If I were wealthy I would wear a brand new pair of socks every day.

Everything in California is new.

There is nothing better than an old pair of underwear.

Old Like Philadelphia.

Immortal underwear full of magic and truth.

Like an old friend.

The best thing about old friends is they remind you of things about yourself.

Things that can not be washed down the drain.

The best thing about old friends is you can sit in a room with them and not have to say anything.

Not like this poem,

Where you're expecting something from me.

Sex on a computer monitor.

Every time I open a brand new bar of soap out of the little cardboard box it reminds me of something. I hold it to my nose and inhale deeply. There is something about the soap, a promise. It looks so good. I want to bite into the soap even though I know what will happen. The mind is powerful and can lock away things for a very long time until you open a brand new box of soap.

I was driving bobby's car. He was supposed to be the navigator but was passed out with the directions trapped inside his cell phone. I had slept in the car on the way so now I had to rely on Rob for directions who was drunk in the passenger seat.

Even at the first intersection Rob hesitated and seemed to be guessing. The road sign hinted of towns up ahead that I had never heard of in my life. There was no way to get a bearing on which direction we should be heading. It was one in the morning and none of the little country stores and gas stations were open where we could get directions. It was a two and a half hour drive home and we had less than half a tank of gas. The CD player starts skipping as rob fumbles with the ipod attached to it.

"Bobbie, how do I get to the Rage Against The Machine? Bobbie.. Bobbie..." Rob punches Bobbie till he wakes.

"I can't, I can't," is all Bobbie says.

Rob continues punching him until he gets a different response.

"The middle Button."

Rob has the dome light on, now the curvy road is barely visible. There is nothing on the stereo console that resembles a middle button.

"Can you two retards hurry it up, I'm trying to drive here."

Rob punches Bobbie some more until he gets up and changes the stereo to Rage from the back seat. Rob turns it up until it's so loud that it's all encompassing.

"Turn the God damn light off. I can't see."

When we come to another intersection I yell at Bobbie which way we are suppose to go, but he is already back to sleep again. Rob yells over the music to turn left. The sign has an arrow pointing to a place called Clear Lake. Rob turns on the inside light again.

"Turn the fucking light off."

"You drive like my Grandma. If I were driving these roads I would drive them like Mario Andretti or some shit. Let me drive."

Rage Against The Machine is so loud it has become a physical entity in the car, like another passenger. The music is fueling Rob's drunken anger.

"Bobbie, wake up you fucking pussy."

"Turn the God damn light off."

Rob keeps opening and closing the passenger window and messing with any button or knob that can be pulled, turned or twisted. In his drunken state he has become a two year old. The sun roof electronically slides back and now the roar of the wind is competing with Rage Against The Machine. Rob starts grabbing things and throwing them out the sun roof.

"Bobbie, wake up you pussy."

"God dammit, turn off the inside light and close the fucking sun roof."

"I want to drive."

Rob goes to take a chew of Copenhagen and spills the entire can inside the car. At the next turn out I pull the SUV off to the shoulder. Rob gets out and goes right to the ice chest in the back and pops another beer.

"Turn the headlights off man, you should see these fucking stars.

"Fuck the stars and clean that shit up so we can go."

"I have to take a piss," Rob yells as he walks into the darkness.

I'm starting to get a migraine. A big rig roars by and shakes the vehicle. It's the first sign of life we have seen since we set out. The big rig gives me hope that maybe we are heading back towards civilization. When Rob doesn't come back I get out of the car and look around but he is nowhere to be found. The only place he could be is in the woods. I take out my cell phone to try and call him but there is no reception. With the car running and blasting Rage Against The Machine, I figure I can find my way back, so I venture in using my phone as a flashlight.

Eventually I give up and make my way back to the car. As soon as I step out into the clearing I see Rob get into the drivers seat and take off with the passenger door still open. He peels out and the car veers toward the guard rail on the other side of the road. After several over corrections Rob drives away on the wrong side of the street.

Finally everything goes quiet and dark and peaceful. The fucking stars look incredible.

A collaboration between myself and Lorianne.

Two, long, sick fingers pull his bottom lip down. He looks at his gums; his face nearly touching the glass of the full length mirror. He hasn't taken a shit in two weeks. He bends over and spreads his ass cheeks. It's compacted in his colon like a piece of granite. His skin is yellow, so are his nails and his eyes. He wants to break the mirror but he's afraid that if he cuts himself, the blood will be yellow.

By the light of a single bulb he moves to sit on the bed; the toilet in the corner mocks him.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein sits on the nightstand. He's read it five times while waiting to die.

