On the road.

A truck driver's meth

lost its edge when his body

gave in to fatigue the moment

I was about to pass him going

the other way.

It came fast, the disgusting crunch,

the ejection through glass

my dog destroyed in the back

seat, my arm ripped off

40 feet in front of me

and facing south

I feel the asphalt on the side

of my face, my body lightening,

my heart and lungs accepting

the end,

my blood ending its work

my brain keeping onto the

road in front of me

bright

warm

the sounds of

wind and gravel

and my breaths slowing

to a stop

it makes perfect sense

I think of my feet under the desk

buried into the fur of my dog

while I write until he's had enough

and goes to his spot on the couch

I think of the keys and the words

the sunshine of those moments

my head empty of music while

I change to dead

smiling at my ripped-away

limb and thinking

the tattoo on the back of

my forearm looks

good as a stand-alone piece

then a sadness grips the

acceptance of the end

despite the words

written on those nights when

I thought I'd had enough

I don't want to die.

Hey. Me here, again. Listen, look. Remember when I called you a few hours earlier drunk? I'm even drunker. Gotta tell you, man... listen... here's the deal. Seriously. I know I've been drinking since five yesterday and all that happy horse shit, but I've been writing some of my best shit, I think. Maybe even comparable to Bill Shields. You know what I mean, fucker. Not saying I'm as good. You know what? Fuck you. Anyway, love you bro, and I wanted to call and tell you I've been re-reading your shit, and the jail book is fucking beautiful, but with Flotsam, you could've at least put a pimple on John Edmonds' ass. He's too perfect. No one fucking lives like that. Come on, dude. Hey, remember when you crashed at our pad in Long Beach and my old lady blew up at you in the kitchen? I was actually in bed laughing my ass off. Glad I'm on my own and that fuckin' bullshit's all behind me, holy fuck. But yeah, man, been writing a lot, back at it. Feels fucking great. Wanna come up there and hang with you mid-October, man. Alright. I should get my head down, I guess. Oh. Been reading your new shit, too. Glad to see your sentences haven't fuckin' lengthened with success. Don't go soft, motherfucker, hit them even harder. Love you, bro. Fuckin' neighbor next door is up and getting ready for work. You oughtta see this puke. Turtle face motherfucker. He doesn't like me. But that road goes both ways. Alright, night, fucker. Call me.

First, prepare to have your heart broken in three years by Metallica's Black album. You won't believe how bad they're going to suck. Also: 95% of what you worry about never happens. Don't give in to your pressures: jobs, poverty, bad people, negative idiots, the wait, the hassles, the relationships, losses, terror. Stay on your own path and don't worry about the rest of them. Travel overseas, avoid serious relationships for ten more years. Don't mistake your freedom for failure by contrast with others. Most people like to be told what to do, how to live, and they like to follow. That doesn't make them right about you or themselves. Change your mind about tattoos because in 20 years everyone and their moms will have sleeves. Have a good time with life, and at the same time keep your head into your work, keep doing your work. It might take over twenty years, but keep pushing. Stay smart, stay aware. Write. Stop at nothing.

It was just after midnight. I still had some food stamps. Across Sunset I walked around the wholesale food warehouse and bought some chicken Alfredo and some fries. I had the groceries in my hand, walking toward two Mexicans out in the parking lot. They were standing in front of a long green car arguing in Spanish. I walked toward the gate. They were getting loud with each other. I watched them as I walked. One started chasing the other around the car and they both stopped on either side of the hood, throwing their hands up and screaming. Then one pulled out a gun and shot the other in the stomach. He fell straight over the hood without a sound and died. The other guy looked around. No cars stopped. A few women screamed in the distance behind me. No one came out of the warehouse. He pushed the body off the car and jumped in. He was coming up behind me. I walked a straight line. I wouldn’t look at him. He went around me full speed and jumped perfectly into the flow of traffic on Western. He had the light and he shot through. I still remember the number on his plates.

I waited to cross Sunset. Over in the parking lot people were gathering around the body. I got the light and walked. A group of tenants were at the corner looking across to the lot. They were talking fast. When I got close they nodded at me.

“What-happened, what-happened?”

“I don’t know.”

I rounded my corner, and the sirens were coming up Sunset. Back at the apartment I threw the chicken and fries in the oven and uncorked the bottle of wine with an inch left in the bottom. I downed it and sat in the living room. It had been horrible. What could be so important that a man had to die? Then I thought about it. Plenty. That guy could have raped the shooter’s daughter or fucked his wife or even killed someone he knew. Most likely the gunman was burned over drugs. And the neighborhood had something to talk about again. They wouldn’t give each other the time, otherwise. I grew bitter waiting for my food. Nature breaks down animals in the food chain and nature gave humans murder for their own eradication. I had a nice dinner.

thinking of Vonnegut's baby unstuck in time

or the exact break in time that causes

damage

the words fall down through blood

and cross over the keys

while outback the water in the pond

sounds Japanese

and beyond the machine

the sea burns

and the night opens into

poetry.

Pondering strange body pains while I down my third Maker's

which completely negates anything credible I'm thinking right now

considering I've been drunk for three weeks straight

-ritual became habitual-

and looking for a way out

I laid in bed this afternoon and counted the days until my 44th birthday

if I start clean tomorrow

I have 43 days to be 43

Then at 44 I will have had 43 days of no booze, no sugar, no dairy or grain or damage

4 + 4 = 8

-and adding that entire equation

together

it becomes my day of birth

16,

which is my favorite number

-P is the 16th letter in the alphabet

-I was born in Peoria

-raised in Phoenix

-writing on Prose.

and 43 + 44 is 87

and 1987 was when

my mom died and the whole

family exploded to shit

and I spent 25 years sifting through

reality and bullshit before

the writing ultimately

paid out

not that it had to

plagues usually don't pay

2 + 5 = 7

lucky, after all

if I believed in luck

drink #4 gone

mentally gearing

for 43 days of grace

sweat

words without the fog

maybe even longer

-clean blood,

because regardless of what I say

right now

I owe the words

my cleanest

blood.

