Dope Sick

Kiki, when you get the flu, do you just deal with it, or is your solution a bag of junk?

Her restless legs were sheeted in sweat
desperate for relief
kicking dirty walls to the point
that she'd bruises to show for it
She was perspiring buckets
that were surely seeping into the 2-inch foam pad
she bought months ago
inevitably staining it forever
to remind her that she was
at one point
Dopesick

"I just deal with it…I guess..."

But a bowl of chicken soup
had no capacity to comfort her
and nothing she could buy at Duane Reade
would stop her clammy body from shaking
She NEEDED heroin

or Suboxone
Klonipin and Xanax or weed
the ONLY solution was a drug
and all she had was a bottle
of watered down Georgi
that made her gag every time
she got a whiff of it

You know, I know where you're coming from. I used to have a habit, I've been dopesick before…but you're too smart, Kiki, too beautiful to be doing dope, Kiki. Come on…this is for the better. I can't give you a bag on credit, I just can't. If you were a regular customer, then maybe, but..you see…I made a pact with Angel and I just can't…….I'll call you back later if my guilty conscience gets the best of me.

He spoke like he was doing her college-girl self a favor
by keeping her sick and
stuck to her mattress
unable to move
aside from the few feet she'd crawl
every ten or twenty
to shit or vomit water
she wanted to scream at him

with every ounce of diminishing strength in her body:

BULLLLSSHIIIITTTT YOU CLEARLY DON'T GIVE A FUCK STOP PRETENDING LIKE YOU THINK IM TOO GOOD FOR THIS SHIT YOU’RE A WORTHLESS DOPE-DEALING-DOMINICAN IN THE PROJECTS WHO THINKS YOU'RE HOT JUST CAUSE YOUR PHONE WON'T STOP RINGING AND THOUGH LAST WEEK YOU WERE ALL BUDDY BUDDY WITH ME NOW YOU CANT GET ME WELL WITH A SINGLE BAG THAT YOURE GETTING AT LESS THAN 5 BUCKS A POP?! FUCK YOU YOU DON'T GIVE A FUCK HOW DARE YOU PEP TALK ME
YOU OLD MOTHERFUCKER.

but she didn't
she said goodbye
and cried
It didn't matter that he was right
because he wasn't gonna help her
just like Angel and Dani and Jack and Lance and Mitch weren't gonna
and she couldn't believe that she'd reached a point
where a smack-pusher
was teaching her a lesson

All she wanted was someone
to hold her
to take her writhing calves in their hands
and knead them for a little
a nurse to sponge her fevered, wet body

withering away before her own eyes
someone to say that things were gonna be okay
that they loved her, and
that she was special and important
and not the worthless junkie
she thought she'd become
but she knew that she couldn't expect that
of anyone else
if she couldn't do it for herself

That Saturday night
when her resources ran dry
she swore she'd kick
because those 24 hours
were among the worst of her life
and it was the first time
ever
that she felt like dying

The First Time

Hollywood said that heroin was cool

it was for people without inhibition

artists with a part-time career in thievery

who led exciting lives

and fucked hot, crazy chicks

with bony backs and cute tits

and my life had always been boring

so from a young age

I wanted to try it

I saw the shit the first time

on an early-morning in December

in the hands of a 31-year-old man

who apparently knew he was gonna fuck me that night

but I just wanted his drugs

so I went home with him

and I remember lying backside on his bed

unable to put my finger on

the kind of euphoria I was feeling

it was so strong that this stranger, shooting up bedside

seemed like a savior

sheltering me from the cold of a New York December

and numbing my own condescending self

that never ceased to insult or bicker

till the second I was touched

by the transcendent relaxation

characteristic of the opiate-derivative

Diamorphine

ultimately, it's a semi-synthetic substance

which could've fooled me

since it felt so fucking

real

and right

and perfect

even though I woke up the next morning

nauseous and sweaty

and at noon, while I was walking down St. Marks

I puked my guts out on the sidewalk

and I felt really shitty about myself

because he didn't take down my number

but even after all that

I wouldn't have changed that perfect moment

in his room

for anything

Poem to my Laptop

I’m realizing now how incredibly much I need you

your dirty screen and sticky white keys

and though I’m usually never sorry

I’m regretting every action

that lead up to your being robbed of me

because now I’m handicapped
accessless
anxious and restless

unable to stop myself from wondering where you are

how you were moved from my possession to another’s

in exchange for what

and for who



I’d say whoever has you doesn’t need you as much as I do

for pen and paper is no match to a shiny new computer

for any student

or self-proclaimed writer

But really,

we’re all just humble humans in a modern age

and now that you’re gone

I don’t have Facebook to distract me

from how empty my apartment is at night

and I can’t watch porn 

or look for jobs on craigslist

even if I wanted to


I know you’re just a thing

a mere blessing of technology formerly in my possession
but you have to understand
checking e-mail has never been such an ordeal for me

and though I’m sure I’ll learn

a few really important lessons

(Be Weary of those you let into your home Be Careful who your friends are)

from the sequence of events

or rather, the number of stupid decisions I made

to cause your absence, but

FOR GOD SAKE I MISS YOU

Cleaning Day

She cleans herself up nice
and though she's barely twenty
she amply entertains beyond her years
over coffee and under sheets
but never in her own home

