because I must but because I'm compelled

Because who's gonna be left to run down the hounds when we're all shot dead as dogs in the dirt?

Nobody, that's who.

When we're older than the doves

everyone heaped into a cruel un-neighborly mass

our posture

through no fault of our own

arched in a singular dead writhe

Disjointed

Disingenuous

Disgusting

Striking upward cold skin leaking downward

feeding the maggots

silver linings

Eat yr heart out

Peddling

He's a traveling salesman

Wagon dreaming across the dusty divides

He follows

And I'm positive that he hits everyone on the block

With their eyes fixed to the window

Ready for visitors the tea cakes set out in front of the Divan

the recklessness of the last days strewn about

the sheer claustrophobia of their own head which has oozed

Incrementally

across door mats

Spelling out “Wipe your Paws!” and laughing at itself

in ways that only forensic investigators understand as demonstrative of pre planning

His wares are Ideation

He’s got a neat little pamphlet that comes along with it

In highway lanes on cliffs edges in the bathroom in the early hours of the morning in the waning hours of the evening

He is there.

Suit and tie

peddling snake oil

concentric and sneering in bacchus vessels

He’ll be there whispering

“Heaven be here! -

before it's too late! -

If YOU don't, the world WILL, and they’re gonna take their time

And be a hell of a lot meaner about it!”

You’ll shove him out, but he'll be back again.

And the worst part is that like any graft it's always a little convincing.

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I suppose I can't help but be a little curious.

That when I finally make that promontory leap into that Great Big Litter-Box in the sky,

that when my mass of fluids should be...

plopped

down upon the operating table

halting,

for a moment,

their congealing and rigamorting. To be looked upon one final time,

with what amount of vim or vigor will the scalpel unzip me?

It is by divine Providence alone that those who drink as fish or smoke as chimneys or find themselves indulging to an inhumane extent

We vandalize those pearly gates.

We are as sick and equivocally inhuman as dogs when we wake.