I Want [4-4-07]

I want those country roads that we drove on in a flurry of snow,

My parents talking about moving out of the city,

As they followed timidly behind us.

I want to ride shotgun and hold your thick callused hand,

While we sing to Jason Aldean.

I want that love we had,

As we drove your monstrous red Chevy

To your grandmother’s farm,

Where you said, one day, we’d raise our children.

I wrote this when I was on speed and watching Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. [1-3-07]

He sat alone in the room, his only company an off channel TV whose picture hissed and popped as he sat quietly, indifferent to the loud noise penetrating through the door from the other room.

The focus of his eyes was distant; glazed and wet from snorting the lined formations of cocaine from the table. The flashing of the TV screen reflected in his glassy eyes. His head was filled with white noise. His body tingled and rushed. Eventually, he sat up on the edge of the couch, and began sliding his credit card across the table; condensing the remaining dusting of powder into a pile. His empty pupils were locked on the roaring black and white screen as his tongue ran around the edges of the plastic card. Somewhere in his mind he thought about the subliminal messages in the static and picked up the last of the minuscule granules with the sweaty pads of his fingertips and rubbed them along the inside of his absorbent gland of a mouth.

With his gums tingling-eyes heavy with radiation-and his tongue grouping over his pearls for teeth; he stood. Swaying, he gave himself a moment to let the blood pump back into his head. He grouped for the doorknob and his clumsy fingers turned it with a loud creak.

The small apartment was swollen with people and the atmosphere seemed uncontrollable. Where had he been? How long had this been going on? He scanned the room and realized that nearly every drug known to man was present. Was that the root of this gathering of self-gratification?

Snaking through the mass of bodies, his mind recoiled in horror at what he was seeing; bottles of poisonous liquor and cackles of flirtatious laughter; the smell of cancer with every burnt clove cigarette. Men with lagoon eyes were surrounded in fog breathing smoke from shiny hookahs and exhaling like dragons. There were philosophers in the corners, passing a joint to the left while figuring out the meaning of life. Pro sports teams were in the kitchen, surrounding the cup-covered table and raging with testosterone. Scientists were mixing colorful and potent drinks from large labeled bottles on the counter, and passing them out to empty hands with fever. Mermaid women with bubbly laughter and sparkling champagne eyes indulged in each other’s half naked bodies, never once dropping their cups full of rainbow liquids.

Gliding through the crowd and casually glancing his way between bong hits and raunchy comments, she finally caught his eye.

Then suddenly, through the thick haze and movement of colors; he saw her. The clear bottle of rum in her hand; half full of the coconut delicacy, sparkled and splashed as her body swayed in an erotic sashaying of hips to the music. She, with a blonde mane of twine for hair and cat eyes, approached him. As she did, he shook his long shaggy hair, heavy and brown like leather, out of his eyes. Their deep color looked like a wet street at night; the red-greeen-white-yellow lights mirrored and stretched against the reflective blacktop.

When she smiled his mind became overwhelmed with instinct and drive; he felt his self control reduce to the sobriety level of a maniac. It was apparent that there was an on-setting lust from the drugs; the blind impulse to fuck. She was stoned and he was twisted. She was blazed and he was ripped. Had he no power to ignore these terrible drugs? These irresistible urges to taste her tingling flesh? The loud noise melted into a buzz and the mass movement around them slowed and stopped. Suddenly his hand was around the back of her neck and waist and her fingers were tangled in his hair and they were kissing. Their tongues were snaking around each other; their mouths were full of bitten lips and soft moans and the taste of pot and rum.

Then, suddenly, he was watching time fast forward and when it slowed he found that he was laying back on a bed, lacking a shirt and covered in scratch marks, and she was smiling as she locked the door to the dimly lit room. The air in the room was humid and heavy as he pulled back her head by her hair and tasted the THC on the hot skin of her neck. Their breathing was slow and deep as she bit his shoulder and her hips rocked against him to the beat of the loud music, which had slithered from beneath the door and filled the quiet of the room.

Birthday in Mexico [4.25.07]

9:30 am.

A tequila sunrise and 27 pesos later
I am sitting, balancing myself
On the plastic, graffiti-covered bus seat,
Listening to the cheesy Mexican radio
And feeling the eyes of those three men
On my body from two rows back.

We make our way
45 miles an hour
Down the narrow boulevard.
My drink splashing side to side
As the bus races around the bends
And slams its breaks on
Outside the busy gathering
Of dark skin and fruit stands.