A Dungeon of Days

SD533

From pages 308-311 of “A Dungeon Of Days”

*****************************************


His sole hospital preoccupation
Became his married woman girlfriend

He was right next to her
As soon as she came out of her room
In the morning awakened
Fresh from fussing around in the mirror
With a blue eye shade shadow layer of cosmetics

He was right by her side
Never farther than a voice away
Stayed next to her the whole time
Until the night staff told them
It was time to knock off for the day

They did everything together
Except sleep in the same room
***

He never had somebody
That he could totally pour himself into
Somebody that could put up with him
For hours at a time
Without getting tired of him

He had never in his whole life
Gotten this close
Wide opening himself up to another person

He always kept a permanent wedge chasm stakelike
Driven between his innermost thoughts
And those that were around him
***

The woman thrived on the exhaustless attention
He was just what she needed

They were both in a cut-loose devoid of responsibility
Dream floating through a hospital ward inactivity limbo
They had nothing whatsoever to do
Just sit around talk smoke cigarettes together
Wait for the meals to be served

He was able to accomplish
What her husband hadn't been able

The husband that was too busy working a job
Combating the daily bullshit of the outside world

The thankless breadwinning provider
Out there breaking ass
On a consistent reliable everyday basis
To keep a foot on the mountain of bills
Carrying the load of a two car home
With three kids and an unhappy wife

The husband that treated her
Like a stick of furniture
Didn't have a chance
***

The woman kept telling him
She was going to be seeing him
After the hospital was a long gone
Almost forgotten part
Of both of their pasts

He told her that they weren't going to let him out
Until he was a bloated stiff armed silent zombie
Tranquilized into a suicide inspiring depression
That was the only way
His family could tolerate him

The woman told him that
He didn't have to go that way
She was going to help him get through

She showed him a large pharmacy prescription bottle
Stashed in the makeup case pocketbook jumble of her purse
Filled with amphetamine diet pills
The two dollar a hit black cadillacs
Black bombers
Black molly speeders
That he had seen before on the street

She told him that she got it from her sister-in-law
She would give him two of the pills each day
She told him that he had to keep his mouth shut
He wanted to know if she could get more
***

He had never felt better in his life
He had found a medication combination routine
That was finally going to work

He slept straight through each night
Knocked black into a dreamless cold death
On the Loxitain tranquilizers

He cleared out the morning cobwebs
With coffee and muscle relaxers

He popped a couple of speeders after breakfast
Then sailed right through the day
The automatic pilot flying
On cruise control

He was able to get laugh out loud drunk
On saturday passes with his family

He was able to get a buzz on
From occasional joints and roaches
Smuggled in and passed off to him
By other patients and their visitors

The hospital staff didn't know what was wrong
Whatever they were doing wasn't working

The doctor told his family
Things weren't looking good
There was no change or abatement in his behavior
***

He had a new guy moved into his room
His other roommate left unceremoniously
Woke up had breakfast then split one day
Having completed a court enforced 30 day stay

The new guy was from a nearby town
A couple of years older than him
A born thief and a natural liar
A lazy slouching whining bastard
The kind of guy that borrowed things
With no intention of ever returning them
The kind of guy that inventoried other people's belongings
Mentally cataloging all that was there for the taking

He had nothing in the room
Beyond the trenchcoat and hat he showed up with
And a couple of days change of clothing
He still managed to lose a shirt and a pair of sox
To the lousy worthless son of a bitch
***

He became friends on the ward
With a puerto rican mexican cuban guy
The guy kept promising to get him some pot

The guy came off like some kind of low leveled gangster
Without ever coming out and saying
That's what he was

The guy would talk normal until a staff member came around
Then the guy would start bird arm wing flapping
While bounce balancing shifting weight
On one solidly floor planted foot
Slow motion stop moving
Back leg swung back suspension
Air hang drop kick ready paused
Saying the word bubblelicous
Laughing in their faces

The guy thought americans were stupid little babies
Television commercials revealed them
For what they were

The hospital people were in a leery fear of the guy
The guy cheeked then spit out the hospital pills
The guy never said why he was there
***
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From a pages 366-372 of “A Dungeon of Days”


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He molded his week
Around the two college classes
That used up tuesday and thursday mornings

He skipped the drunken hang out
The nights before class
Spent the evening skimming the textbooks
Going to bed early

He spent school day afternoons
Horse breaking with his cousin

He set aside each wednesday
For the visit from his married woman girlfriend

The rest of the week he was free
To go out get drunk stoned with his cousins
Crash deep into morning early afternoon
Awaken slowly to the alcohol marijuana blearies
Sit alone in the house
Recopying the notes he wrote in class

He found umbrage in the schedule
The busyness gave him less time
To think about killing himself
***

He watched the daylight recede
Dusk drawn shadowed five o'clock dinnertime
The gradually percepted cooldown
The dried leaf winds of october

The slow death dramatic autumn spectacle
Nature transforming itself into a winter

He felt a stirring energy for life
Growing in the memory of dark november nights
It always held out a hope
Of something that was promised for him

If the seasons could change
Then maybe his life could change too
***

Every wednesday for four months
Had been spent with his married woman girlfriend

She left her three kids to fend for themselves
Drove the hour out to his house
Bought a motel room for the afternoon
Loaded him up with diet pills alcohol and sex

She drove through the rush hour back home
After they had gotten their fill
Of each other

