You don't need the
employee of the month
badge to know
that you're it

He knew he was it

The other day he asked the girl
who called whether she
had any family

She said no
"And I don't want any. I don't want
to hurt them with
my going away. So it's better that
they don't exist." She
sounded so tired, so drowsy,

so helpless

He started tearing up
and told her. "If you do it... If you
do it then I'm gonna cry. I will
remember you. I will never
forget you. I will be the
family you're leaving behind if you
go. You will leave me in
great pain, I tell you that. In great pain! I
will cry every day and... and please don't
do it. Please let's talk about it. I'm
here for you. Let's talk. Please." He was
crying into
the receiver

And the response was
a loud bang
from the other side. It was over.
The caller was gone

He hung up
wiped his tears and
awaited the next caller

There was no win
or fail in this job
but still
he did a fine work

He smiled to himself

Here we go
open the beer can
bring it to the lips
have a sip
and...
There it is
that PSA starts running on TV
about a great part of the population
caring for nothing but how to get high
The numbers are alarming
Getting high has become
as much a science as it is an art
and a banal thing
Everyone seeks to escape reality

with desperation

therefore
the strongest drug of all
is suicide

so potent it can get you high
even if you just think about it

I had my share
but managed to change my mind early
I no longer think of suicide
but make others do it
and that still counts as getting high
since they're all characters in my writings

He started writing at the
age of thirty-eight
and most of his early poems were
about starting late,
being a late bloomer

He said he'd spent those thirty-eight
years figuring out what not to be
and in the process of figuring
that out he did a lot of
living
changed countless jobs
and locations
and lovers
enemies
customs
religions
political views
philosophies
opinions

and now it was time to
document all that
with as little fiction added
as possible

he began
and went on
fueled by the saying
"Since I started so late
I owe it to myself
to keep going."

He kept going

And the young
fresh writers
the budding talents
the prodigies
shit-talked him for being a delirious
old fool who mistook
fiction for reality
And they rated and reviewed
his works and referred to them
as being dull garbage that
belonged into the trash can

"Oh, poor fool," they said. "He's just
trying to sell the world bald cats.
That's what he's trying to do. He strips
them of fur, of the beauty that makes
cats desirable, lovable. Behold,
his works are so raw, the
writing so simple, so
lazy and devoid of any description.
He tells the reader that there are
curtains before the window but fails to
show what color, shape, smell,
effectiveness of keeping the sunlight away
from a housewife's eyes while she
examines the cucumbers brought in
with the last trip to the grocery store.
Raw and dry
that's how he is
raw and dry
and that deems his works not
worthy of our attention.
Though we are a bit sorry for the old fool.
No matter what the voices in his head
told him
there is such a thing as being too
late to begin
and this is it. See? He's like an eighty
year old playing hockey with the pros,
athletes in their prime."

What those who haven't done
enough living fail to realize is that
in this world there is a market for
literally anything and everything.
And a market you can't find
is just a market that has but to be
started
and the customers will come.
There are lots of people who love
bald cats and even prefer them
over the furry ones.
No market has ever died because
of the customer
only because of the merchant.
As long as you're that merchant who
doesn't give up you'll sell your
stuff eventually

four jobs in two months

and it wasn't even his
fault. He just
left because they didn't pay him

"Nobody works for
free," he said as he closed the
fridge, the
last can of beer in his hand,
not too cold

"Hey, leave some for me," his
girlfriend said

He threw himself on the couch,
careful to avoid
the spot where
springs poked their rusty
silver heads out

He opened the beer. "I keep
tellin' you I should
just open
my own business."

"Um-hm."

"No really, you know what this
town has in abundance?" He
took a sip

"Poverty?" she said, already stretching
her hand for the can

He handed her the can. "Yeah, poverty.
And poverty means homeless men.
Men nobody gives a damn about. Hell,
everyone wants them to
vanish. I was thinking,
maybe I can cash in on that. I could hunt
them down at night and
use their meat in a fast-food restaurant. It can
pass as pork. Everything passes in
this town.
What do you think?"

She took another sip. Handed
the can back to him. "Yeah. I know
where you can
begin, by the way. Tonight I'll show
you the alley my dad
and uncle sleep in."

He raised the can. "Cheers."

