Junked

Apparent Self Inflicted by Brendan McCarthy I got down on my knees and begged him,

my forehead touching the wooden floor.                 

"I have nothing left, boy," he said in a husky voice,

"my pockets are full of fog, my head is full of fog.

I'm happy I even managed to tie this knot

and put the noose around my neck.

This damn prosthetic arm is defective, you see?

When I try to move my thumb, my little finger moves,

When I want to point, my ring finger wakes,

When I want to flip someone the bird, my thumb comes to life.

Maybe I don't know how to want anymore.

I don't even remember learning to want.

It was a miracle I tied that knot, God only knows."

A deep sigh filled with shame.

"I can't help you anymore, kid,

We had a good run

but I'm at the end of my rope."

He gave a phlegmy laugh and coughed on cigarette smoke.

He was a freakish old boy learning how to count. Not getting it.

His left was waxy and flaccid from his latest stroke,

good only for lifting the cigarette to his chapped lips.

He stood with his leg stumps on the seat of the wheelchair,

rope tied to the rafters.

 

I pushed some more: "But we have been a good team so far,

we can keep it going,

the wind will blow in our sails again."

He shook his head in resignation and defeat. "I couldn't even if I wanted to, lad.

I don't know how to want and what to do with it, don't you see?

Don't you listen?

You never listen.

I forget.

It's all fog.

What I remember is that losing at Russian roulette is winning,

and winning is actually losing.

The empty click is losing, that's all I know."

 

I felt the tip of a pen writing a suicide note on my twisted face.

"Oh, don't get in a mood now, you cry-baby,

you can still see me as a ghost.

I'll be there for you till you can fend for yourself and start getting lucky."

He winked at me. His eyes were gray, cloudy, timeless.

You can find me in the empty places:

attics with dusty Christmas decorations,

January hangovers wrapped in spiderweb,

abandoned railways,

weed-choked ditches,

that place up the hill where the pine trees have shopping carts on top,

my cardboard box with its foundation of dried-up vomit

and roof made of needles, like tiny nuclear warheads.  

If you follow the Tumor Constellation

you're bound to slip on my ectoplasm body on the way."

 

Suddenly, he pushed the chair with his stumps, fell,

his neck snapped,

My heart sunk.

His eyes were now white, milky.

It was the milk he sucked from his mother's breast, no doubt,

he was back to being a baby, a broken one,

back to a dusty womb.

Loneliness filled my mouth with sand.

It was a pipe-dream, going to chase his ghost.

Any movement, the very idea of putting one foot in front of another,

was something from the hazy past, a wild superstition.

In the future, I saw my own resting places: a padded room, a jail cell,

a green dumpster drenched in the purple twilight.

It was all foggy.

All I was certain about was the pen scrawling on my skin 

and the sound of the cylinder spinning.