Some weeks she showed up
For an extra day

Sneaking around out in the open
Too obviously clockwork predictable
A careless flaunt in the face
Of the required clandestine

He kept wondering where the end was
For all of the fun he was having
He knew that this was no way
For a married mother with children
To be carrying on
***

His married woman girlfriend's husband
Had been gone away all summer
Out of town construction job working
In another state

Her husband didn't take long
After getting back home to family life
To realize that something wasn't right

The guy's wife came home sloppy disheveled
On two consecutive late wednesday afternoons
Half bombed laughing mascara smeared
Negligee stuffed inside of purse
Disappearing for the whole day
Unaccounted to unknown thereabouts

She arrived at his house the next wednesday
With a rusty metal magnetic key case
A spare pair stashed in the car underside
For locked out of the car disasters

She told him that her husband took the keys
Without remembering the emergency set
She said she was going to fix that bastard

He momentarily startle flashed with the vision
Of an irate out of control fixed bastard husband
Busting down an afternoon motel room rendezvous door
Brandish ladening spiked baseball bats
Sharp machete hatchet blade knives
Bullet full double barreled guns

For all he knew
The guy might have followed her
Maybe was seconds away
From a blind fury rampaging stormtroop
Into the living room of his parent's house

He told her to turn around
Get in the car
She had to go
Don't look back
Haul ass back home
The wednesday afternoon game was over
***

He started to miss the married woman
He was forced to take a face slap sobering stare
At the botch stalled relationships
He had going with the people in his life

His interaction with those around him was quagmired
In an unnaturally choked meaninglessness

He never talked with length or depth
To anybody that he knew

Emotionally silent frozen abort truncate
He heard the few words that he spoke
Pin drop quietly to the bottom
Of a well of empty insignificance

Shut off closed down mistrusting
He was unable to look anybody in the eye

He was noticeably nervous
Almost in a petrified knotted cast
In fear of other people

He was the only one that knew
How far he had receded
Into his loneliness
***

He waited a blank month
Dull walking numb
Through the days lost irretrievably
Before calling up the married woman

A beggarly salvage for scroungeables
In the consensual aftermath
Maybe there could be one more
One more
One more last time

This time she was the one
That had to say
It was all over
***

He came to a loose formal agreement
A grudgingly mumbled verbal acquiesce
With the girl he had been hanging around with
When he went out nights with his cousin

Instead of drunkenly messing around with her
Whenever he haphazardly ran into her
He was going to be her boyfriend
With all of the responsibility
To commitment that was implied

He would be calling her on the telephone
Making arrangements to meet her
Going out to her family's home
Getting the once-over from her mother
***

His new girlfriend's mother
Didn't want him anywhere
Around her daughter
She told him over the telephone to quit
Calling for her daughter
Click cutoff dropping
The receiver down into his ear

The old lady knew
He was a never amount to anything bum
A whipped down beat back mongrel maggot dog
Shamelessly lacking self-esteem
A freeload plundering cadge
Without a job a car or a future
Looking to pillage on her daughter

Her daughter didn't work or have a car
Scraped loose change together for cigarettes
Spent all of her time figuring out ways of getting high
Came home drunk every night of the week
And she slept late

They were both a couple of losers
He wondered why her mother had a problem with him
***

He went out on double dates
With his new girlfriend

The two of them tagged along
With her older sister
And whatever stiff
The sister had lined up for that week

His new girlfriend's sister was a hustler
Out on a single purpose determined scam
For a good time
He became an unwitting accomplice through association

It meant a free ride for him and his new girlfriend
Driven around by some trying to be a nice guy chump
Stereo cranked saturday night car backseat oblivion

The two of them ripped loose from their senses
Partaking in the generously offered dope
Alcohol free flow available abundant

Most of the doubledate saturday nights were lost wasted
Neither of them knew where in the hell they were at
Or where they were going
***

He went out on a cold early winter weekday night
With his cousin to watch
The John Belushi Blues Brothers movie

The movie had taken on a synchronotous importance for him
The random coincidental purpose found
In the unrelated happenstantial crossings
Occurring along the impersonalized paths of chance

He walked into the movie theatre
Remembering a saturday afternoon
A year and a half earlier
Spent sitting in the dark
For the last 15 minutes
Of a two day Continental Trailways bus ride from Texas

The bus gridlock parked
In the commandeered underground tunnels
Of downtown Chicago Lower Wacker Drive
Unable to proceed to the bus station
All traffic temporarily on police barricade hold
For the filming of a John Belushi movie the driver said

He thought of himself sitting on the bus
Waiting for the traffic to loosen itself
Aware of the momental extension of his anxiety
Returning home for the drunken driving court date
That guaranteed the certain revocation of his drivers license
He had spent four months hiding in Texas
Unable to face anybody that he knew
Following his first psychotic disruption mental ward hospitalization

He knew then that the end of the bus ride
Meant the end of the darkest days of his life
Whatever was ahead would have to wait a few more minutes
In the carnival frivolous atmosphere of hollywood movie making

He sat in the dark of the theatre thinking
About a yellow hazed glare day 11 months before
Rolling up to the gates of the Joliet Illinois Stateville Penitentiary
In a fence building work pickup truck with his friend
The movie studio production semitrailer trucks
Parked outside the buildings inside the prison
The excited gatekeeper guard said that
They were making a John Belushi movie

He sat in the theatre reminiscently aware of how
He had kept glancing at the movie trucks
That day in the prison while he worked
Overwhelming in a sudden personal realization loss
Of dot sized insignificance

