I see why husbands beat their women. I see why moms and dads beat their kids. I see why they take oaths and break them. Make promises, forget and regret. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. It’s right there. In all their eyes. It’s a lie. It’s a lie and no one seems to mind. They find the most painless and elegant way they can to stand in line.
The frail white people on the bus. They look so out of place. Mixed in like pieces of shit hanging from a Christmas tree. They’re out of place and they know it too. Look at their faces. The slight discomfort, the nervousness, their thinly masked disgust. What a trip. They always look like they’re being filmed by the police. I’m one of those white dudes. I ride the bus. I watch them and it makes me laugh inside. The Mexican girls with all that makeup. Big asses crowding over into the aisle. The homeys in the back smoking dope. The faceless workers and the whiteys.
The ambulance came and took the bum’s body away. The girl next to me looked out the window and said, “God, there’s a lot of blood there.” I wondered if the ambulance attendants curse under their breath when they have to haul away some stranger who stinks of his own wastes, who dies in a pool of puke, shit, and urine. I wonder if they ever take one of those stiffs to a dumpster behind a twenty-four-hour doughnut place and dump it. Or toss it over a bridge. Might be cool to dump the damn thing on your landlord’s doorstep. Toss it into a swimming pool in Century City. The body is taken downtown and incinerated by a wetback who works for minimum wage.
I’m never wrong inside this room. Everything I think, everything I do is right and true. Even when it’s a lie, it’s my room. I know I’m lying, there’s no one around to tell me any different. You could tell your friends that last night you were right about everything and there’s nothing they could say to prove you wrong. That’s why I don’t like to leave this room. Outside it’s all lies. You tell the truth and you get ripped off. You can get arrested or even killed. Inside my room I can tell the truth out loud. Sometimes it’s the only time I get to be real. Because out there everyone is trying so hard to get away from what they are. Reality is the terminal machine. Death-propelled. The truth is so plain that it reduces us to crummy bags of flesh. Weak and dependent. Shitting, pissing, eating, escapists. All of us, this is a drag for some. You can’t rise above your asshole, you can only rise above those who think they can.
I saw this dog run diagonally down the street one day. Right after it had gotten run over by a car. The dog was howling like its throat was going to come out of its mouth. Its guts were coming out of its stomach. They were tangled up in its hind legs. Made the dog run diagonally. I watched the dog go all the way down the block and around the corner. I could hear the howls for a while after that. I looked at the old black folks hanging out on their front porches. Their faces didn’t even move. Now I’m sitting here wondering what kind of shit they must have seen to make that nothing at all.
When I was young, I used to go to this park to play almost every day. One day I went there and I was heading toward this clump of bushes. There were all these policemen there. I knew from the TV that I had nothing to fear. I went over to where they were and asked if I could play in there. They told me to get back, and then one of the park maintenance men pulled me away and said I should play over by the swings for a while. The police didn’t leave until it had gotten dark. I found out the next day that a little girl’s body had been found right in the same spot where I had buried seven pennies. I dug up the pennies a few days later. I kept them because I thought they were important. Soon they were gone in the gumball machine.
It was 360 degrees outside
The police had come dressed like friends
Acting like soldiers
They arrested everything
All the apartment renters
All the condo owners
The rich girls were trying to catch the pigs’ stare
In hopes of getting in a quick suck behind the bushes
To avoid prosecution
The rich boys could only offer credit cards and their assholes
The asshole offering had worked so many times before
It was no use, we were all going in
The last thing I saw before I passed out
All the rats and roaches cuffed and walking in a line
Standing in the bathroom with my dick in my hand. Pathetic slobbering fuck looking into the mirror. Come like any other animal. Wash it down the drain. I feel mean now. I don’t need the girl I was thinking about. That was a temporary weakness. I’ll never do that again. I want to kill someone now. I want to see someone get destroyed, fuck that. I want to see a whole lot of people get wasted. I catch myself. Almost punched a hole in the wall. I killed romance. That shit was all right when I wasn’t wise to the ways of the world. Now it’s nothing to me. No girl can make me lose it. I must have been out of my mind. Stupid child. No more. It’s just a place to put your dick as if you had no brains. Getting all bent out of shape. I tell you though, it’s the lies that I couldn’t deal with. Having to lie to not be alone at night. Lying my goddamn head off just to get laid. I can’t do it. I’m glad that I don’t feel the need to do that shit anymore.
