What do I want most in my life?
REVENGE!

I want a British Blue Shorthair purebred.
Normally I don't like the idea of supporting breeding
since there are so many cats in the wild, waiting
to be adopted, or dying of malnutrition.
But I've done my service, I've raised loads of wild cats
and given them good lives.
Now I want a big plush grey tom with golden eyes
That I will name Tuffy.
I want to really study his lineage and see his parents
and get the biggest one I can possibly find.
BIG, not fat. Big head, big bones, big paws, bad temperament -
except when he's snuggling with me on my lap,
purring and watching the final Harry Potter movie or something.
I woke up "today" at 2:00 am with an alarm clock called my heart
going off like gangbusters. Holy Jesus I was scared.
I tried to return to sleep on again, off again for a few more hours,
then called it a night. I showered and nearly fell.
But I didn't. That was the best part of my day.
It was business hours now, and I dialed my lawyer:
Hello, is Richard in?
I'm sorry, all the attorneys are off today.
Why? It's Friday.
It's a holiday - Cesar Chavez day.
THAT'S a holiday?
Yes.
You mean the Mexican civil rights guy?
I don't know. But they'll be back on Monday.
Shit! I need to talk to him now.
I can take a message for you.
Ok, I need to know what building handles the...
Hold up there. All I can do is take your name and number,
and he'll get back to you on the next business day,
time permitting.
Whoever heard of Cesar Chavez day? (I hang up.)
Everyone else in town seems to be working.
I think only schoolchildren and lawyers get this day off.
I run into an old acquaintance while filling up my gas tank.
Thinking he looks a bit shabby: Hey, how's it going?
Not too bad, yourself? (Tone indicates he thinks I look
like a bum, down on my luck. Really let myself go. Shame.)
I gotta go (I say). I got a bunch of stuff I'm not gonna do.
Say hi to the family for me, he smiles.
Thanks, you too! (He doesn't know my family Fredo'd me.)
Drive all over town on a variety of errands, none
of which actually succeed properly.
Friday traffic is horrible and the Dept. of Transportation,
which apparently works on Cesar Chavez Day,
and even BANKS stay open,
seems to think this is the perfect time to work on roads.
They drive around in their Tonka yellow and black
striped vehicles like Real Men and you know what? They are.
I set off a security alarm leaving Walgreens and get searched,
though I have no contraband on me.
Everyone from all walks of life, except the respectable ones,
are watching me, waiting to throw stones and draw blood,
make me carry some kind of wooden cross.
You can see it in their eyes.
As I'm leaving to go to the parking lot, a guy gets
out of his car and gives me a haughty look, you know the one.
He appears to be a thirty-something ladder-climbing businessman.
Businessmen make me sick, so I actually scream at him,
"What the FUCK are you looking at! Huh?"
He quickly turns and heads purposefully to the store
entrance, cowed or thinking I must be insane or maybe
one of those gangsters.
Or maybe he needs hair gel really bad before a meeting.
I find myself staring a lot and flipping people off
throughout the day. I'm not hungry; I'm living on coffee
and diet soda, and some eggs from the morning
that have begun to upset my stomach.
I shouldn't have eaten all six, probably.
I explode into the toilet at home and
feel like vomiting as well.
I wonder if I would start spinning like a pinwheel
with sparks flying out of both ends...?
Even my cat doesn't bother to greet me today,
he's too far into a mouse dream, but I'll bet he's faking.
Nobody but Mom has responded to any of the emails I've sent out,
no surprise there. My router is still hunting for an IP address;
I think it needs a lunch break. I probably just need to
reset it, but I don't want to disturb my bittorrent queue
that is flowing along so smoothly,
bringing me shows and movies I'd never pay to watch
and albums I get just because I barely like the band.
Free things are seductive but they are empty.
Some sick God made us have to suffer to find happiness,
and before that can happen, we usually die.
In the meantime we make everyone around us miserable
which is what the whole things seems to be about,
either that or redemption without dignity or intellectual honesty.
I have two middle fingers that I use without thinking,
some folks even get the double deuce if they're lucky.
Some people get screamed at in four letter playground
language that even people in China would understand.
Some people have to see the cold and utter emptiness in my eyes
before they understand.
My computer won't let me open folders or files anymore
the usual way, so now I have to use an alternate
file browser program which I've grown to like much more
than Windows Explorer. It's called ExplorerXP,
which is a gay name, but check it out sometime anyway.
When I had money I tried to make myself happy by getting new things.
It only made me more sad, more cluttered inside.
I never read all the books I bought - just some.
I never played all the games I bought - just a few.
I never learned all the gadgets I acquired - hardly any.
I never became a birdwatcher,
Or an amateur geologist; I never ordered that
topographical map of Sonoma County I wanted.
But I bought a globe I haven't unpacked yet,
because it makes me sick to think I wasted so much money
In such a short amount of time last year and my
computer is still pants and plus,
I want to unveil the globe when the house is clean
and finally organized. One day. It will be the cherry on the top.
In the meantime, the box has a large pillow crowning it,
stands by the sunny window,
and acts as a perch for Jackson if he can't finagle
his way onto my lap or attempt to enter my banking password
for me as he walks across the keyboard like an orange idiot.