He had went from a deep bottom
After coming back from Texas that summer
To a flat lining settled unsatisfying low
He was desperate for something to shake loose in his life
He was still clutch clinging to that desperation
Nearly a year later

He watched the movie unfold upon the theatre screen
Vaguely aware of its content
He wrapped the previous year and a half of his life
Around the back of his mind into a circle
With the movie marking
The significant points of reflection along the way

He saw the night as a culmination
The third point in the triangle
Of a journey
Along a deadend circuitous route
Out and around and back again
On a road that had taken him nowhere

He walked out of the theatre with his jacket open
Embracing the chill night air
His breath a long pulled train of billowing frost
Black winter sky myriad speckled in points of star bright
The trip was over
He knew it was time for his life to change
****

SD533

From pages 360-366 of "A Dungeon Of Days"

****************************************************

He kept up his wednesday motel room appointments
With his married woman girlfriend

The whole thing was becoming boring
Dull predictable
The soul depleting unvarying staid exercise
Of two people using each other's body
Chasing placid escape in the carnal

The only thing that he cared about
Were the alcohol pills and smoke
Available with the occasion
***

Each week he saw his married woman girlfriend
He sensed the intransible gulf between them widening

Each week that he saw her
He felt himself farther away

The bridge of a 12 years age difference between them
Taking on a flagrant appearance
With her escalating use of makeup and hairdye
False eyelashes fake fingernails multi-colored eyeshadow
Little girl fake dressup imposter costumes
The garish ridiculousness sickened him

He wanted to tell her
To get rid of all that shit
It was time to go back home
To be a mother to her children
And a wife to her husband

But he still wasn't ready
To let go of the only thing that he had
***

He had a built in auto-destruct mechanism
For as long as he could remember
Which had a way of deliver rescuing him
From any seemingly impossible to reconcile situation
That he needed an immediate way out of

No matter how hard he tried to keep going
Another part of him was working secretly
Circumvent undermining
Looking for a way to sabotage
Fuck up everything in a totaling completeness
So that whatever he was doing
Was brought to an abrupt screeching skid end

All it took was the first thought
The acknowledgement that he was sick of the shit
Then another part of him took over

He learned at these moments
To let his common sense reasoning step aside
Get out of the way
Stand back watch with bemused marvel

Let one part of himself
Destroy another part of himself
***

He started hanging around with a girl
A year older than he was
On his nights out at the barn with his cousin

She was one of three sisters
That were running around with his cousins

It was a wordless attraction
Built on a mutual indifference

They found themselves
Thrown together by circumstance
Night after night
Stoned drunken into a useless stupidity
Left alone in a hayloft
Conversation was unnecessary

They both needed somebody
That they could grab hold of in the dark

He started showing up
For his wednesday get-togethers
With the married woman from the hospital
With barn straw in his pants
From the night before
***

The girl he was hanging around with
Had an older sister

A tough little broad
With two kids
Fresh hatched from a marriage
With a guy that was supposed to have been
A dope fiend pusher wife beating maniac

The older sister had went around
On an angel dust binge
Wound up OD'd in a paramedic run
Then got carted off to a psych ward

She made jokes about taking Thorazine
Like there was nothing wrong with it

He was hoping that maybe
He could hook up somehow
With the older sister
***

He never talked about what had happened to him
He never heard the behind the back gossip about it
He never knew for sure
What people had been told about him

The girl he was hanging out with
Told him about her older sister
About how she had flushed her whole life
Down the toilet
Bad decisions bad men bad drugs
Two daughters in a perpetual tow
A road of ruinous squalor
Laid out before her

He listened to the story
Didn't think that it was so bad

After all of the shit he had been through
He wondered what she thought about him
***

He headed out on a saturday morning
In a car that his cousin had borrowed
Up to Alpine Valley Wisconsin
For an REO Speedwagon concert

They had a cooler with ice packed around beer
A bottle of vodka in a paper sack
A nickel bag sized tin foil wrapped stash of pot
Along with a half-assed set of directions

They hauled the couple of hours through Illinois
Swilling beer from the can
Smoking bowls through a resin clogged pipe
Windows cranked open to the rushing wind
Pacing themselves

They missed the turnoff for Alpine Valley
Kept pushing steadily north
Cruised through the Madison exits
Going hours out of the way
Until they started seeing signs for Green Bay

He knew they had overshot the mark
Didn't say anything
Neither of them seemed to care
The open road rolling out under the car
The motion with speed was a welcome release

They decided to turn back around near Green Bay
Figured if they kept pushing on
They could still make the show

A speeding ticket detour cost them a couple of hours
His cousin's boss wired the money to get them going again
They fought the saturday evening Wisconsin highway traffic
Pulling into the concert parking lot
To see that everybody was just leaving

His cousin got nailed for speeding again
Just short of the Illinois border
He slept in the damp car outside of the police station
While his cousin banshee howl wolf barked all night
In the small town Wisconsin jail cell

He woke up in the morning to his aunt and uncle
Pounding on the car windows
They took the unopened bottle of vodka
Put the rest of the beers in the trunk of their car

He didn't bother listening
To his uncle's sunday morning parking lot ranting
He already knew
The whole thing was going to be his fault
***

His cousin was three years younger than him
His cousin and his cousin's year older brother
Had been one of the few constants in his life
Since his family had moved back to Illinois when he was 10