for no sane person could excuse
the piles of shit-stained clothing
creeping along nicotine-yellow walls
littered on a floor
so layered with dirt
the soles of her feet are always black

or her once-beautiful balcony overlooking the willow trees
uninhabitable now
with weeks-old garbage and
the sunbaked smell of rot

or the dirty dishes
caked with old cooking
overwhelming the sink, tempting the flies
who've made a home with her
in her sweaty apartment in the alphabets

the flies
those six-legged scavengers
are the only ones who'd accept her
and she desperately wants to be loved
so she lets them whirr in her company
though she hates the sound of buzzing
and how they nip her ankles while she sleeps

the years pass and the girl grows older
not much has changed
but her youth is gone and her charm is fading
ages ago, with the best of intentions
she'd bought a broom and dustpan
but her studio stayed the same
and the flies remained

till the day came
when she died sleeping
and her winged companions picked
the plastic garbage bags,
the dishes, her clothes
and her bones

clean

Junk Food

The first thing the girl could remember about her parents is how, one night a few years ago, though her brother and she were kneeling, tears bucketing down their kindergarten cheeks, they would not stop fighting. The mother had whacked the father with the hook end of a wire clothes hanger, and so the father's lip was bleeding and he kept on going HIT ME BABY HIT ME BABY COME ON HIT ME. The mother was terribly scared of the father, so she called the police, and the cops came even though the only act of domestic abuse was on her own behalf. When the authorities got there, there wasn't much they could do but sit the misbehaving parents down at the kitchen table and attempt to mediate a bad marriage, since neither party wanted to deal with the bullshit that came along with pressing charges. The man cop took the father downstairs, the woman cop stayed with the mother at the kitchen table. The two children peered through the kitchen door.
"He's going to stay somewhere else tonight. I'm sure, once he cools down, everything will be fine. He's being very understanding, you know." The woman cop saw the kids and their tear stained cheeks, an older brown-haired girl with scarce teeth and a younger boy with cute curls of blonde hair. "You should probably take your kids out to dinner. Something greasy."
In the back seat of the car the little boy stayed quiet. Through oversized glasses, he looked out the window of the Subaru Outback, staring down the desolate, post-8-o'clock streets of a well-to-do Suburban Virginia. The girl asked the mother questions like, "Mom…are you okay?? Did Dad hit you?? Why was his lip like that? Why did the cops have to come? What happened?"
The mother answered the girl's questions like she always did when it came to personal matters she was ashamed of.
"It's none of your business, dear. Dad won't be home tonight, be quiet, everything's fine."
Though she ate nothing, the mother watched, satisfied, as her children's hands, greased over by calamari, brought big-bunned burgers to their tiny mouths, pleased she'd blessed them with a gift her husband, a healthy surgeon, never would have. The girl was the only one that talked, blabbing about figure skating and piano lessons and the kids at school, all things that seemed trivial and unimportant in the aftermath of a domestic crisis. She got chocolate cake for desert. The boy ordered a sundae.
Upon entering the driveway of the white two-story house, the cops were gone and the kids were put to bed. The mother stopped by the kitchen for a bottle, as she always had, and consumed its contents on her side of the bed with the company of a blaring TV screen, to wake up early, alone, and with a self-imposed obligation to hide the bottle (or two) of wine under the bathroom sink. The nanny would come up to the childrens' bedrooms, get them ready for school and make them breakfast, while the mother would drink coffee with milk before work, and that evening the father would come home late for dinner, and everyone would sit around the kitchen table together, not-speaking, and from that point on everything would go about as usual.

The Game

I see your brown lace-ups everywhere
on shoe racks, in classrooms
tapping tile on the feet of faceless men
who walk and talk and dress

the same way you do

When I see your clones in Manhattan

I tell myself you’re too fucking normal

with your routine

your fresh-made bed and your nine-to-five

but I know I’m wrong when I say that

because I’ve never liked normal, ever

and I like(d) you

a lot

trust me, man

it’s not that I’m desperate
I boast an accomplished stable of thoroughbreds
trained to be whipped and spurred
Stallions I can ride at any time of night
who’ll pant and pelt
til I’m satisfied

But not a single racehorse
won me a blanket of roses
and after a few seasons speeding in circles

inevitably

I got pregnant with empty-

too fat to be a jockey

It’s a shame you’re about the derby

the “most exciting two minutes in sports”

because I think about fucking you all the time

but I can’t since

you just want to race, left-handed

along the edge of a dirt track.

Intro to a Story.

You don't care, at this particular point in time, that your mother loves you.

Nor do you care that beyond the bathroom door lies a finite number of opportunities that could make you something great, and that by blowing lines of dope off the ceramic surface of a toilet in a Brooklyn bathroom stall today, as you did yesterday, and probably will do tomorrow, you're most likely throwing them away.

All you care about, at this point in time, is getting the shit out of its wax paper bag, onto a semi-clean surface without spilling any of the powder into the toilet bowl.

And then, soon after leaving the bathroom, you'll find yourself careless…feeling that life is blissful, that you're incredibly healthy, and that the present moment in which you're living is the only period of time that could possibly matter.