Dirtbag Holiday

Shake off the muck left from the night before. Crack open eyes matted with dirtbag gravel. Trace the line of a frayed power cord; unlock a sticky phone. What’s that fucking number again? Oh, yeah. A birthday. I should probably change that shit. Just so I don’t have to remember those digits anymore. It stopped being relevant over a year ago. It might be easier to use the print of a shaking finger. But biometrics rarely play nice with battered ramp hands. So I’m condemned to absorb yet another PIN. Without the security of any sort of receptive cushion to actually carry it. Splatter out plasticine texts. Because if I don’t respond quickly enough, people worry. And then wonder all day if I spent the night …

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Peak Insanity

Smoking my way through another black pack Michigan Monday night. Just because there is fuck all else to do, here in the frozen wasteland of an empty December 517 holiday season. Downing dirty pints. Like it’s my actual job. And not the pretend one. The one I play at every night. Dressed up like a ramp running G.I. Joe; the one where I am kitted out in a uniform of cobbled-together high-viz ridiculousness. With an endless variety of electronic paraphernalia strapped to an aging, uncooperative body balking at the inhospitable weather. It’s always the same damn battle. The one fought six nights a week. Or sometimes, even seven. Especially when it’s our peak season of commercial craziness. And there are glaring staffing gaps to fill. So …

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Champagne Idiot

Slipping wild down around DeWitt Road. Right where the airport roads all blink and bend together. Down past the inconvenient end of 28 Left jutting out into Clinton County. That rippling runway scar along which a familiar tin tail number used to shimmy and brake in bombastic MD-11 style. Back in those happy times. Before that catastrophic crash, that cost me more of my friends. I was left shifting gears mechanically in time with the rhythm of sifted memories. Slapping the stick just to better absorb a soundtrack that only I could hear. Because something had to push me through all the suck.  And sometimes, you just have to ride out all the fucking hurt. It was just another unsupervised dose, of yet another manic Michigan …

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Last Call

I have danced delicately in the grip of attractively damaged devils. And I have kissed the naked secrets of more freckled angels. I have played endlessly with big words. And even bigger guns. But eventually, I discovered that the words were far more damaging. Because a gun means unequivocally what it says. It rifles true in the world of pure absolutes. Whereas the whispered language of part-time lovers is often too unpredictable. And can’t ever be properly targeted in more responsible fashion. I am guilty of that obfuscation myself; I have never once said it plain before. It has always been easier to hide behind the clever wordplay. Lurking on the literary periphery of acceptable behaviors. Because I have learned through the errors of my trials …

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Black Box

Boozy slides down icy Clinton County back roads. Airplanes that spin down on routine maintenance flights. Or inexplicably drop out of the sky. On fucking fire. Carrying the names of faces once familiar to our little backwater Mittened gateway. Danger seems to lurk everywhere these days.  And all I can think is…. fuck it.  Bring on your worst, Michigan.  I am not afraid. Because at this point, I think it’s honestly kind of funny. Maybe it’s the unreasonable number of fresh Old Fashioneds helping pump the cloying sludge through aging veins fueling that bravado. Maybe it’s just the sheer repetitiveness of it all. Because when you dance with the devil every damn night, danger quickly melts into the mundane. Especially after so many close calls. Admittedly, …

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Bar Blessed

She ended up blessing me. And all I did was buy her a pizza. With an accompanying pint. At the time, it seemed like a fair deal. So I was happy to make the investment. She dropped into the bar when I was already several rounds in. It was just another typical Saturday Old Town night. One spent feeling sorry for myself. Because after a week of having been benched after punching that fucking airplane, the threat of other winged monsters arriving on the morrow loomed large. And I wasn’t sure if I was prepared for that challenge. So I occupied myself by punishing my brain with doses of liquid poison. Downing rounds like it was my new job. Because at least that was a hurt …

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Two Five Nine

It began like every other Michigan Tuesday. Wake up. And immediately struggle to shake off the hangover.   Down some coffee. Rub bloodshot eyes into hesitant focus. Get human again behind the twin hits of caffeine and tobacco. Shuffle across the constriction of a boulevard apartment seeking more nourishing stimulation. Because something had to get the sludge moving again. Force a cold body into a hot shower. Just to feel a different sensation. And to steam an uncooperative body back into adult movement. That aging, fragile meat bag still yelping internally from the abuses absorbed the night before.   Even a brain left pickled from the unanticipated liquid poisoning could still comprehend that it was probably the closest to a baptismal that the attached Mittened maniac will ever …

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Bottom Shelf

She said that this city is killing me. And, she is probably right. I feel the bite of that malignancy every fucking time the boulevard coughs and sputters. Or when I have to pivot myself to the floor to dodge the popping clack of turf wars erupting outside the second story of my window. I never wanted to fucking be in Michigan— shamrocked things were always much more my style. Because I was born with an insatiable hunger for something green. And the broken browns of dead Midwestern corn are at best a cruel joke. But here I am.  Suffering through the suffocation of another Ingham County overnight. Just rotting away in the inconsistent squeeze of a misunderstood Mitten’s grip. And expiring slow in the farcical …

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Ramp Rats

Gold and orange autumn canopies arched over broken Michigan asphalt. Reflective ocular cautions of migratory deer lined the road curving out past the grip of those unhealthy Clinton County mirages. Glaring glances peeked accusingly from the fields of brown corn recently broken in the harvest. And they constantly threatened unexpected collisions during the entirety of that wandering Tuesday night Airport Drive. It made me want to collapse into the want of someone. But that was just another 517 impossibility. And my heart fucking knew it. So I could only keep driving.  Pushing myself down past the awkward highway interchanges. And up around the curves where the numbered signs stop making sense. Because I was always taught that 69 should mean north and south. Not east and …

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517 Skeletons

Somewhere amongst the curled pages of a yellowing manuscript lies my truth; somewhere beneath broken Michigan heartbeats hides my story. And in the space between the division of those divorcing concerns, somehow I survive. But, barely. My mornings are partnered with throbbing afternoon hangovers; my nights are too often invested chasing after ghosts. Lingering translucent amongst the memories in all those windows; reflecting on shadows cast across Old Town alleyways. Straining to hear the echo of old laughter before the tin monsters steal the last of my hearing for keeps. Because I can’t fucking remember the last joke she said to me. Robbed of my favorite little hill by the blight of renewed expansions, I seek another sanctuary amongst strange geography. Slinking haphazardly across inconsistently patched …

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