junk-sick afternoon

Broken images exploded softly in my head...I was living in my parents’ house and couldn’t leave my room on account of vicious black guard dog roaming the halls - argue with my father - long tableau of quarrels which has lasted a lifetime. I realized what I had come to accept all along: I loathe and hate the old monster. Pure, white hate.

…time slowed like an unreliable internet connection…

…outside, red brick slum in summer sunlight as clear as glycerin…

…twitching and shivering in dirty underwear, grasping a charred meth pipe in the junk-sick afternoon…

…a lonely rooster caws in the distant adobe slums under a forest of satellite dishes…

Jolt up - flesh dead, indeterminate, bitter - jet to corner taco shop for a couple of carne asadas.

Waitress noticed my funk: “Don’t worry about the past or the future, guero. Live for the moment, live for the now. Life is good!”

I took a walk down the strip and ignore the barkers, pass the casino under the watchful eye of The Man and into the Plaza for a coffee and a smoke. Fags circulate outside in droves as I sat and think and think hard. Radio plays thirty minute government sponsored program in Spanish about catching crab lice. The cantina across from me thumps where deceitful rentboys put the make on you in favor of The House and there is no health in them clap boys rotten to the core.

A handsome vaquero in a yellow Stetson, black shirt, black jeans, and cowboy boots stood on the corner with a guitar, singing a woeful ballad no one cares to hear…