This Shit I Wrote This Shit

Wrinklefuck the puppydog

	Overgrown into normalcy, the yard hoists
	string-cheese long-grass around
	wrinklefuck the dog

	If seen, which he isn't, they would find, which they won't,
	green-grey breaths of mold lodged between snaggletoothed pant,
	spilling from running mouth slobber
	onto the old dirt filled with keys and metal and syringes.

	Two inches of fur loosely stitched
		with skin fly past the gnat gaggle and roll into a bush
	Two inches of grime loosely prodded
		with beady puppy eyes wander elderly back out.
	Bongwater-mine toiling gilds beholding mind's boiling
	to think of such a shivering, stumbling wretch made to live here,
	on this telephone-pole planet.

	Acid-kid (the kid that makes acid) says that its parents
	were siblings, and theirs, and theirs, and theirs,
	and theirs - eternal tumble-down mutation and accident,
	false step and consequent genetic churning, silent
	gethsemane stars and doggys
	nuzzling each other
	in that locked barn, hidden in the
	midnight hay.

	He scrambles atop the foot-tall plastic slide and yawns,
	maw spreading stretching little tongue, legs folding,
	body shaking. Circling, circling.
	Laying.

	Flies shutter and twirl 'round as I kneel beside him
	look into his cloudy eyes and ask if he chooses this life.
	Ancient lids only crust together
	and he whistle-breathes slow.

	I ask him again:
	Do you choose this?

	As wrinklefuck naps the Thursday afternoon away,
	the sunlight pours through his inbred skin,
	and his vile body kicks with love in its sleep.
	

The Stupid

	Shuttering light pulls the face of the
	shivering man across from us back
	into our subway car.
	Dad’s pupils constrict just as they did
	when he saw my handiwork, my staples,
	six-year-old me’s penciled plots, 
	and in equal parts amusement and malice
	gas seeps from in between his narrow teeth. He says,
	“The weak of mind will only bring you down,
	buddy.”

	Yet, the weak of mind are beside me in the early hours of the morning,
	watching from the top of the abandoned factory as the sun rises over
	the lake, burning its way back into history.
	The weak of mind grip the back of my headrest as the night rattles by us,
	the warm wind of summer flittering through our hair,
	garbled music playing through the busted speaker we found last week.
	They feed me in the dark after my debit card is stolen,
	and they drive me through Montana, hurtling into the west.
	The weak of mind hold onto me tight as I weep quietly
	in the McDonalds drive-thru.
	
	I think of my dad’s words as I sentry by the bus stop in an empty world,
	thinking of how cold it would’ve been tonight
	as I thumb the holes in some other moron’s sweater.
	I don’t think of those words as I sleep on a floor that’s not mine,
	feeling the whole Earth resting under me,
	listening to the voices of the stupid, whispering at dawn.

	A bonfire of idiocy burns
	where no others can see.
	
	The strange sounds we make when we laugh will not be in any history books,
	And economists will never speak about the implications of our drinking habits,
	nor of our personal projects – pittance in their ambition,
	proudly unwilling to be held to a higher standard.
	Our drawings will be lost, and our stories will be forgotten,
	and our names will, one day, vanish with us,
	but, as the evening fades with us on the sinking porch
	and we listen to the trains rattle in the distance,
	it doesn’t feel scary.
	My eyes are heavy, and the stupid carries me 
	back inside and lays me down in my own bed.
	The door is left just slightly ajar.


	

Pennsyltucky

	The name "Pennsyltucky" is from an adage. It goes:
	"Pennsylvania's got Philadelphia on one side, Pittsburgh on the other, and Kentucky
	everywhere in between."

	There, rust wafts from forgotten vents, smelling like a stagnant pond
	as I lay on old carpet, wondering if this place was ever any different.
	Stubborn pride comes to blows with a need to be whisked away,
	to have that poison stricken from the deep groves in your fragile brain,
	but change is a privilege afforded to the few.
	Instead, fork clinks and mouth sounds fail to break silence.
	All the world here is still - angry, but still.

	Gutted pigs hang from the interstate, and bottles are thrown at us from moving cars.
	"Faggots!" they say. Travis says that. I know Travis.
	Travis sits with me in homeroom -
	he tells me he shivers looking at the empty buildings,
	who tells me he knows there will be no world for him to live in.
	His eyes waver as you talk to him, and his hands are scarred.
	He throws bottles at faggots.

	If you sit on the curb in the summer's evening, and you look across the hills,
	past the broken lampposts, and the collapsed church,
	and the husk of the grocery store,
	and the highway that outburns all the stars,
	you may see a faraway, desolate mountain. Luminous in the dark.

	But, as you drive towards it in the heated night,
	going 80 on the empty highway, gripping the steering wheel,
	seeing fluorescent mile markers fly by,
	screaming, "It's there, it's there, it's right there!"
	you realize that those wet stains on your shirt and falling down your face
	were from yesterday.
	The mountain never gets closer.