I drove down to Tijuana and went to jail. In there I was beaten repeatedly. I was arrested for absolutely nothing. One minute, I was walking past a prostitute after I had parked and locked my car, walking around Mars, past the strange billboards and faces destroyed by poverty, in a town destroyed and dependent upon lust and drugs. I was walking around a people who hated me for needing me. The poor sat in file on the sidewalks, their palms out. The faces on the necks reminded me of shrunken fruit. The owners of strip joints and fruit stands and street-side booths were happy to see me. Their English was broken and desperate. The prostitute followed me. She was offering me anything. Her face was a novel. It was carved throughout with lines of grief, with angry knuckles and damage from the sun. Her hair was like black straw electrified on its post. Her eyes were sorry. Her whole self almost brought me to tears. I reached into my pocket in the middle of that dark orange sea and handed her a five-spot. She handed me a crumpled up baggie with nothing in it. She hustled off. The next minute, I was dropped on my face, cuffed and stuffed and wiping the blood from my forehead onto the back of a torn leather headrest.

In jail the big Mexicans pummeled me in turn. One guy tried to get my pants off. I fought them wildly. After a while they gave up, from time to time walking by the corner I was thrown into and kicking me, spitting on me. The cops held me for nine hours, took everything I had and kicked me in the ass out into the dark. Back at my car, my rear windshield was shattered and the whole car was gutted, saving the driver’s seat. They even got the mirrors. My bike was gone, my music, my books, my backpack, my life. They had my keys back in that dungeon. I could hear the Mexicans laughing at me behind the rusted bars. They were sitting on that diseased, urine stained concrete with no windows, sweating and laughing about me. I broke off my ignition switch with a rock so I could turn the wheel. I had never jump started a car before. I learned quickly. The guards at the border showed no interest in my face.

I drove to Yuma, bitterly. I was low on fuel. It was December. The desert was cold but my face burned with a heat I’d never known. I pulled into a gas station and explained to the Indian behind the counter what had happened. He shook his head. I asked him for ten dollars in gas so I could get to Phoenix. He said nope. Up the street I found a Shell station. The old lady said that I could gas up and she would treat it like a drive off. In the bathroom I locked the door and looked in the mirror. I looked like a mask. My whole face was twisted and swollen. I looked diseased. I fell back against the door and sank to the ground.

I drove north with a sympathy cup of coffee and a full tank. The wind from the opening in back chilled my neck and shoulders, the exhaust billowed inside and choked me, made me sick. The smell flavored my coffee. One of my eyes had just swollen shut so I drove the limit, confused.

I reached Phoenix before dusk. At a stoplight two girls stared at me like I was an animal. I could feel them. They honked. I looked over. They were laughing with the two guys that were in the backseat. No mercy. By the time I found my sister’s house I was sick from the exhaust and the desert on top of the germs from the floor of the jail spreading under the cuts. I was certain I could not go on for another second. The house was empty. She had moved.

I called one of my brothers collect in Illinois, woke him up. He gave me her new address. He asked me how I was and so on. During the conversation I would throw up while he was talking. I told him everything was fine and that I was home for a while, at least until after the holidays. He told me he loved me. I threw up. I made it back to my car and used up the rest of my strength finding the address.

I parked. Her house was bigger. I could see the Christmas tree in the window. I had nothing to carry inside. She lived in a better part of town. I hadn’t spoken to her for a long time. I thought it was funny that this would be the second time in a row I showed up at her place badly beaten. Only this time was worse. I had long hair and was older, taller, a little heavier from working labor. I didn’t want her to see this. I made it to the door and pushed the ringer.

Friday

Maker's neat

10:57

Slayer, Reign In Blood, blasting the air around the bar

Criminally Insane just winded down and I smile with vengeance

into the glass

To hear this in a bar

in the Pacific NW

-the anti-formula of today

the clarity of evil

the night has unfolded into a chromoly desert

watching the people but

also not watching them

sitting here absorbing

the beautiful chaos.

Track ten on the album

spits the whiskey into blood:

Pierced from below, souls of my treacherous past

Betrayed by many, now ornaments dripping above

Awaiting the hour of reprisal

Your time slips away

It was pushing midnight and I was drunk. Meg was sleeping under my chair. I filled her bowl and gave her some fresh water. Kara was passed out on the floor. I sat down and looked at my boxes of work, at my typewriter and my bike. The years of wreckage and waste and slime and blood and work. Thirty grand was nothing compared to the compromise. I didn’t want to be an old author of my words, heard or unheard, with a motherfucking sitcom on my record. I dialed the number and left her a message. I told her that I respectfully resigned from even the chance and to keep the screenplay for the hundred bucks she flowed me and to please return my story. I hung up.

Kara jumped up looked at me, and her face flushed with anger. She started to open her mouth. The phone rang once and stopped. It happened at least once a day, him letting her know he was home. I was tired of it. He answered. I called him by his name, and I asked him why he was hanging up on me. He tried to deny it, but I had the proof. Kara stormed into the bathroom. I asked him politely to hold on. I opened the door. She was holding a kitchen knife to her wrist. I told her to cut the veins vertically so no one could save her. She shot me an ugly sneer.

“I mean it. Get away from me or I’ll kill myself!”

“Do it.”