II & I

II



crippled night. bloody leaves. dreams like broken guitar strings,
tired eyes could see the knife-scars in the morning sunlight,
ashes on your tongue. spit aghast marked with venom,
images have to be dragged to your vision,
a man with a mile-long face sitting in a fold-out chair
with his back to the sun in the parking-lot of a fold-out
shelter stares through the ground and taking one last toke
of his cigarette flicks it into a portal then gets up leaving
his shadow sitting there,
there’s mice and rats and insects in your ears along w/ the
earwax and those bedbugs that tried to kill you in your
“sleep”. bulging from your ears like a bouquet of,,,,
spider-webs dangling from planets,
emergency exits leading you in circles till your back at
what you were running from,
out of nowhere a pigeon lands on the table in front of you
and asks if you got a cigarette for 50cent,


I


It was around 4am at the shelter.
I couldn’t sleep at all.
My body turned and turned on my top bunk,
this side then that, sleep evading me for what I knew was
a good reason, it always evades me like this when there’s
something that’s going to happen I should be aware of.
I turned and turned,
biding my time thinking of whores I’d fucked and how I’d
do what to them next time I saw them.
My erection was infinite.
All around me as background noise was The Snoring Orchestra,
playing their nightly symphony conducted by Mobieus.
The night was black and God walked the streets with a garbage-bag
in one hand while digging though trash-cans with the other, looking
for recyclables.
It wasn’t pussy I was thinking of when I heard it – this shrill inhuman
snorting.
“What the fuck was that?” I thought, my turning come to a cease.
Then it sounded again – deeper, choppy, loud with grunting, confrontational,
diminishing all the snores in the packed shelter room.
Then what must’ve been exhaling the sound of what resembled
someone roughly clearing their throat with their mouth open like
words to a sentence.
A high grating sound almost like a voice about to speak a foul
tongue then the chopped up shrill.
I’d only heard this shit in movies and rose myself from the mattress
to see just “What the fuck is going on here?”
The R.A. and security were standing to both sides of him,
the sounds emitting from a man on the bottom bunk on a bed
near the front desk and the elevator.
His bunkie, alarmed, had leaned over the side to see what was going on.
The RA told the man to wake up,
shook his leg which caused the sounds to stop and told him to wake up
again.
He didn’t.
Now the man was silent and he shook his leg again the body now visibly
stiff.
The RA shined his flashlight in the man’s face to get a better look at him
in the dark and I heard him say something about “foam” and “his mouth”.
“I’m calling an ambulance.” and he walked back to the desk and picked
up the phone.
Security stood by looking at the stiff man as did myself and other residents
from our beds, woken up by the strange activity.
Stiff’s bunkie jumped out of bed and separated himself from the whole thing,
scarred he had a dead man for a neighbor,
said something to the RA about leaving as he walked to the bathroom which
the RA, still on the phone, responded to which for some reason caused the bunkie
to call him an “asshole” as the bathroom door closed behind him.
Eventually the RA finished answering the operator’s questions and hung up.
Walking back over to the corpse he tried to wake him up again,
wondering if there was anything else he could do.
And as he stood there with security the man’s bunkie came back out
of the bathroom and the RA let him know that he wasn’t an earlier
employee who was there that day that let themselves be cursed at,
he would not talk to him that way and he was free to leave when ever
he wished, all he had to do was sign the paper and bounce, not one
person would stop him.
The bunkie went over to a clipboard with a paper on it and started writing.
2 other residents were out of their bed by now to see what was happening.
The sound of ambulance sirens fell unto our ears but just as soon faded
away, flying on their way to another possible dead body.
“That wasn’t for us.” someone said who I couldn’t see.
Then ambulance sirens again, louder, lights flashing into our window
from the dark street.
Security went down to let them in.
The bunkie was somewhere but I wasn’t paying attention.
Soon the medics and firemen came up with the gurney and asking
who it was were directed over to the man virtually right in front
of them as his bed was the first you practically see.
The medics got to work in the dim light and the RA said we needed
some light in here and went and turned on the light, the whole place
flooding with desperate illumination.
One of the residents awakened by this brightness exclaimed “What the
hell is going on here!?!”
“Shut up!” I barked, looking at the medics working on a man who may
no longer be here.
Now more residents were standing around, watching, spectators to
a potential darkness.
The trees outside leaned with an imaginary wind to peek inside at what
was happening.
A needle was injected into his right arm and a sphygmomanometer put around his left.
The Vajra Guru Mantra repeated over and over in my head as I tried
to keep all this in the perspective of Emptiness (disturbed only by comments
like WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE? which caused me to think
of the immortality of stupidity).
I looked around at those still asleep and thought of how they would
wake up the next morning with no knowledge of this happening whatsoever
and what truly blissful sleep the ignorant get (then the contradiction of Masters
who might not care due to emptiness anyway, etc, etc).
He finally showed signs of waking up.
Movement – his chest expanded to exhale.
They shook him a bit, shake him back further into consciousness,
spoke in a loud voice as his head started to move side to side and
feet began some kind of kicking “WHAT. IS. YOUR. NAME?”
“….uhhh…..”
“ARE YOU BLAH. BLAH. BLAH?”
In a weak voice, “uhhh…yeah…”
“WHAT YEAR IS IT?”
“….two-thousand-eleven…”
“WHOSE THE PRESIDENT?”
“Barak Obama!”
He’s awake.
They told him that they’d given him an injection of sugar and that his
blood-pressure was low and if he was a diabetic which he answered in
the affirmative.
“Did you take your medicine?”
“No…” was his reply.
“Fucking fool.” I tried to keep myself from thinking but concluded
that was the most honest response. “What would that near-blind shit-talking
old man who stayed here (as I saw him walk by apathetically to go to the bathroom)
say to all of this? That he was a “God-damn fool! Just a God!damn! FOOL!”
I agreed.
They explained to the RA that he needed to eat something, a meal,
and one of the residents still in his bed watching this just shouted
out that there was no food here and we didn’t have anything to offer
him because they didn’t give us enough here and I just thought incredible
probably shaking my head and the RA told him to fucking zip it (without
swearing) – you feel that way write a grievance, this aint the time for that.
The resident shut up.
The RA went to the kitchen and readied the man a meal,
passing lazarus’ bunkie who was still standing on the other side of the
front desk still staring holding up the clip-board to his chest.
The hearts of those awakened knew they were no longer looking at what could’ve
been a dead man and would’ve been had he been on the street, and settled
down now, had begun turning their minds back to going to sleep.

Hands of Smoke

I sit in the open lobby of the shelter,
exposed to the Winter cold and breeze,
burning my little stick of incense in
the non-smokers corner while the other
residents down here sit within their
spa of cigarette smoke and puff
on ways on getting out of here.

I burn my little stick of incense while
security sits at his desk hoping nobody
chooses his shift to turn into a 3,000
year old maniac cursing and swearing
at all living things daring the police
to fulfill his destiny.

I burn the herbs as a madman paces and
the Earth travels around the Sun.

Smoke rises from my humble stick
as the flowers die from cancer and
love is just a band-aid for starvation.

My incense burns as a man more homeless
than me digs with his hands through a
dumpster thick with waste and stink for
any sign of G-d’s existence while tyrants
in nicely shined black shoes and high-heels
dance in private rooms to salsa music.

My lowly stick of incense burns its smoke
rising to the Underworld.

It is calm this evening.

Even the Moon just lets it’s phone ring.