He went nine years without doing
it. Five of those
were spent in prison so it
was just normal
but the other four he spent
desperately trying and failing

He did look fine before
he got into hardcore drugs
and crime

Well, there was this
cute drug dealer
down the block
from whom he kept buying
only to get to see
her and try to strike up a
conversation

He didn't care that
she was pregnant
He called up almost daily to
meet up and
buy but he wasn't too
good at
conversation. Had no game,
as others would put it

And on the other side
she wasn't so
good at putting the products
together
She constantly laced the weed with
some other shit
and one such shit was so
bad that
when he smoked it
he got all horny and creative
and desperate

He grabbed a black
permanent marker and
drew a cunt across his
left forearm

It wasn't good enough so he
cut it open with
a razor and began to
lick at it and finger it
around the bone
and eventually fuck it until
he came

He came about four, five
times until
he passed out

the absolute worst part about
being locked up
in the psych ward was having
no access to guns

No greater torture
for him

He spent his creative hours
in the workshop
drawing chicks with guns
and jerking off to them

“You're pretty good at this,”
said one of the
nurses

He snorted. “I'm hella good at
everything that involves
shooting, babe.”

“Oh sir, I didn't mean... I
meant drawing. You're pretty
good at drawing.”

“Yeah, fuck drawing. I wanna
shoot shit. Say, could I
at least get some gunpowder. I just
wanna snort it. Nothing more,
I swear.”

She gave the usual answer. “I'll
check with the doctor
and see what
can be done.”
and was gone

He wasn't mad enough to believe
her
He was just mad enough to
use the tools in the workshop to
shape a wooden gun handle from
a small log
and staple it to the
base of his penis, to make the whole
thing resemble a pistol

He held the wooden
handle and moved it
up and down while staring at
his drawings
until he shot his load at them

Oh, that face
Of a mother
Her mother

And that grin

And the voice that never spoke
aloud, only whispered
“Oh, look at you, dear. You
think you’re grown
up? You think
you’re ready to leave? Abandon
your dear mother? Go start
your life with the fool
who got you pregnant? Oh, please.
Can you get any more ridiculous
than this, I wonder? Ah, dear,
you’re not gonna have a happy life.
I tell you what
you’re gonna
have. An abortion and the duty
to turn that fool away. You’re
not leaving
here. It’s not your destiny, dear.
Besides, he’s not gonna love you. Not
after he finds out
about your... problem. Ha-hah-haa!”

Yes, eight years
later the words still echoed
in her mind
They were the opening theme
before every episode
of seizures
in the show of life with epilepsy

It turned out to be
a self-fulfilling prophecy
but only by half

The fool was driven away, indeed
but the child
remained

He was a good boy
who always stood by his mother’s side

father had a big room
all to himself

he called it the study

No other fathers
she knew of
had this privilege
but hers was an artist, a writer,
a poet

And the last time she
entered his study
he turned from his massive
desk to face her and
spat in her face and slapped
her hard and cursed her
plenty

You do not disturb an
artist when
he is in the state of flow,
was the lesson there

Well, it was learned so well
that twenty years
have passed and it was not forgotten
Its greatest benefit
standing in
preventing her from marrying
a writer

It led to happiness

Today she was a
happy housewife
who prepared pear puree
for her three-year-old girl
who would one day have
to learn the most important
lesson of her life
Don't you dare become an artist's wife!

But there'd be time
enough for education. Today
she'd have to
deliver the monthly payment
to the nursing home for taking care
of some mad old fool who
wrote poems with his
own shit on the bathroom walls

They were all
about some daughter who won't
visit him and wouldn't
acknowledge his existence
or something like that

you can’t unlock the door
when there’s a key
inside the lock
from the other side

right,
all you can do now is
to plead with your kid to
let you in

it’s 12:47 AM
and kid’s got school in the morning
He’s not asleep
because there was no one to tell him
to go to sleep
There was no one home all day
and this late into the night
and he’s pissed
and very hungry, tired and
full of rage

Where have you been all this
time, mom?

Indeed, where have you been?

Better leave the answer
for tomorrow
when the spirits will sizzle
a bit less

Until then
take off your high heels
and the glitter from your face
and the semen from your hair
and lie down on the
doormat and
maybe pray yourself to sleep

It’ll get better. One day
you know it will

It is known
You can never hold on to
an adventurer

and she was one

And she was gone

and he stood by the window
and smelled the
guitar she left behind,
not knowing how to play it

A girl like her
travels around the world
like a sailor and
loves many boys and men
and they never forget her

The one mistake
they all share is
trying to lock her in their
world

It’s like trying to
capture the sun’s light in
a bag and take it
into your dark house

Women like her
are responsible for
men who call themselves
romantics and write love poems
and dream

He struck the cords
of the guitar
once. Looked out
the window. Warm, sunny day.
Streets busy with children
running fast, passing by
adults who walked slow