	The gas station employee's eyes are fogged over, and mine are puffy.
	We say nothing to each other, but we both remember an old adage.

	Philadelphia is on one side, Pittsburgh is on the other, and then there are the people who live
	in that strange place, forever in between.

	

Thirty years away

	The domain of a chronic dysfunction kitchen
	pulls in strands of burning yesterday,
	pleading you away from the echoes of past molds seeping
	from the can.
 
	Dollar General stands tall amongst
	the short wheats, or the naked flatlands -
	bare in sunset, full by morning.
	Miles around us, the evening stalks,
	itching to move on down Highway 2.
 
	A soldier in Vince’s pack-a-day battalion
	burns softly between his fingers
	as he shuffles on the curb to make room for me.
	He says tonight smells familiar,
	like the summer before the $12 showers,
	before the decaying town of Lakota.
	Indiana haunts his lips.
	
	His eyes crinkle as he talks about Lucy,
	with three legs and five hearts,
	and the way she always bounded into the river,
	and the way he and Jen would have to wrangle her out.
	His dry chuckling hangs itself on the memory
	of the time he and Jen got stuck in her truck
	all night, and they invented songs until morning,
	their voices ringing, out-of-tune, under a night sky
	they couldn’t see.

	Sometimes, he says, home’s a people,
	but sometimes those people are a place.
	Sometimes the warrant comes to you
	on the porch just after dawn,
	and sometimes the judge just hasn’t had lunch yet.
	Sometimes, you see the lifetime you’ll spend
	between somebody’s eyes.
	Sometimes your last words to somebody
	can’t be saying that you’re leaving
	because you know they’d follow.

	Sometimes it’s thirty years away next month,
	and, sometimes,
	you still never close both doors
	at the same time.


	

McDonald's 99 Cent Coffee

This story will be rewritten with similar events occasionally, endlessly. This iteration was published 06/23/24.

		Little Brian died after a piano fell on him. They said it was the first time that had ever happened 
	to anyone. The construction guy kicked some blood off his shoes and scrolled on his phone and said yeah that’s 
	the first time that ever happened to anyone. He asked how old he was and I said pry fifty or sixty. Holy shit 
	why’d you call him little brian then the guy asks. There was a big brian who used to have a really red face I 
	answer he went to all the AA meetings every night all over town and they all knew him and his wife didn’t see 
	him. She said his real wife used to be alcohol and then his real wife was the fact that he wasn’t an alcoholic.
	He had little brian and called him little, and all his life he was little because no one ever wanted to change
	it. Big Brian was the king of the lack of alcohol, and little brian, now dead, lived beneath him, made to be an
	alcoholic. The construction guy said that’s way too much info for me bud and turned his stop sign back to yield.
	
		At Little Brian’s funeral, which is held at st. joseph’s, little brian’s mom  (big brian’s wife) floats
	up to heaven. I don’t think theres anything that makes you stop believing in god faster than seeing someone get 
	subsumed up into the cloudy grey pennsylvanian stratospheric expanse body and all without dying or anything. 
	She’s been crying obviously and gripping her two pugs so hard they went bugeyed and suddenly she goes up not even
	like a floating type of deal just up. No variation in speed no nothing just up. She clearly isn’t sure what’s 
	happening and then isn’t sure if she should hold onto the dogs if she’s going to heaven. She frantically debates
	a while and screams a little and then throws down the dog that is presumably not the favorite

	Others attending the funeral include:
	Mopey Jane, Mopey Jim

	Mopey Jane and Mopey Jim and the priest and I all look up at where god should be. I inhale and kick the dewey grass
	with my loafers.

		Hey asks the priest hey was that the rapture. That’s really funny I say I was about to ask you that. Oh wow haha.
	Lot of it about recently he says everybody asking everybody everything you know. Oh yeah I guess so I respond. It’s 
	quiet no one’s really sure what to say. The unloved pug lays down at my feet. The priest says you know I watched a 
	good docuseries on michael jackson recently. In it he says that he went to mcdonalds and saw a man watch the coffee 
	go from ninety-nine cents to a dollar-nine and apparently he went ballistic im talking napkins on the floor ballistic 
	im talking some plastic forks on the floor and shit. And all. Sorry I forgot I can’t curse im a priest it’s ok I say 
	thanks he says. anyways the mcdonalds guy screamed “ninety-nine” over and over again in this real shrill voice and 
	everybody kept trying to calm him down but he was going ape nuts like in his eyes was this slimey yellowish shine. he 
	was arching his back and writhing and flailing then he slipped and hit his head really hard on the counter and stumbled 
	back up with sauce and grime on his nice shirt that had the instagram logo on it. then he stopped and looked at michael 
	jackson with his slimey eyes and pointed at him with his slimey finger and then he said “michael.” then he fucking died. 
	sorry I mean freaking
	
