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.

Apartment 367 - Deluge or Delusion

I don't quite know why...
but she asked me if I was using two fingers.
I wasn't.

She was shifting her hips
like she was riding a rocking horse in the air adjacent to my bed-
massaging my fingertip against her button
again
and
again...

I lost a bit of my mind with her every motion.
My hard-line masochistic streak keeps me
blindly stumbling into these situations--
and I'm not sure what I am surrendering
by not surrendering...

A sin is a sin is a sin is a sin is a sin is a sin is a sin
is oblivion.
The hell I've walled myself into
is no less excruciating
because I've espoused some moral imperative.
Penetration is penetration,
whether by word, flesh or sword...

Another breathy moan from the direction of my headboard,
and I realize I'm sinking deeper into thought
as I'm sinking deeper into her...
suffering a disconnect
in the midst of this connection.

To be honest, I couldn't remember her name right now
if you had a magnum pressed to my skull
rather than sheathed over my dick.

I'm fairly certain sex is just an act for her;
A way to sate some salacious craving without feeling pitiable.
I could be anyone, as long as I was someone
who was no one special.
I'm essentially a dildo with a pulse...

and a conscience.

I'm not sure she counted on the second part.

Her breathing quickened,
my member stiffened
and I realized that I've been aloof in atonement for the moment
I forgot one unyielding truth...

Whereas making love is an act of creation,
Sex is an act of destruction :
It should not be performed if you don't intend to do damage--

I don't quite know why...
but she asked if she could cum on my fingers...
Ironically, I couldn't give a fuck.

Scarecrow IV: Young Lust - AkA Syd Barrett's Sydnrome

The trick is to keep breathing. These little calamities occur from time to time, but you can't allow the superstructure of your ego to fracture and dissipate due to them. When you're navigating your way through the thick underbrush of a forest, you don't simply stop hiking because you trip over a root. You pick yourself up, and proceed with more caution from that point forward. You just have to gauge your pace based upon your environment. Thus far, I have had two extremely productive weeks in Baltimore with one slight hiccup. That's it.

So why have I broken out in the first cold sweat I've encountered in years? It certainly wasn't the death of the child... I've done far worse to far better people. Perhaps it's the circumstances that surrounded that evening. The task was certainly not performed with my usual grace and efficiency-- but that shouldn't be enough to shake my confidence.

I've been taking lives for the better portion of my own... I first felt the sweet surrender of another humans soul at the tender age of 12. That was a scenario that I have vividly reconstructed in my head with religious fervor.

I was inordinately awkward as a child, given my rather disassociate nature with my contemporaries and various character oddities, and often the subject of ridicule. I suppose my daily attire of a white collared-shirt and black necktie certainly assisted in relegating me to the realm of the queer and unusual in the minds of my contemporaries. Many of the larger boys in my class felt the need to ostracize me at every opportunity, verbally accosting me in the classroom and physically abusing me in the absence of any authority figures. As I was the product of a Southern Baptist home, I did my best to show restraint when brutalized by others. It was, as I was told, the proper Christian thing to do. However, after years of perpetual abuse one's tolerance wanes at the drop of a hat... and a great many other edifices will crumble along with it.

So it was in my twelfth year, whilst walking home from school on a blustery October afternoon (I recall the month because of the gaudy decorations adorning many of the houses along my path... the world felt permeated with devilry) I happened upon a cadre of trouble-making teens setting fire to a small dog they'd significantly wounded. The discourtesy done to the animal was not particularly abhorrent to me... I had often dabbled in animal cruelty as a means to procure a peek at a fresh viscera... However, two of these scoundrels had regularly brutalized me in a particularly venomous fashion, so I rather sincerely doubted I would escape the encounter unscathed. Without hesitating to calculate the odds, I plunged headlong into the pack of boys before they could take complete notice of me.

There was not a great disparity in size between myself and the other individuals. I was certainly not picked on due to diminutive stature... it was my timid disposition that made me an easy target. Thus when I barreled into Aaron Belie, the sandy haired alpha-male of the group, my momentum alone blew him off his feet and down atop the flaming canine. The other boys were understandably startled, as their fearless leader was now smoldering on top of a mewling dog. Using the distraction to my advantage, I fell atop Aaron's squirming form (subsequently crushing the pooch pyre in the process), pressing my knee firmly into his abdomen and proceeding to choke the boy as violently as I could.