His two cousin's were his best friends
He used to think that they were
Almost like younger brothers

After his first crack-up he noticed
His cousin's started treating him differently
They looked down on him like he was
A condescent black sheep uncle
That was almost embarrassing to have around
***

He liked hanging around with his younger cousin
His cousin would do all of the talking
When they were alone together

He listened to his cousin talk
He felt comfortable knowing
That he wasn't expected to provide a response

It seemed like his cousin's talk was thinking
An out loud incongruous ramble of words
An in progress redefinition of ideas
A selfclarification
That nobody was ever supposed to hear

Sometimes while his cousin was talking to him
He caught the look in his cousin's eye
A quick frozen bolt of bewildered fear

He knew that his cousin wasn't ever sure
If he was really there
***

He knew that he made other people uneasy
When he let their words trail off into dead silence

He would hear their words
But he had nothing to offer in return
No reassurance for them
That he was in agreement or understanding

He had no way of letting them know
That he had even heard what they said
***

He remembered the first time he met his cousin
His cousin's family pulled a fold-up camping trailer
Across the country from Illinois
Out to his family's home
For a 1968 california vacation

He went with his sisters to a camp grounds
For a weekend with his cousin's family

His cousin spent the whole time with a fishing pole
Sitting huddled on the bank
Of the narrow creek
That swirled muddy water through the camping grounds
Steadfast determined through dirt streaked tears
His cousin refused to accept
There wasn't a fish anywhere near the place

His cousin looked like a little old man to him
Hunched in a green illinois flannel shirt
Waiting for the big one
That was never going to be there

He always thought of his cousin after that
As a wrecklessly hopeless dreamer
***

He went with his cousin to buy a horse
Somebody unloaded a three year old on his cousin
A nervous skittish temperamental moody animal
That had never taken a bit
He was supposed to help his cousin break the horse

He stood like a dried lump of turd
Fingers fumbling in the bottom of his jacket pocket
When the vet came out to do the gelding

White sausage horse parts in a ziplock plastic bag
The cold wasteful destructiveness sickened him
***

He spent the afternoons with his cousin
Out of kicking distance
While his cousin brush combed the horse
Ran the rope tied horse in hours of circles
Slowly leading the horse's head into a halter

His cousin was working out of a book
Full of horse dreams and horse plans
The horse got meaner and crazier

He figured that the horseshit strawbale hay
In the barn they were hanging around
Had finally gone to his cousin's head
***

SD533

Pages 195-205 from "A Dungeon Of Days"

************************************************

He put up his last fence
At the Joliet State Penitentiary
It was an 18 foot fence around a basketball court
In the prison exercise yard

He rode up to the prison
In a fence truck full of empty beer cans
Ashtray full of roaches and half smoked joints

The guard at the gate took one look into the truck
Tools and equipment scattered
All over the cab and in the back of the truck
The guard said there was no way they were
Getting into the prison

They drove back down the road
Threw out all of the empty beer cans
Straightened out all of the tools
Then drove back to the prison
The guard let them into the prison

The fence was being put up
Next to the prison commissary
The prisoners stood in line waiting for commissary privileges
Some of the prisoners drifted over
To where the fence was being put up
They wanted to know if he was getting time
For putting up the fence
The prisoners assumed that he was a con
The guard up in the tower
Overlooking the yard
Must have assumed he was a prisoner also
He kept his rifle on his shoulder
Pointing down on him and his friend
While they worked
They were the only ones
In the yard
****

He spent several days working at the prison
In the afternoons he saw the prisoners
In the exercise yard
Next to the basketball court where he was working

The black guys pumped bars
Loaded with immense rolls of iron weights
With arms that were bigger than both of his legs

Skinny long stringy haired
Burnout hippy white guys
Pitched horseshoes at iron stakes
Sticking out of the ground
Their bell bottom blue jeans
Dragging through the dirt and dust

The rest of the whites
And the browns
Were involved in a game of softball
Loud with cheering and hustling
He thought that the basketball games must have been the same
Short explosion bursts
Of locked up energy and emotion
That needed an eighteen foot .6 gauge chain link fence
To surround and contain it
To keep it from spilling out all over
The prison exercise yard
****

He sensed a sinister evil at the prison
Something lingering from the 1930 or 40's
A legacy of apparitous terror
On the part of inmates guards and prison officials alike
Part of past that conspired
The old black and white prison movies
He watched late at night on television as a kid
He thought about Jack Palance and Burt Lancaster
Busting out of jail
In the dark cool Joliet run away to freedom midnight
Of some imagined half awake long ago

He thought about the real life monsters
Like Richard Speck
Housed somewhere inside of those prison walls
While he was working out in the yard
He wondered where they kept Speck
He wondered if Speck had a window
Or a view of the yard area

He wasn't afraid of the inmates he saw
Out on the prison grounds
He was afraid of the malignant spirit
That seemed to live all over the prison
Leaving everything inside quiet empty and dead
****

He wondered how old the prison was
It looked like it was built
Back in the 1920's
Designed from some blue print
Left over from the middle ages
Of inquisition wracked tortuous revenge
Iron chains
Hangman scaffolding
Guillotine electric chairs

The prison was made out of distinct yellow bricks
Rough cut bulging rectangular oblong misshapen masses
Custom chiseled from the same quarry
Made to order
In sizes varying
As large as an automobile
And as small as a fist
Piled into a fort like wall
That looked 40 feet high
Blocks long on every side
Capped with rusty barbed wire
And castle like shotgun guard towers

