Apartment 411 - It's all there in Black and White

No matter how many times I fold the paper, 

it just won't seem to close.
No apologies printed.
No corrections tendered.

Not that it would make a damn bit of difference-
bigotry is headline fodder
easily enough recanted
in the smallest print imaginable
on page 6 or 7.

We don't even warrant that, apparently.

I get it.

Misanthropic missives
and hipster epistles
in the editorial column of some obscure publication
can somehow paint a saintly halo above your brow
in the eyes of the swine
herding in and out of night-clubs and coffee shops.
Addressing inconsistencies in treatment 

will merely get you buried.
So they get buried.

Sure, letting some redneck rant about
how he questions the moral integrity of a nation that lets it's
"nappy-haired nigger of a president
take away their bullets and
scrape out all their infants"
is an easy way to sell papers.

That doesn't make it right;
it damn sure doesn't make me wrong.

Infamy is not fleeting, friends,
and unfortunately
it's the precipice with the furthest fall.

It would be pitiable
if it weren't criminal.

Their only aim is deconstruction;
the only glory achieved
is through debasing any opposition.

Is anyone exalted anymore?
Is anything?

Another crease in the page
like the folds of my brain...
I still can't put the issue to bed
when there's ignorance all over it.

I need to stop people like this
from telling the world that it's okay to discriminate.
I need to shatter the lens
that insists on focusing on our differences
to create our definitions.

They used to be the moral majority.
That term has been usurped by "we."
If you don't fall under that heading,
you'll become the enemy.

Fuck them,
and then fuck you
for distributing abuse
instead of news...

It's not as though I haven't spent my entire life
under someone's scrutiny...

But, hell, who am I to criticize?

I'm just another name on the opinion page.

Apartment 348 - Pushing the Envelope

It's amazing what you're capable of

with your back against a wall. 

I sold smack on a playground today; 

      just biding time to scrounge the rent-

Two months ago I had never even seen the stuff. 
     I'd never procured it for personal use, 
     let alone sold it.

Now I'm a full-time profferer of prescriptions 
 for problems that can't be cured...
A modern day snake-oil peddler
 with a panacea for every conceivable ill. 

Trying to cope with depression? 
     This'll give you a shot in the arm!
Your boyfriend just broke your heart
mere weeks after breaking your hyman? 
     Here's a prick that you can depend on...

I thought I was better than this,

but who can afford to have scruples
when there are bills to be paid? 

Internally

I guess I'm still struggling to compete

with people who would never deign to take note of me...
My revenge is in undermining their immaculate lives, 
some drug-peddling Socrates
trying to keep the creditors at bay...

I'd always envisioned being someone's hero;  

at least being remembered for an act of creation. 

Instead I'm an enzyme for eradication... 

A cancer cell at best- 
     A fucking wrecking ball.

Somehow...

I'm not sure how it happened...

One day I woke up a sidekick 
to a heroine that's never saved anyone...

Apartment 206 - Even the Dead Need to Eat

Another year gone and I can’t
believe I’ve still got this millstone on my finger.
Crossing the threshold
as a married woman filtered me;
out of the world and
into the kitchen.

I used to write.
I used to be funny.
I used to be caring.
I used to run.
I used to be passionate.
I used to have a home.
I used to be in love.
I used to be a lot of things but
with every revolution these things fell away from me.
A friend gone here.
A dream lost there.

I jumped into the colander faithfully and
came back with dinner…and with all the
important pieces of myself missing
like the Wizard of Oz characters rolled into one.

This year our anniversary
fell on the day of the resurrection.
And as someone who needs to believe in such things
I was hoping this day would be enough
to bring our relationship back to life.
But watching him lay there
I’m reminded of the flood instead, and
with the rest of the dead we’ll just wash away.

Apartment 151 - The Last Tenant

No one knocks on their own door to enter except for me.

I feel like a visitor in my own apartment

knowing that I could be in the room where I die.

Three raps before I turn the key to

announce my presence

to the ‘Shogun’ of 151.

I live alone but the man who

used to live here hasn’t left.

