Unfortunately though
being a good boxer doesn’t
earn you a good job
in today’s society. Best he
could do was bouncer
at a local bar
His IQ wasn’t much help either
He beat up quite a number of
troublemakers
and earned a reputation
became a local celebrity
The women desired him
and got him
and life was good until the one
invincible opponent stepped
into the ring
Well, there are many invincible
opponents in a man’s life
but his was prostate cancer
All the women who wanted to
take pictures with him
and have his autograph on their
chests and wanted to take
him home meant nothing now
One of them was a rich
older lady who
gifted him a car after he served
her a few times in the bedroom
He used it to
drive at full speed into
a pole
And as it happens after someone
dies, the people had only
good words to say
about him
They thought he didn’t leave
much behind
but one of the girls he’d been
with knew better
She rubbed her swollen
belly as she
thought of him. It’ll be fine
as long as her husband wouldn’t
suspect anything
Goddammit, they were looking at
a doctor
He came into the casino in a suit,
the same suit every day and night
dark gray
shiny with grease around the
elbows and lower back
smelly
patched up in places
he kinda forgot what it was like to be
sober
and lately he kinda forgot what
it was like to win at the slot machines
he forgot how to perform surgery
how to diagnose a patient
forgot what the company of a woman felt like
forgot what love was
he was a machine that consumed cheap
but strong alcohol
Rubbing alcohol filtered through bread
That stuff was 70% alcohol
his liver knew it
"Ah, pleaseeee, for the love of God, don't
make me work with this
stuff again," he would scream while
playing at the slot machine
and the bouncer would walk up to him
and say, "Hey, hey, doc. Everything all right, man?"
"Oh, sorry. That was my liver shouting
through my mouth. He's a pussy."
They say companies that deliver food
get very suspicious when their
regular customers,
the people who order every day,
stop ordering all of a sudden
They even check on them
Well, we don't deliver food
but we got really concerned when
our favorite doctor stopped
showing up
all of a sudden
Maybe our managers would've checked
up on him but
there was no phone to call
and no door to knock on
Still, one of our boys went to the nearby
park and asked the homeless men around
for our favorite doctor
and the man handed him a
newspaper
Shit,
it wasn't even on the front page
there was some political shit on the
front page
Nobody gave a damn about that article
The real thing was a few pages
after, not even colored
HOMELESS MAN DIES AFTER TRYING TO
PERFORM SURGERY ON HIMSELF
IN PUBLIC RESTROOM
That was a doctor with guts
Guts pouring out of him
straight into the sink
and another cluster found in the toilet
We framed the article and pasted
it on a board in the back room
of the casino
Daydreaming as a profession 