The building was meant
To exude and represent punishment
Deterrence in the form of fear
To whatever was concealed beyond those walls

He noticed that the same bricks were used
To build the high school
Across town from the prison
In Joliet
***

Vehicles entering the prison
Had to park in a doubledoored bay
Over a walkway with steps that went
Under the vehicle
To allow the guards to check for prisoners
That might be hiding on the underside
Of the vehicle

Nobody ever checked under the fence truck
For a prisoner
He wondered if the walkway was always there
Or if it was installed
After some guy rode out of the prison gates
On the underneath of some truck
****

He saw a movie truck in the prison
One of the days he was putting up the fence there
A guard said it was for a John Belushi movie

He kept looking at the studio truck while he worked
He thought about the summer he had spent
Down in Texas
After he had gotten out of the hospital
He thought about the couple of months
He had been working around Joliet with his friend
Everything started seeming empty useless and boring
He was wallowing insignificance
Perpetuating meaninglessness
Wondering when change would set itself free into new motion
****

He was officially laid off of work
A couple of weeks after the fence was installed
In the Joliet Prison
Work had quickly slowed down from every other day
To half days to an hour a day
He went down and filed for unemployment
He was told he would be paid
200 hundred dollars every two weeks
That was enough for his car payments
With enough left over for drinking

He found out that his friend and his boss
Were going to be working all that winter
Inside the prison
Putting a fence around the multi-storied tiered railings
Because an inmate had thrown a guard over the rail

The work at the fence company didn't really stop
It had just dried up for him
*****

He quickly established his unemployment check collecting routine
He woke up late morning early afternoon
Sat around the house alone watching television
Went out to the bars at night with his friends
To get drunk
And chase women

He had no responsibility
He was 20 years old
Living at home with his mother
He had no hope or thought about the future

He made payments on a car
That was sitting in the driveway
Parked

He put down the names of bars that he drank in
On his unemployment forms
As the places that he applied for work

He just wanted to get and stay drunk
To make up for lost time
To heal and smooth over
All the rift rough spots
That had come before
Between him
His family and his friends

He wanted to erase the ever present feeling
In his mind
That tortured gnawing paralyzing fear
That told him
Everybody from now on
Foremost and first off
Would think of him as being crazy
He was now and forever to be regarded as a nut
He would never be considered normal
In the eyes and minds of anybody that knew him
Again

He wanted to make everybody around him
Forget his past
And let him escape from it
****

He was still depressed
More than 7 months after being released from the hospital
Work had kept him busy
Too tired and too worn out
To consider suicide

Now that he was left idle again
The suicidal escape thoughts returned
****

He started to think that the weight
That he had piled on
In the hospital
Was the reason for his continual
Unabated depression

He was convinced that
The forty extra pounds
He had been carrying around
Was causing some kind of physio-mental disturbance
Larding his mood and outlook
His energy and thoughts clogging up
Dense with the saturation of fatty deposit despondency
He decided that the weight had to go

Every afternoon he put on 2 pairs of pants
5 layers of t-shirts sweat shirts and a jacket
Then climbed into his old railroad winter coveralls

He would put a stack of old rock and roll albums
On the family stereo turntable
Then he would run in place while the music played
He would run until the music stopped
Soaking through all of the layers of clothing
After he stopped running
He spent another hour sitting in a steaming bath tub
Filled up to the top with hot water

He was at home all alone during the day
Nobody knew that he was doing this
He ate one small meal each day
Then drank beer all night with his friends
He was able to sweat off 35 pounds in a month
****

He started to feel better gradually
As the weight soaked and dried salt into his exercise clothes
He started to feel like his old self
His mental frame reflected in his changing physical appearance
He had more energy
Drinking became enjoyable again
Instead of burying himself in a stuporous withdrawn silence
He was talking to people again and laughing
Almost able to forget
For a while
All of the misfortune he had brought
Down upon himself

He went into the winter
Thinking this was the best he had ever felt
In a life flavored with depression and unhappiness
****

He became friends with a woman
He would meet at the bar
During his nightly drunken escapades

She was 5 or 6 months pregnant
Impending motherhood in its showing glory
The father-to-be wanted no part of the outcome

He met her through his friend’s sister
He worried that she might find out that he had gone nuts
He worried that she already knew he had gone nuts
He wasn't sure what she expected from him
He was obviously a drunken fuckup
No job living at home collecting unemployment

He half wondered
During increasingly less frequent sober thoughts
If he could take care of himself a woman and a child
He realized that only a person
With more problems than his own
Was ever going to have anything to do with him

He liked being with her
She kept him calm and he was able to relax
When he got drunk enough
He let her take him for rides in his car
So that he could listen to car stereo
****

His mother got remarried at the end of that year
To a guy that lived across town
With his two sons
In bachelor pad mechanic grease all over everything squalor

He moved into a new home
With his mother his stepfather and his two stepbrothers
He drank a fifth of vodka on the moving day
Got so drunk that he was dropping everything he carried

He was happy
He thought that he was getting the brothers that he never had
He thought that he was getting the father that he never really had

The new house had a family room
With a bar and barstools
He bought all kinds of bottles of booze
Bar glasses a blender and a Mr. Boston drink book
He filled the closet shelves with his hundreds of rock record albums
He spent the first few nights up all night in the family room
Drinking and listening to music

