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After Heroin
 
2:16 a.m.
Two street whores ignore the rain
as though it were the familiar piss of some john
washing away the dime store make-up
off their sullen, swollen faces.
They huddle together, stay warm,
in glowing need for heroin.
 
2:28 a.m.
Still no cab.
Traffic splashes by
in random uncontrolled spurts,
like a 16 year old boy
discovering sex for the first time.
 
2:35 a.m.
This is day 7
of my alleged detoxification,
and this soiled mattress
lying limp on this worn wooden floor
reeks a bit more of flesh
than it once did.
Sometimes I sleep to dream of mirrors
but awake to only windows,
as though this city were some extension
of my soul,
and like the cheap petty artist
I search for a metaphor of self
in the broken streetlights
and trash scarred alleys...
in the disembodied and disemboweled voices
that grip me in sleep
and pull me into these sweat drenched nights
to watch two whores wait for a cab
beneath this hotel window.
 
2:43 a.m.
Seven days
and I feel clean again,
but I still don't trust myself...
it somehow turned on me
like a dropped stiletto in a gang fight.
Turned and twisted like a secret
whispered into the ear of a lover
who doesn't need me anymore.
But I have no lovers now.
No friends.
No enemies.
Just demons with fangs like syringes
and voices like drunk fathers,
reminding me I'll never amount to shit.
 
3:01 a.m.
Two whores drift like memories
into the backseat of a yellow cab.
I light a stale cigarette
and fall into bed
beneath the blinking cliche
of a neon sign.
There is a "vacancy" here.

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