Morning After the Night Before
Inside the hard edged darkness,
the bar after hours, chair legs turned up
toward the pitted ceiling, toward yellow
caked layers of nicotine and dirt and beer,
the drip of the faucet, the tick of the minute
hand on the industrial clock, ten minutes
past reality and running fast. The blur
of the TV screen, Music TV with the sound
turned off, rootless images and wasted,
misplaced energy, narratives without meaning,
stories like a Fritz Lang, Metropolis with
dead rock stars inside, floating cars heading
toward a destination no one comes back from.
Sensing the presence of the long gone,
the solitary drinkers who made this their last
home, still sipping their last Socrates
cocktail,
their riding the stainless steel gurney
elixir,
two bits short of a double and not caring
either way. Recalling the faces of those
not so long gone, those brown girls with
“Don’t fuck with me” expressions and you
didn’t,
but you bounced their boyfriends so high
they might never come down, the“ Just who
the fuck do you think you are” tramps, one
article
of clothing short of an indecent exposure
arrest,
and those banshee voiced women with their
drug shot eyes, bleeding from the corners and
their bad money men with their ‘I shot the sheriff,
I killed me a guard ‘tattoos, two tears less than
a deluge of body fluids and sudden death and
a whole bar full of drinks to drown them all in
for awhile and a room to wake up in when
the drugging stops and there’s nothing
to save you but yourself.
The
Mercenary
He's got a
complete
set of Soldier of
Fortune
Magazine neatly
stacked
and indexed, hot
places
marked with
post-it-notes
as if he'd been there,
done
that, got the battle
ribbons
and the scars to prove
it,
has some convoluted
bull-
shit story about
working
rescue on the
Autobahn,
even has a closet full
of
white EMT shirts
with
his name sewn on
pockets
that proves he loved
the
work and was ready to
go
back on a moment's
notice,
says picking body
parts
out of twisted beyond
all
recognition wrecks
caused
by out of control
drivers
playing high speed
chicken
games with designer
cars
was where it was
at,
says he loved the work
cause
it reminded him of
working
FUBAR patrols,
Graves
Registry, all the details
no
one in his right mind wanted
or would ask for, though
he
missed the heat of the
jungle
in winter but not
dealing
with freakin' bugs with
fangs
the size of walrus tusks
that
drew blood on recon
human
fly bys, painted such an
elaborate,
detailed picture of his
work
you wanted to believe
some
of what he was telling
you
might be
true.
Like
clockwork
every Saturday
morning
between three &
three-
thirty, she wakes
up
screaming for more
blow,
crack, whatever she's
on,
injecting, snorting,
smoking,
all of the
above----demanding
that he get some
more---fast,
before she got sicker, so
sick
she wouldn't be able to
stand
herself, would have to
climb
the mother fucking
walls,
coming down
hallucination
demons crawling under her
skin,
down the walls, filling
up
the room, all the spaces left
to
breathe----he says, "Calm
down.
Where am I going to get
such
a thing this time of
night?"
"I don't care." she cries,
"Just
get it!" Screams, getting
louder,
more desperate, more
frantic,
more out of
control-----until
he smacks her. Hard. "Snap
out of it, girl! Get a grip,
get yourself together,
now."
But she doesn't, won't,
starts
that Godawful screaming
again----
Until he hits her, harder,
this time.
Again and again. Inducing a
kind
of cowed silence, she
interrupts
by whimpering, nodding off,
for
the moment----Their two
boys
from other partners,
burrowing
under the covers, no longer
asking
what's going on, what's
wrong
with momma? They know, now,
how it is and how it will
be.