His whole family was celebrating
It was Christmastime
His mother had just remarried
The two families had moved into a new house
His younger sisters were staying at the house for the holidays

He was so loaded that he had bruises
From falling over and banging into things
He got so drunk that he couldn't stand up
He thought that this was the way things were always going to be
****

He spent an unemployment check on a new year’s eve party
He bought a halfbarrel of beer
All of his friends and his stepbrother’s friends came over
The house was full of people
He played albums all night
Then threw the records on the floor when they were done playing
There was spilt beer and quarter full plastic cups of beer
All over the house
He wanted every night to be like that
****

Everybody in the house went back to work
At the start of the year
He was wound up from the end of the year christmas celebrating
Nobody bothered to tell him that the party was over

He stayed up all night listening to music and drinking
While his family was trying to sleep for work the next morning
He drank up all of the christmas gift bottles of whisky and scotch
He drank up his parents vodka and then tried refilling the bottles
With water
He had people over every night of the week
Every morning the family room of the house was strewn
With beer cans ashtray garbage and people
That got too drunk passed out unable to leave
He emptied all of the swill
From the opened beer cans that he found
Into a large mug
Then guzzled it down to start the day

When everybody left for work
He started scheming around for a way to get drunk
He was usually broke
He got a $200 unemployment check every two weeks
He would spend it all in a couple of days
Then he would scrounge around broke
Pilfering loose change from the couch seat cushions
Until he got the next one

He wasn't sleeping very much
He would pass out for an hour or two then be awake
He wasn't eating very much
He would drink a glass of beer with salt and a raw egg for a meal
He was having too much fun to notice
That his family was getting tired of his bullshit
Real quick
****

He was still seeing his pregnant girlfriend
When he met another woman in his town

He met her at the gas station
She asked him to help push her car up to the pump
Because it was out of gas
He had just came from the grocery store
Where he cashed in two bags of soda pop bottles for money
It was one of the rare times that he went driving in his car

It was the middle of January winter outside
He was running around sweating without a coat on
He had just put some gas in his car and was in a hurry
To get some beer with his pop bottle money
He pushed her car told her where he lived and invited her over
Without even looking at her or noticing her
He had forgotten all about her when she showed at his parent’s house
A few nights later
He was getting drunk with his friends
And his pregnant girlfriend's older brothers
His pregnant girlfriend was sitting on his lap
When the woman that he met at the gas station walked in
That was the last time that he saw his pregnant girlfriend
When his pregnant girlfriend left
With her brothers that night
They told him that he had better never bother her again
The woman that he met at the gas station spent the night with him
In the family room of his parent's house
After everybody else had left
****

His new girlfriend was a hustler
A con rip-off artist woman
That could get away with anything
Because of the way she looked

She was the kind of woman that drove away
From the gas station without paying
He couldn't believe anything that she said
She said she was married to a big mean harley biker gang guy
She said that she had two kids
He didn't know if any of this was true
She worked as a waitress in a restaurant
Where she was in trouble for stealing credit card numbers from receipts
She came around whenever she felt like it
He didn't know how to contact her
He didn't know where she lived
He thought that he had something special
She was a scammer and he had nothing
He thought that this must have meant that she liked him
For himself and not what for what she could take from him

She usually stayed all night when she came over
His mother was getting tired of finding her there in the morning
His mother started yelling and ranting when she came over
One night his mother told them both to get out of the house
He drove her in her car
With 4 inches of snow and ice on the windshield
His head out the window to see the road
Drunk laughing yelling and screaming out into the middle of the night
To the empty condominium where he used to live with his mother
They spent the rest of the night there
On the floor
****

He was hardly sleeping that January
He was drunk all the time
Things around him were falling
Apart fast
He denied what others
Hinted at in his presence
He was cracking up
Again mental hospital bound
****

His renewed friendships of the previous autumn
Quickly frayed
Unraveling after a weekend trip
To a frozen winter cottage resort town in Wisconsin
Three days of around the clock drinking
Ended in a Wisconsin ski lodge
Broke out of money drunk drinking other people's drinks
Wearing a coat without a shirt underneath
Bare chest bellied to the snow and the wind
Registering nothing
****

His friends started avoiding him
He started hanging around with a guy from town
That had went around the bend
A few years earlier
On psychedelic drugs
Never making the return trip to sense sanity or reality
Convinced that the voices in his head
Were being broadcast from somewhere
Within the town
By somebody with a microphone
Hooked into a secret transmitting device

His friend talked
Utter disjointed nonsense gibberish
Having him around the house was too much
For his mother and his new step family
Nobody could sleep with his crazy friend and his girl friend
Drinking all night in the house
****

SD533

From "A Dungeon Of Days"

*******************************

LABELS

He was committed to a mental institution
When he was 19 years old
At the time
He thought that his life was over
He still thought that was true 16 years later
Only then it didn't seem to matter
****

He was an acute paranoid schizophrenic in March 1979
After he spent 9 months intensely abusing LSD
And after he stayed awake for most of the previous winter

He was schizophrenic and believed to be permanently brain damaged
In the late spring and early summer of 1980
After he had been totally drunk for 7 months
And after he had spent several months awake and living out of doors

He was a manic-depressive in 1981
After being awake and living mostly outside during the spring
Of that year

He was psychotic in the early summer of 1982
After he had been awake for more than 8 weeks
And after he hadn't taken any drugs for almost a month