He rests on the cubby where I put my Converse

waiting for someone to show and he

constantly reminds me that he is the master of this residence.

I did the best thing I could do for him; I gave him a name.

I call him Bruce Leroy

because he’s reached the final stage; he has the glow.

Even now I’m not able to

commune with the dead but he feels so close it’s

like he glued his soul to me.

Doing maintenance in the hall, he fell.

Wife divorced, daughter living in Texas.

No one to call family…

no one to call for help.

No one would hear.

Who knew such a tiny mistake could erase an entire life?

On the linoleum dying,

for three days

crying for help…to no one but himself.

Turning into nothing but a dead man

and an ambiguous 80s reference.

Apartment 333- Therapist

If you wanted privacy,
you might have closed your blinds from time to time.
If you wanted intimacy,
You should have shut your windows.
If you wanted security,
You would have locked your doors.

The devil doesn't knock upon entry.
He knows where he's wanted.

I've heard your conversations.
The bigotry.
The loathing.

I've sucked up the sin seeping through your floorboards.

I've tasted your wasted love as it
swirled down the drain,
seasoned with misspent tears...

I've stepped through the hillocks of cigarette butts
you discard as carelessly as you do your dreams...
a little measure to meld your
environment with your outlook:
The world as an ashcan.

I know you better than I'd ever know myself,
because my appraisal is realistic.
Not tainted by pride or egotism.
Not laced with self-pity.

I know that you wanted this,
in spite of your pained cries to the contrary.
I know you really wept for the innocence
you lost long before I let myself into your loins.

You let the world in-
you offered yourself with impunity for far too long.
You valued your life so little
as to put it on display for anyone's appraisal.

You were waiting on catastrophe
to prove your life was worth saving...

I was the instrument.

I took nothing that wasn't proffered by your unlocked door.

Your home and your body share sentiments...
I simply took the welcome mat at it's word.

Apartment 267 - The God Myth

I often pass these women on the stairs

coming from the room above my own.

I see them only once, then never again.

Narcissists all of them.

Obviously attracted to the same

generic model of beauty they

perceive in the mirror.

They’re all good-looking but nothing special,

apart from the lack of sight.

Heads down from the door

to the car – not in shame

but in permanent refusal to notice a guy like me.

The red-head tonight

reminds me of a harsh double standard:

low self-esteem and a

need for validation

get a guy loneliness

and yet it gets the girlies laid.

And I have to listen.

I can just imaging her

pointing her legs upwards toward heaven

anointing him her God for tonight… until she

recognizes little lesions on the Jesus.

“Oh God”

I guess she missed them.

“Oh God”

“Oh God”

Even the superficial

looks and sounds true

when it covers up a lie.

“Oh God”

Honey. Shut up!

God made the universe

in seven days and this prick

can’t even make you come.

Apartment 316- No Place Like Home

The redneck got arrested last night.

The bastard was barking back at dogs
and belting shots of scotch well-before sundown.
You could say he and the sun were collectively sinking...

Nights like these
breed pregnant silences
in-between the outbursts--

I sit as poised for the next eruption

as a child quivering under covers for fear of thunderclaps-

Another howl,
(presumably bellowing for beer)
then he's batting his live-in lap straddler
around the apartment beneath me.

With every strike
the drywall learns a lesson
this ignorant bitch
can't comprehend:

Some things will never change.
The world will change around them...

The cops will come,
the cuffs go on,
and the problem is put on pause for a night--

but he'll be back with the sunrise.

They'll reconcile,

because all the while
he's the real victim.

He is his addiction's bitch,

and she is only hooked on him.

Misery does want for company.

He'll promise he'll be different.

She'll actually believe him.

They'll be back to battering their plaster

with the reverberations of orgasms and arguments...

I found out long ago that a drunkard's apologies are

essentially counterfeit currency.

I just took it for common knowledge.

Maybe it is...

Maybe love for some people

is the emotional equivalent of living in tornado alley...

They'll cope with ceaseless shit storms

because they're too lazy to move.