The old man wasn't sure if he had dozed off when he heard a knock. Not bothering to dress, he makes his way naked to the door. Maybe his dinner left on the welcome mat?

Instead he finds a woman dressed like a Japanese school girl holding a digital voice recorder in her tiny hand.

He makes his way back to the bed and sits down. The woman follows and straddles the only chair in the room making no attempt to close her legs. He can't help but notice the softness of the inside of her thigh. Totally incapable of doing anything about it, he wants to reach out and touch her leg but his hand is so brittle.

A black beetle walks across the dirty floor. The beetle; death. It walks up the woman's patent leather shoe.

She clicks the voice recorder and asks him what year the he was born? On a yellowed notepad he scrawls 1929. With no television, typewriter or anything, she asks if he writes everything out long hand? He points to a mountain of handwritten papers piled on the floor. She picks up several from the top of the stack to read.

The old man thinks he can see blood trickling down her pale thigh. It wasn't bright red; it was nearly black blood. He wanted to taste it. To follow it all the way back to it's source.

The woman in the chair didn't seem to notice. She just kept on reading the unpublished work of a legend; a wicked smile on her face. Maybe the woman was death and not the beetle.

The old man slithered between her thighs, brittle shoulder touching brittle shoulder; his bones colapsing inward. He tasted the thick fluid and soon his face was covered in blood. He drank from the fountain as the red light of the voice recorder flashed.

He didn't notice that the beetle had made it's way up the woman's leg and stopped on her thigh like a bruise. He could feel himself getting hard for the first time in his life.

The beetle whispered in his ear: fuck her, but he has no idea how to do such a thing and he's scared and ashamed so he picks up the pencil and stabs her in the neck. He continues to drink as the last page of the manuscript falls from her lifeless hand.

The beetle walks over the clean, white piece of paper like a period.

Dead trees full of witches
in black dresses.

An orchard
of
malevolent virgins;

moaning
as they comfort each other
with their tongues.

Never waking the baby,
as they wait for it to become a man.

First prize was a decommissioned, like new, nuclear missile. It arrived just before the 4th of July so I could light it off in the street.

Every year I go to the the park for the fireworks show. It was canceled this year due to the recession.

To win the contest I had to go down to the store and try to find something made in the USA. It wasn't easy, even the American flags were made in China.

My neighbor refuses to buy the overpriced fireworks at the stands. He just lights dollar bills on fire out in the street.

This woman comes around the trailer park giving five dollar blow jobs. She is albino so her eyes are bunny eyes and her hair is the color of an envelope containing a bill you can't pay.

Her blow job purges you of all impurities: cancer, disease, aches and pains. After the blow job you fall into a heavy sleep. You have to scream at your mind to wake up. Your body is lying there useless and you can kind of watch yourself from above not waking, no matter how loud you scream.

The woman's stomach is so full of cum from everybody at the trailer park it dribbles out the corners of her mouth.

I can hear her walking the streets at night and choking while I try to wake.

I didn't even recognize her at first. Her face and arms were swollen. She was homeless and taking showers at the gym when she was bitten by a spider. A whole family of spiders was living underneath one of her breasts and she didn't even know it because the shower at the gym was so dark and cold. She was in tears when she told me the story. I can't stand to see a woman cry so I said she could shower at my place and I gave her a key.

She would arrive in the mornings so damn early. All I wanted was to sleep but she would be standing there dripping wet; lifting up one of her breasts asking me to check for spiders. The lights hurt my eyes and I had to squint. She told me she was Italian but her skin was so dark, too dark to be Italian. She had deep blue eyes so she couldn't be Mexican I thought to myself. Anywhere a spider could possibly hide was revealed in the harsh bedroom light.

Each day the swelling would go down and slowly the bruises faded away. She grew strong again. One morning she was a beautiful woman standing there dripping wet.

Maybe I would save her.

Maybe I would become the spider.

My neighbors house burned down today. It's so God damn easy to get caught up with the firetrucks and the excitement and the speculation. The fire was like music getting louder and louder. It was a 108 degrees and the fireman were dying in their over sized coats. They would take breaks on my lawn and we gave them lemonade and lawn chairs in the grass.  The news van showed up and filmed from the end of the street so the firemen got out of the lawn chairs. Aquafina bottles and cups of lemonade were swept down the gutter by the water. The house burned all day long until the smoke was in my hair and in my clothes and my food.

It would have made for an easy picture to paint

with lots of reds and blacks,

& blood and sweat

& ashes and tears.

She asked me to help her pay the rent and I helped her out because the oldest kid looked just like me.