He was a bi-polar disorder in the late summer and early fall of 1983
After staying awake for a month
And after sporadically living outside for several weeks

He was suffering from a manic episode in the summer of 1985
After staying awake for a couple of weeks

He was in an escalated and agitated state at the end of 1991
After he was unable to sleep for a week
****

Sometimes he could only see the inherent decay in things

He looked at trees
In a wind washed ocean of leaves
Summer green
All he could see were black January branches
Mottled with ice and abandoned

He looked at the highwayed suburbias
Bristling with small business and franchised enterprise
Driven convenience
All he could see was faded asphalt fractured by an overgrowth of weeds
Boarded windows lined by crumbling brick corroded frames
Broken glass mosaics shining desertion

He looked at people that he didn't know
Filled with the moment's spur and galloping energy
Unaware vitalous pre-occupation
All he could see were forms laced with old age and infirmity
Weathered by a time that was still years away

Sometimes he looked at people and felt that they never would get old

Sometimes he looked at things
And all he could see was the lost promise in their hopelessness

He looked at automobile salvage yards
Twisted rusty metals spewing engine parts and worn interiors
Inconsequential decay
All he could see was a brand new car being driven by its first owner
Handled with the respected deference
Given to babies and cartons of eggs

He looked at out of business and for sale signs
Advertising economic battles given to eventual failure and capital loss
Inevitable disaster
All he could see was the lifetime realization of somebody's dreams
Aspirated with the lure of getting rich quick
While working for one's self

He looked at people that he didn't care for
Seemingly constructed of unbendable hatreds and self-serving greeds
Uncertain motivation
All he could see was the fresh-worlded innocence of their childhood
Spirited with playful discovery in a world of lesser concerns

Sometimes he looked at people and saw them swathed in their infancy

Sometimes the seasons couldn't change fast enough for him
***

JOB IN THE SUBURBS

He left for work
In the pre-dawn darkness
Of a city succumbed in tired sleep
To travel to his job in the suburbs

He made it a point to get himself out on the street before 6:00 a.m.
He didn't have to get up and leave so early
It didn't matter what time he showed up
As long as stayed and worked for 8 hours after he got there

He used public transportation to get to his job
He traveled with all of the forgotten people
That had to wake themselves up and leave
For work at that time of the morning
Because they had to

He rode the el train with the young run-down black men
Traveling from the south sides of Chicago
To wander mindlessly through soul denying maintenance shifts
Within the gray loading corridors of the airport industrial area
Or within the warehouses of the stores in suburban shopping malls
Pocketing half smoked cigarettes and visions
Laughing off old boy and all the shit that he says
Living for friday night paydays of reefers and booze

He rode on the train with the northwest side hispanics
Unable refusing and pretending not to understand ingles
Quiet dark brown indian eyes watching and learning the ways of america
Dressed in a cast-off collection of outdated oddfitting clothing
Numb with cold on the first winter day without coats jackets or gloves
Traveling huddled in confused scrambled groups
To assorted pick-up points
Loaded into overcrowded rust spotted vans
With drearily streaked greasy windows
Dropped off at the back entrances off hotels and landscape details
To work as aproned maids and backbending manual shovel stooped laborers
Human elements unnoticed and unsaid
In the cracks and around the edges of the great technological machine

He rode on the train with the northside polish ukranian slavs
Just finished for the night or just starting for the day
Middleaged escapen refugees
Of torn eastern european bloc-nation descents
Swabbing the toilet rimmed plastic underdesk trash can of corporate USA
Breathing cough fumes into the red-eye industrial strength antiseptics
Leaving their smells and their cabbage sweat in the empty office air
Taking nothing but that which is unused unneeded set aside and unwanted
Asking for expecting and receiving all that is less

He rode on a bus with college educated black women
Reporting to timeclocked routines
Of monotonous telephone conversation copy machine duties
Checked thoughts and deeply held breaths
Catching sleep on the ride
With heads quietly pillowed with a jacket against the window
Worrying about children left alone by themselves at home
Thinking about men who come in drunk at all odd hours of the night
Wondering about men who don't bother to come home at all
Knowing that there had to be a break or an end somewhere

He left for work in the pre-morning early waking Chicago darkness
When white authority was still
At home slow and asleep
Nowhere to be seen
****

He worked and competed with people
That had graduated from college
He was considerably less educated
He had completed a few college classes after highschool
And he had taken 12 months to complete an 8 month training program
At a bullshit technical school for computer programming
That ran advertisements on the late night early morning television
While most of the people he worked with were getting their education
And never missing a meal
He was dividing his time between being locked up in nut houses
And living outside in the street
****

He worked in an office
With people that said words
With little fear or understanding of the reprised consequence
That the idea expressed by those words might bring
If those words had been said in the presence of the people
Those words were meant to describe denigrate and deride
****