I'm looking up the fatal doses of all my meds.
Turns out my meds don't have fatal doses, for the most part.
I'm on a safe regimen that ensures I will suffer in good health
for years to come. I can't even buy a gun for three more years.
I surrendered my right. The hospital made me sign.
What kind of "right" is that?
I called my daughter this morning
to tell her I would leave my other cat, Otis,
who is my favorite pet in the world, my true buddy,
with her because I heard she had grown attached to him
and didn't want to separate them if he was a comfort to her.
I know she's been feeling bad lately.
She screamed at me for making her depressed and afraid
of everything, and how her mom's put her on antidepressants
(and never even told me) and she hates me. She IS sad, and messed up.
But I'm not the reason. I know because her mom must be the
actual Devil, and there's only one of him, and how could I be
any worse than that? No. I'm some kind of vagabond shepherd being led by
the poet Virgil, taking a tour of Heaven and Hell (mostly Hell),
and seeing a good bit of the earth too.
What I see all around me makes me want to throw up
and jump into one of those boiling cauldrons where at least
the pain is unimaginable but consistent, predictable. In Hell,
they don't tease you with hope. They're evil to the core,
but they're honest about it. I want to chop some people's heads off
Or smash their brains with a heavy shovel and then kill
myself with a shotgun blast to the brainstem.
Let that be a lesson to old Virgil, the sick bastard.
Don't show me things, I don't even want to know.
Some asshole parked his shiny new Escalade in the precious
free parking spaces the other day, perfectly
straddling a line, taking up two full spaces presumably
so his new ride wouldn't get a dent from we the unclean.
At 2 am I took a key and make a mess of his paint job.
It was a harsh lesson I admit, but I know in my heart that
if I ever did what he did, my car would be trashed by morning
By all the druggies and burnouts and single moms and
dying elderlies who have stopped caring about anything
in this world full of beauty and trees.
No one wants to walk a whole block except for athletes,
And these ghouls I live amidst aren't even close to that.
Even dreams of cruises to Tahiti don't flutter their pulses
anymore; they know it's not all it's cracked up to be;
they know those parasols and drinks with umbrellas are a ripoff,
and more importantly they know it will never happen.
They're only living out their days watching cable.
And I have a restraining order against me. Apparently you must
be able to get one for any reason, because I've not been
charged with any crime, much less found guilty of anything.
"No evidence," they said when she tried, so what justification is there
to restrain my freedom of movement now?
Our country is surreal like Wonderland.
This filing happens to bar me from seeing my daughter
and my favorite cat who I raised like a son from
the time he could fit in a teacup till he was a full-grown man,
albeit one with no testicles.
Women can ruin a man's life just with accusations
and paperwork. The God of the Courts loves women.
I can't even find my keys.
The God of the Miniature Black Hole in the house
constantly eats them along with one of each pair of socks,
my wallet, my quarters (he leaves the pennies and the bills),
my cell phone, and my clean underwear and comfy t-shirts and pajamas.
I need a new bookcase or maybe two or three.
How did I get this many books?
I don't care; I love books. I love to organize.
My place looks like a wreck, but it's categorized.
I know where to find things. I have my own system of logic
that works the way my brain does: perfectly well in a way
nobody else would ever understand.
I write poems to feel like I actually have a talent.
Some of my poems are good, I really believe that.
You know - objectively good. Some are hit or miss, depending on how
you relate to the subject matter or rhythm or whatever;
older people don't get it because their rhythm sucks:
They're locked into being so simple, they can't learn anymore.
They don't even want to.
Some of my poems are derivative or clumsy,
and I hate those ones. So I don't write any like that.
I used to think I was a good writer but I really haven't written
prose in such a long time, I don't know anymore. I probably
still have 'much potential' but also still suck at the same things.
You have to practice to be good at anything.
Even Kobe Bryant practices.
Especially Kobe Bryant practices.
There are born geniuses,
They're more common than you think.
Most of them kill themselves literally or by
running from their talent all their lives and simply melting.
Only those who also have a singleminded dedication make it
into that echelon, that pantheon of The Great.
That will never be me, now. At least I can say it plainly
and not cry anymore. I'm just some smartass kid who needs
medication to keep me from kicking other people's asses
who try to get too cute with me.
I don't think there's a damn thing funny about life.
I don't think people ought to smile,
because they're going to experience pain
in their lives, and finally die, and some of them
will have it really, really bad. Evolution was a crummy idea from
the start. Fuck you, Darwin. I want to go to greener
pastures devoid of cow droppings but full of thatch-roofed
cottages minus the pottage and boiled fat for dinner and the muddy toil.
I want to meet my sweetheart Nicola at the top of a hill,
above the village, by the windmill that generates clean energy.
I want to make her SO happy and never leave her arms
or think about words that label things as objects ever again.
I want to paint smiles and squinted eyes, shining white.
I want to live in a fairy tale without villains,
a nice story all the way to the end,
with no morals at all. When I die I want to glimpse
this place with the drugs they give me in my IV,
but the chance of this actually occurring are probably
a thousand to one, if not worse.