I used to love you
I still do
So selfish
I love the old you
The you that didn’t shoot drugs
The you that didn’t get beat on by men
You laugh in my face and call me a fool
But it’s true
I still love you
Sometimes, I can see the old you
When your eyes flash
When you look almost alive
He sits in the folding chair
He stares at his hands
All the scars
Fist to face
Fist through glass
Fist through wall
Fist
Fist
Fist
Where to now?
Glory is an echo
He listens to the others tell their stories
They all sound the same
He thinks to himself:
Rehab isn’t a road, it’s a treadmill
He looks at the men he’s sharing the wagon with
Faces hollow
Seen ghosts
Seen Vietnam
Seen Korea
Seen Beverly Hills
Seen too much
Too many times
They sit in a circle
Confessing
Coming clean
Wagon wheel
Lonely, holding on
Still addicted to addiction
The fluorescent lights make them look injured
Soon, time to go home and wait until next week
Get back together and sing the old songs
Awoken from a dream
He looks out the window
Three a.m.
What happened to the last two years?
Running away
Curling up
Hiding
No use
Just abuse
He conceals his pain and horror
Life could be so great
Without them
He got raped
By his mother’s boyfriend
You think I’m joking
I wish
The disease died
Brokenhearted
There was no one left to infect
There was a time
When things weren’t so
And the air was
And people were
When you could go about at night
And not hear
Gunshots
27 to life
Staring him in his face
Hanging out with him in his cell
Following him to the shower
Putting him to bed at night
He’s got a lot of brothers
Friends as a gesture
On the edge of violence
The thing that keeps everyone together
; He doesn’t want to be a faggot
It’s hard
No woman in seven years
What the hell was it like?
How did it feel?
There they are
The walls
There it is
The time
There it goes
Life passing
She was raped by her uncle
Her father left home
For another man
She is confused
She is sixteen
He never told anyone about the beatings
The time his father broke his arm,
He yelled so loud,
That the neighbors called the police
Now he lives with strangers
They’re all right
He had the closet door taken off its hinges
He doesn’t let anyone touch him
Listen!
Hark!
Machine-gun music
In the sky
Police chopper
Electric warrior
Round up from above
Random gunshots
Somewhere in the palm trees
I sit in my hole
Safety in #1
At night LA glitters like a woman
Who got punched in the mouth
And got told to get her ho ass back to work
Listen!
Hark!
I think I hear an angel!
Oh, it was just a pig
I’m lost. I don’t understand. There are a few things that I can remember. I have dreams of him touching me. Dreams of his tongue. I swore to myself that if anyone ever touched me like that again, I would kill them. The dreams never stop. I am afraid he will be there to rape me again. I know I do it to myself. Why? Do I hate myself? I rape myself in my dreams. I torture myself daily. I murder myself at night. I let him into my dreams. I’ve tried to have boyfriends. I don’t want to be alone. I like boys. It’s hard to deal with it when they want to touch me. I know that there’s nothing wrong with what they want to do, but I can’t do it. They call me bitch, castrator, tease. They don’t understand. I am so scared and alone. I wish someone would hold me. I’m so cold. Why doesn’t anyone understand? I can’t talk to anyone. Sometimes I want to die. I feel that I will go through life with no one to love me. The only one who ever told me that he loved me was him. Maybe that was why I keep having the dreams. Please God let there be someone to love me besides him. Someone on the planet to love me. I see the looks on people’s faces. The world is cold and mean. People are wild and dangerous. Someone to love me. Please don’t let me go through life like this.
I miss you. I know that I keep saying that and I know that you’re getting tired of me writing you all the time but I can’t get over the fact that you’re gone. I know that you only live across town but it’s hard driving by that house you share with that guy and knowing that all the time he’s using you. You know that he’s using you don’t you? You never did listen to me. I have some friends who hang out in this club that he goes to. I am told that he hands you some pretty heavy beatings. I hear that he sells you to his friends. I am afraid to go over there and knock on the door and talk to you because I am afraid he might kill me. Are you using drugs? You never needed to when you were with me. Can I see you again? Will you call me? Will you at least call me? I miss you.
