For the Cause

It has to be done, I know that,

but God is it boring. Unsavory, of course,

but it’s the boredom that eats away at me.

I stare out at the flies crazing

beneath the ceiling fan, feel like my eyes 

are going to start circling and looping like them 

if he doesn’t finish soon. I’m jerking as hard as I dare;

too fast or too slow and he’ll gripe.

It’s small and flaccid, but I do my best  with the material

as I wait for that final spasm so I can finally 

get some work done. In the meantime, 

I stare at the flies and think about the diagrams,

the lists, the maps, all the scraps of folded paper 

outlining the plan to bring down this gang of rejects

from Monster Island. Some of the information 

is vital –lists of potential allies,

the heights of buildings along various routes,

seating arrangements in the chambers and halls. 

Some of it is more esoteric. Secret sauce recipes

for various fast food items. Sources for exploding

seat cushions. Theories on how to keep a head alive 

once it’s been separated from the body 

so it can still watch and feel as a razor-sharp, 

many-pronged dildo is rammed repeatedly 

into the rectum. Is that really a necessary part 

of the overall scheme? 

There are various schools of thought on this. 

Some fear we will lose focus, as I am right now, 

letting my weary mind daydream about a day 

when a never-ending series of handjobs 

and blowjobs won’t be necessary 

to appease and distract these slobs. 

That day seems so distant, 

but at least this current state of semi-hardship 

is close to coming an end, his cheeks having gone 

from orange to cherry to grape 

as he puffs and groans, sweat matting 

linty cobwebs of hair against his brow. 

Finally, with a little squeak 

his whole body shudders 

and a greasy comet of spunk 

streaks across the room

to splat against the portrait of his daughter 

eying us from the end table. 

Milky tears run down her face 

as he struggles to extract his ass 

from the deep plush. 

It won’t be long now, I want to tell her.

He totters and tugs on his trousers 

and flicks a few bills at me.  

As they flutter to the carpet, 

I go to the bathroom and wash my hands. 

One of the flies follows

and I snatch it from the air with a soapy fist 

and drop it into the sink

where it swirls and swirls before 

being sucked down into the darkness.

I Thought We Were Talking

Sunday morning I wake up and look out the window. On the street below, a figure in s black coat is standing nearly doubled over, frozen in place. This is a common sight these days; dealers have taken to cutting fentanyl with an animal tranquilizer called Xylazine, or tranq, which extends the length of the high and paralyzed the recipient. 

I spend the afternoon riding the bus around. I am sickened by the nastiness of the anti-homeless rhetoric, but today is one of these days when everyone I come across seems fucked up on something or other, and it’s pretty depressing. The ones who aren’t huddled in doorways pace back and forth, muttering and twitching. The city’s once clean streets are now always filled with garbage and food wrappers. Tents are everywhere, but they don’t stay in the same place long. The cops keep doing sweeps so people are always on the move.

As I’m waiting for one of my buses, a man paces back and forth in front of the shelter. It’s a large shelter, with four seats, only one of which is not covered with globs of various liquids. He finally asks me if I saw twenty dollars under my seat. I tell him no but do a cursory check. He walks away, screams something at the sky, then returns and quietly asks if Ive seen twenty dollars. 

I get on the bus and sit down across the aisle from a young man who is talking as if engaged in a conversation, though he doesn’t have a phone or earbuds and no one was responding to him. He is clean cut in a tshirt and pair of shorts. His legs are very smooth, like they have just been shaven, or maybe he just doesn’t have any hair is his legs. From time to time he chuckles to himself, and keeps glancing over at me. I dont make eye contact and don’t pay attention to what he’s saying though I hear him say “The thing you got to understand is he really does love me.” 

I get off at the closest stop to my apartment. It’s a three block walk. At the last minute the young man leaps off the bus and walks beside me as I cross the street, talking the entire time. “You know what I’m sayin?” He asks, and looks at me as if expecting a response. 

“I didn’t know you were talking to me,” I say. 

He laughs and continues to walk alongside me. “I remember you from that place we lived in Milwaukie,” he says. (Milwaukie is a suburb of Portland.) 

“I never lived in Milwaukie.” I say. He seems confused then continues chattering about some upstairs neighbor. His speech is very difficult to follow; the sentences themselves make sense but they don’t seem to connect to form a narrative. 

Instead of continuing on straight ahead, he turns right when I do and crosses the bridge with me. I am starting to feel apprehensive; his demeanor is friendly and he seems harmless, but he obviously has some sort of brain damage, probably caused or exacerbated by whatever controlled substances he is on.

At the other end of the bridge I turn left and cross the street and finally stop. My building is just ahead and I don’t want him to know where I live. He takes a few steps then stops and turns to me, still talking. “Are you following me?” I ask, annoyed. 

“I thought we were talking,” he says, sounding confused and slightly wounded.

“I need to go home,” I say. He immediately turns and starts walking back the way he came. I watch him for a bit, then walk past my building and around the corner to go in the back way. It’s only then that I sheepishly notice how hard my heart is pounding. 

The next morning I look out the window and see a figure in almost the same spot as the one yesterday, standing hunched over with his head bowed, standing completely still as if time as stopped. As if he has turned to stone. 

Junebug

 A full year after the juncos made their nest in the eaves above my apartment, a pair of sparrows moves in. A few weeks later I hear the insistent chirping of the chicks, and occasionally spy the parents darting in and out of the crack that leads to the nest. It cheers me to hear them.

Though the night air is chilly, I leave the balcony door open when I go to bed, thinking it will feel good to crawl under the warm covers. I sleep well, though in the morning Olivia wakes me up a number of times meowing. She often does this when she’s hungry, but today she continues even after I fill her bowl. She keeps waking me up and I keep scratching her on the head and falling back asleep.

The sun is bright when I finally haul myself out of bed. I sit on the balcony with my coffee for a little while and listen to the tweeting of the hungry chicks. It’s still chilly though, and after a little while I head inside to get on the laptop. 

A few minutes later I hear a loud thump. It sounds like something heavy has fallen off a shelf. Then I hear Olivia scrambling around. Did she fall? I peer around the corner of my writing nook and see her lying on the desk, not moving. I leap up and see that she has something with feathers clutched in her paws. My first thought is that it’s one of the sparrows, but it’s much, much bigger than that. It’s a full-size pigeon.

“No!” I yell. She doesn’t move, holding the pigeon so tight it can barely move. “No!” I yell again, and try to smack her butt without touching the bird. She jumps off the desk with her quarry gripped in her mouth. I chase her around the apartment yelling but she will not let go. The bird is moving but I can’t tell what kind of shape it’s in. There’s no blood, and I don’t see any loose feathers. I finally lunge at her and she lets go and the bird flutters out the door and over the railing. She runs after it but I close the door before she can get out. I sit down panting and she scurries off to hide. 

After a little while I go back outside to finish my coffee. My hand is shaking. There is no sign of the pigeon. I close the door and Olivia peers through the glass and meows. My sweet little girl finally found a plaything larger than a Junebug and I ruined her murderous fun. The baby sparrows chirp madly, waiting for their parents to stuff them full of bugs. This is the life they have to look forward to. I don’t know how any of us do it.