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
she woke up because her feet were cold
The window was open
and she had not the audacity to
stand and shut it in someone else’s house
He was still asleep
beside her
The sheets were stained with her maiden’s
blood
That was all right
She was twenty
But him.... He was also twenty but that’s not the point
This was the boy who
put her through hell during both middle
and high school
The bully
There was that time when he pushed
her down the stairs
and broke her thumb
that time during the field trip
when he threw a rock
straight into the side of her head
that time when he put
a frog in her
lunchbox
And another in her backpack that she
carried home
That time he kicked the ball
in her face giving her
a bloody nose
that time when he threw a snowball
at her ear
And there was another incident
resulting in a chipped tooth
and all of that was besides the
name-calling and the random hair pulling
and the tripping and the scaring
and all...
Yet now here she was
Here they were
In his house
In his bed
And all because he contacted her the previous day
and apologized for everything. Truth
is her life placed some nasty miles both
behind and ahead of her
and someone being nice all of a sudden...
It was so easy to get her
And what did he think of her now?
She felt tears trickling down
her cheeks as she thought of this and
stared at his sleeping body beside her
silence
Silence is the most important thing
It's what renders headphones
and earbuds
and headsets one of the
greatest
inventions of the modern world
The ability to enjoy entertainment
without disturbing those
around you
Silence
It's important to know this about it
cuz unfortunately some of
the lessons
about the importance
of silence
are taught by the most
extreme teachers
Myself and a friend of mine had been
taught the lesson by such a teacher
We were twelve and thirteen
and he got a new gaming console for
his birthday and we spoke with another
friend to lend us a cool game,
some shooter
I stayed over the night
and we started playing
and the TV was quite loud
The game was fun
We were loud
and there were bangs and explosions
and guns firing and screams and flashes
and suddenly
the door of the bathroom bangs
open with a kick and my friend's
grandfather storms into the room
with froth about his bleached lips and
he grabs my friend's arm, twists, and
pins him to the ground and holds him there
as he looks around the room with crazed eyes,
more scared than both my friend and I
I think what's worse
is that the old man was previously
on the toilet
using it
and he got up without wiping
or washing his hands
and came into our room like that
My friend's father came when he heard
the commotion and
dragged the old man away
and left us mute
and shaken
we didn't say a word until he
came back a few seconds later
and lectured us about PTSD
but I guess the real moral of the
story is that silence is important
and headphones are really one of
humanity's greatest inventions
Daydreaming as a profession 