Everybody is somebody else’s freak
Think about it
Sit at home with the television on
Watch some people burn shit down
Thousands of miles away
“Look at those freaks. Aren’t they something? Must be rough over there.”
Outside a killer is checking you out
Thinking to himself about the freak propped up in front of the television set That’s you
Everybody is somebody else’s joke
You laugh all the time
You’re always up for a laugh
Point your finger and laugh
Put it all below you
Meanwhile
The monkeys are laughing at you from their cages
From their glass boxes
You laugh back and throw excrement
You go back and forth and laugh and throw
But it gets to you
You wonder what’s so funny
What’s the matter, can’t take a joke?
He is laughing his ass off
You do look funny with a gun at the side of your head
And his cock in your mouth
Who is the freak now?
You’re one of those bad trips
One of those things you read about
Don’t bite
You might get shot in the head
I don’t know if you get what you deserve
All know is that you get it
Sleepwalker with the “boob job”
Yeah get one of those
You’ll need it
Otherwise fuckhead won’t fall in love with you
When he grabs the top of your head
And tells you to get busy, just think of it as an investment
Get yourself well-oiled
For the lifelong sellout
Drive down the boulevard
Look at the young boy working the corner
Look and laugh right?
It’s not you
You couldn’t touch a reality that fierce to save your life
Look at the freak
Don’t look for too long or he will rip that smile right off your face
Hand it to you
And then he’ll start laughing
You’re a ripe apple on a low branch
You’re a fillet in a shark tank
You were born human
Perfect for gang rape
Mutination
Prostitution and glory
Everybody is somebody else’s excuse
Perfect
All you need to get by
A point man
So you can have a reason to point a finger
To be able to escape yourself one more time
That wasn’t me
I was drunk
You know how it is
That’s not my fault
I was in love at the time
The pressure of the city made me do it
I took drugs to get away from my father
I drank to get away from my boss
I go to the bar to loosen up from the hassle at work
I hit my wife
Because the car wouldn’t start
Because our son won’t listen to me
It’s not me with the problem
Someone else will take care of my sins
Some medicine will be invented
Someone on television will say something
Everything will be all right
And since I can stop anytime I want
Don’t tell me how to run my lie
I’m free
I heard that in a song on the radio
The cesspool of love
Festering swamp
Hear the blues song
The one about the man sitting alone in his room
Waiting
Hoping
That maybe she will come back
It’s because of her all this pain
All this sweat
Like heavy thoughts
Like:
I don’t want to live
I can’t live
There is no sunshine
There is no life
There is nothing
Without her
So when that woman comes staggering back in
There will be a hot fist of love
Waiting
It’s nothing but the blues
Keep your blues to yourself
Unless you want every pore, every hair, every thought you possess,
Bought and sold at the speed of light
Blood, dust, and an empty six
Spent shell c
asings
A broken television
A bent spoon
Dirty sheets
Broken glass
The smell of rotting beer
Stale sweat
Dreams of nowhere
You want mercy?
A break from the plague?
Arms to hold you?
A kind word?
Then get out of the 213 area code
It’s all the blues around here
BLACK SABBATH
So much litter out of place
It’s time to put it in its place
A mind is a terrible thing
A dream is flashing like a polished weapon in my mind
To the summer ambulance
Siren songs
The two girls
Drunk
Fighting outside the club
Broken glass under the crime lights
Fuck these streets
And the bastards who put them here
All these experiments
Like how much blood will it take to drown you
All the while I know
That I am a hero in the making
A walking legend
Superstar status is my domain
If I had a car big enough,
I would drive all of you right off the edge
But there is not the time to play games
I walk the streets looking at you
Listening to you living your garbage cowboy coward Fantasy
This place is going to look a lot different
After I get done decorating
Too bad you won’t be here to see it
I am an angel
I am a soldier
I am on a mission
No one knows but me
The streets talk to me
The sidewalk looks up at me and makes faces
It mocks me
When I breathe in the stench fills me
The Portable Henry Rollins Page 6
