Work days become work months but your friends are still jobless, talented but so broke, freaking out on coke, snorting a raw nostril snarkt! of fire and oh and red chapped skin sitting in bare apartment rooms in North Park shooting smack and screwing each other, unwashed, cumming into sad loins and bent-toothed mouths and asses. Bleeding into each other's bleeding holes, and bleeding together with shudder of Hep C tested at 5 p.m. at Planned Parenthood, though they thought it was something worse. They're cutting rough acne'd skin with green Heineken bottle shards and shaking with withdrawals, with D.T.s, with laughter because it's so absurd, because you can still laugh no matter how sad you are.



placing pills in each other's blued lips and packing cigarette packs KAK! against bare thighs, a tangle and curl of dark black hair and white bone leg like Auschwitz.



19 years old, slipping into the Void.



Your parents are getting older. You see it over the dinner table on weekend visits, more like hospital visits than family time. Your woman needing more than you've got. She's okay; what's your problem? The last thing you did happy was your last record and even that didn't last. Doesn't make sense anymore. What's the hassle? What's the use? You used to write and record but who wants to write and record when you're gonna die sooner than later anyway? The city has gone frozen and your ship has hit an iceberg.



Songs of Prayer: Eat the barrel of your old shotgun, 410/.22 over and under Savage/Stevens your grandfather gave you when you were 10 and in love with the Vietnam war and guns and bein' a hero. Pull back the trigger and spackle yourself 'cross the wall, slump forward, your eyes stunned like a fish, the back of your head gone and hanging open like a surprised mouth. Do it before she gets home, no one will notice this time, no one will stop you this time. But god, you have options. Lie still, wine drunk in the bathtub and sink down low, your nose bubbling out lungs' last breath, too drunk to fight back. Run razors down wrists and bleed out alone and naked on the bathroom tiles, shaking in the cold of morning. Overdose. Hang yourself. Eat muffler smoke like Jackie did, drive your car off the cliffs at Black's Beach, glory and twisted metal wreck in white sand. Starve yourself. Eat pills 'til your stomach swells and swims like aquarium rocks and you fade 'til gone-eyed.



But you're a coward and you know that. You turn on the TV—M*A*S*H re-runs again—and sink into the couch.