		Wasn't that before instagram existed i say and yea he says it was. And I say ok. Then he says can you all go home
	i have another funeral at 11. Mopey Jane and Mopey Jim load back into their converted Prius and ride away. I walk back
	along the road. The sun's out today. The big sun. I go to by a pack of gum in the store and they say i dont have enough
	money. I go home and go to sleep, and the next day a piano falls on me, killing me. As reality becomes small and I 
	resign in movements of my now toothless mouth in the puddle of dark blood and heavy strings sewn through my body,
	I hear someone say that's the second time that's ever happened to anybody and someone else says yea it is
	

Worms on the Highway

		You will dream about men and fucking in your closet alone. You will scramble for an expertise that is not
	there. You will stare into the ancient twirling sun who beams its permanence down onto you and you are thinking
	about an APR. You think about that as the sun beams its permanence down onto you and its magnetic cosmal carnate
	orgasm and you will be thinking about buying a car

		At the pawn shop you will claw out of the first man you see five golden coins and you will spend them. You will 
	remember something as you spend them, a fleeting realization of meaning without the content to accompany it. You 
	will walk out into the parking lot content with your disknowledge. You will watch the cars hurl by throwing beams of
	reflected light carrying people who hate you and their cars they bought.  You will stare into the ancient twirling 
	sun. You will wonder if it will die when you will.

		You will rue the state of California. You will not live there, you will not go there, and you will rue it. You 
	will rue the posers in the radio. You will rue the posers in the woodwork. You will rue the paint thinning house that
	you can’t stop staring at. You will rue the lawnmowers and you will rue the state of California. You will rue the 
	f4ggots in the radio. You will rue the child who is buried in the grate of the crashed MAC truck. You will hold his
	delicate body full of love for legos and mighty beans and he will stare into the ancient twirling sun and as his last
	act which you will never tell his foster parents he loosely grips the front of your shirt and says something about a
	kirby. You look into his vacant cloudy eyes and imagine a world in which Jupiter spins on an axis for no reason with 
	no maintenance and you will rue entropy’s nepotism.

	In the arms of a car dealership, I let my muscles relax. Its suit is wrinkled and it plays ads on the television 
	telling you there’s no better time than this summer for a new pickup and it’s crying. Come back come back come back 
	it says. I didn’t know. I didn’t know this whole time you could cry. The wind blows from over the mountains and my 
	buddy’s saying come to mine for a slushie and the car dealership’s face is obscured in the blinding sun and the buses 
	roll past with critterpeople on them and in the arms of chevy I see myself full for the first time. I ask it to send a 
	letter somewhere. It says yes. I say send it to Omaha. I say in Omaha there’s a Garrett, and I need to tell him I won’t 
	be able to make it back to his for thanksgiving because I’ll be dead. The flickering motel lights and the empty van and 
	the festival the day after and the last day of summer break, can you put those in the letter? I’m sorry. I didn’t know 
	you could love, too. I thought you were a picture. It says of course I can. It says did you leave the oven on. I say I 
	probably didn’t but there’s no way to know for sure. Who else.

		I say in Omaha there’s a Matthew. Can you tell him I forgive him for molesting me. I wanted to come tell him myself 
	but I want him to know he won’t be a p3dophile forever. I wanted to tell him that he loves Star Wars enough to make it 
	big and if only he believed in how smart he is he wouldn’t be a p3dophile anymore, he would move to the city and in the 
	night he would drive home in a taxi with the others their costumes illuminating vibrant under the passing streetlights 
	and he’ll say I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. And it will be another 11 minutes of driving after that, and he 
	won’t die in his apartment alone in July in a pile of market wine and junk mail.

		Chevy one last story thats it then ill go and the chevy says ok what is the story and i tell chevy about the time 
	when i was seventeen when the lights came on after the orange disappeared into the sky. that night when the heat wriggled
	into the street. i watched a guy named Grannyfucker fart out his own c-ck, and we all laughed about it. we said, how's 
	that even possible? Pino was there, and he left for Santa Fe at the end of summer and no one sent him letters. When we
	all laughed i was thinking about the smell emanating from the grate and how hungry I was. Grannyfucker's cousin was named
	Yvonne, and she kept off to the side gathering worms from the industrial park dirt in a bowl. I asked Yvonne what it was
	for and she didnt look up at me grabbed some more and said "Worms on the highway. The game." Her scissor-cropped hair blew
	in the wind. 

		There was a state called california with a highway that curled through it like a ringworm, infinite closed loop of
	burrowing and skin-picking, enshrined in the purple of fading sleep. There, on the pedestrian walkway far above the lights
	of the heated carnal circuit, Yvonne showed me what she meant. As the worm disappeared into the light and became something
	no longer deemed worthy of change, no longer worthy of altering the record, as it became not what a worm is but what we 
	know it to be, it stared at an ancient twirling sun listened to the dull thud of a motel light the dull thud of a letter 
	answered "VACANT" the dull thud of worms on the highway. I die.
	

Damn Ol I Aint Finished It

	Dunnno whadda tell ya i write real slow like
			suck my righteous nuts