Something that is quite worthy of note here is the disparity between the general expectation of how long it takes for someone to succumb to asphyxia and the actual time necessary to strangle someone. Whoever perpetuated the idea that, like Uncle Ben's rice, two minutes is all you need was a complete idiot. Granted, the human body can retain the requisite amount of carbon dioxide to expire after that time; however, to completely close off someone's air-way for that length of time takes a considerable amount of strength and energy. That is even if the subject is much smaller than yourself, and putting up little or no resistance. Now, given that this particular individual was equal in size and strength to myself, there was little or no chance I'd be able to strangle him to death without possessing a considerable amount of experience in such matters. As I did not, we merely wrestled around on the ground for a few minutes with him retching and gasping for breath before I regained my sanity and realized the futility of my actions.

Luckily, as it stands, most human beings can be easily shocked into a petrified state. When tragedy strikes, most folks will stand dumbfounded as any deer transfixed by high beams... As it stands, this fact was in my favor. This group of scoundrels outnumbered me significantly, and at any moment could have pried me away from their compatriot then beaten me senseless if the notion had occurred to them. However, they stood idly by and not only watched me choke him, but refused to come forward during my brief moment of indecision when I released my stranglehold.

It is quite unnerving to leap into a situation such as this without truly contemplating the consequences of one's actions and be thwarted. Your energy is sapped fairly quickly, your resolve ebbs and then you're left drained and confused. Aaron gazed up at me with an overwhelmed, panic-stricken glare as he gasped for breath. Seeing the fear radiating from his eyes somehow triggered some sick frenzy in my head... a bestial blood-lust that until that moment had lay dormant at the base of my skull. Shaking off my previous hesitation I thrust my right thumb down with all the force I could muster directly into his left eye... He wailed, bleating like a lamb being slaughtered, as my finger worked to separate the slimy gelatinous orb free of the socket.

Finally, one of his friends managed to find his testicles and work up the courage to shout.

"Stop it, man! Are you crazy???"

As I finally managed to exorcise the eye (though it was not completely in tact... I was basically pulling pieces out), and proceeded to force the better portion of the mucous-y matter into his mouth as he screamed... the optic nerve was still attached to the bulk of the matter, and I could not work it free enough to get him to swallow it. Quite unfortunate.

Turning to the outspoken boy, I noticed a surge of panic through the group as my attention shifted to them. It was at this exact moment that I first felt a wave of sadistic glee sweep over me, surging through my veins like an adrenalin rush on speed. The zygomatic major muscles contracted in the corners of my mouth, and a cheshire grin crept across my face. Quizzically, I queried,

"Stop?"

The silence was resounding. That is, the silence from the peanut gallery. Aaron, the dear boy, was still spitting out globs of eyeball.

"Crazy. Yes... I am crazy."

With that, I slammed my palm against Aaron's nasal septum with as much force as I could muster. There was a sickening crack, akin to the sound of an over-ripe melon dropped from a great height onto concrete. The formerly rigid frame went limp beneath me. The other boys turned and ran at breakneck speed, scattering likes birds from the underbrush when a predator is afoot.

At that moment, I felt a very severe pelvic pressure that nearly doubled me over atop the two corpses beneath me. My penis throbbed and tingled with violent sensations, and suddenly I felt as though I began urinating watery porridge in violent spurts... With each explosion I jerked spasmodically atop the heap beneath me, my head flying back violently and my limbs constricting around my body as though trying to staunch a wound. I extricated my member from my slacks as quickly as humanly possible (whilst dealing with a blood spattered necktie that flailed in the wind) in an attempt to ascertain what exactly was causing this strange hemorrhaging, only to find a viscous substance similar to diluted lotion smeared around the inside of my underpants and still oozing from the tip of my penis.

Most young men stumble upon the secret bliss of erogeny in the comfort and quiet of their bedrooms, fantasizing over some random amalgam of flesh that passes as a woman in their eyes... I first discovered the disorienting joy of the orgasm whilst astraddle a random amalgam of flesh I'd recently converted from a living organism to a compost heap waiting to filter into the loam. A rather severe price to pay for climax, now that I ponder it... It's strange how often the act of discovery for me is preceded by act of destruction. I suppose you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs...

The question is: with a past like this, why is it that I feel like I'm the one who's cracking?

Apartment 144 - No More Solicitations

We're in the middle of an 8th inning rally and the fucking doorbell rings.

I don't want any magazine subscriptions.

I don't want to buy chocolate bars to fund your eighth grade field trip.

And I don't want to party with you and the other sheep at your goddamn Rock Church.

When I opened the door shirtless

scratching at my stubbly chin

I saw the best job a push-up bra has ever done.

Years ago I remember

being told that a woman's breasts

exist to entice and

to disguise the racing of the heart.

My younger idealistic self

believed those words and may have been seduced by her.

But not me...not anymore.

I closed the door on her face

because they're just tits.

The man that I am now could never

make the heart of a woman flutter.

We lost six to nothing.