He was an anomaly
In a company of more than 300 people
He was one of the few people that lived and came to work from the city
He refused to relocate himself
To somewhere in the suburbs closer to his job
He didn't own a car and was seen arriving and setting out on foot
He skipped lunch worked a straight 8 hour shift and then left
He never divulged any personal information about himself or his past
He only talked to people
If the conversation was specifically work related
He quit cutting his hair and it grew down to his waist
He never went to the company sponsored social gatherings
He never hung out after work or went to the bar with his co-workers
He missed 3 weeks of work because he had a nervous breakdown
He came back to work after he had a nervous breakdown
He went on after his breakdown like nothing had happened
He was voted the Employee of the Month
After he came back to work from his breakdown
He came to the office early
Hours before most of the other people got there
He played music on a cheap tape player
All day long when he sat at his desk
He used the music to block the sound and noise around him
Allowing him to focus single mindedly on his computer programming work
He spent 4 or 5 hours a day traveling back and forth to work
He walked through the office like a zombie
He avoided making eye contact with anybody
He was an eyesore and an embarrassment when clients came to the office
He never sat around with his boss and laughed at his jokes
But he made goddamn sure he busted his ass everyday and did his job
Because he didn't want to give his boss any reason to fire him
****

He was good at his job
He was a computer programmer
He could sit for hours and concentrate
On the most boring and mundane of intricate details
That would have left most other people screaming
In a torture of agonies
He developed that ability
During the hundreds of hours he wasted
Fried out of his mind and tripping on acid
Trying to fathom and determine the secret mysteries of life
He could have never believed that somebody would pay him to think
****

He was good at his job
He learned how to force himself to think logically
He had to continually think about all the possible things
That can go wrong in any programmable situation
And plan for it in advance
He had to be paranoid and logical at the same time
Every computer programmer he knew was paranoid to some degree
If they weren't paranoid they were no damn good and didn't last
He used to get locked up and loaded with tranquilizers
For being paranoid
Now it was almost like he was getting paid for it
****

He was the kind of employee that employers hire
Because they have an assuming notion that he will fit in
Be an acceptable cog in their little machine
Because he looks like he acts and thinks
Just like them
So they let him get his foot inside of their door
Only to find out that
He has no intention of fitting in
Or becoming part of them
And he has no intention of leaving
He just keeps showing up
Doing his job
Collecting his paycheck
**********

SD533

From pages 408-419 of "A Dungeon Of Days"

***************************************************

He started to drink heavily
Looking for the good times
The laugh outloud fun relief
The alcohol had fueled before

The drunks took on a darkened ugly moroseness
Frustrating smashed bottle escapades
That would eventually aggravate
Into a late night breakdown of anger
Requiring physical restraint

Nothing was working
Everybody was all over his case
People were abandoning him

In his eyes
People were letting him down
***

He started taking the pills
That he had stashed the summer before

Muscle relaxers topped off with downers
Mixing the shit with beers

He told the people at rehab
He needed the downers to calm down
Then went back and told them
He was having side effects

He was given muscle relaxers
For the side effects

He wanted to blot himself out
Smash himself over the head
With a chemical hammer
So he wouldn't feel a thing
***

He ran through the muscle relaxers
A month supply gone in a couple of days
Triple quadrupling the dosage
Taking them every couple hours
Until he felt stoned

He used the downers sparingly
They made him pass out
Wrecking the muscle relaxer high he had going

After three refills in three weeks
The guy at the pharmacy told him
That was enough
***

He couldn't get enough of the muscle relaxers
It was better than anything
He had ever gotten illegally on the street

The stuff made him spaced out
Dry mouth quiet stoned
Like he was tripping on acid
Without the boxed-in no end in sight fear
Lost mind paranoia

His body felt good
Like he was nestled in a cloud
He moved around like he was made out of paper

Colors intensified
Bright blurry
Opiated warm
Fuzzed around the edges

He wanted to be put on muscle relaxers
For the rest of his life
***

He had always heard about the breweries in Milwaukee
Stories about beer production plant tours
Walking through a vatted factory with a sloshing bucket
Drinking beer for free

He decided to go up to Milwaukee
Hit one of the breweries
Schlitz Pabst
There had to be breweries all over town
He didn't care which one it was

He wanted to get good and drunk
Right inside a brewery
Get so loaded
They would have to roll his ass out of there

He didn't care if the beer they were handing out
Was piss warm 89 cents a quart Old Bohemian
Made from tap water
Spigotted through a muddy green garden hose
He just wanted to get drunk
***

He could ride on a bus to Milwaukee
Leave on a saturday morning
Get there before noon

He estimated Milwaukee to be an hour walk
From one end of town to the other
He would start walking
Until he spotted a brewery

All he had to look for was a water tower
With a beer brand logo

He might even be able to hit a couple of breweries
Before it was time to catch the bus back

He'd have money in his pocket
After drinking for free all day
He could hit the Milwaukee bars afterward
Stay out there all night
Get the bus back to Chicago in the morning
Be back home before sunday afternoon

Make a nice weekend trip out of it
He had the whole thing figured out
***

He headed up to Milwaukee on a saturday morning
Woke up while the rest of the house was asleep
Got the first train out of town to downtown Chicago

He left the house with his shirt and jacket pockets
Stuffed with cigarette packs
He had a prescription pill bottle
With 15 downers and 25 muscle relaxers

He had nearly 40 dollars in his wallet
After he bought a round trip bus ticket
For Milwaukee

Cigarettes pills
39 dollars with change
And a round trip bus ticket

He was organized
He had a plan
He didn't tell anybody where he was going
Nobody was going to be able to fuck it up for him

The whole thing was bullet proof
This wasn't going to be
Another of those one way ticket excursions
Like in the past
Where somebody from back home
Had to bail his ass out of jam

There was no foreseeable way
Anything could go wrong
***

He rode on the bus up to Milwaukee
It was two three hour ride
Out of downtown Chicago

He had already put a dent
Into his supply of muscle relaxers

He sat placid in the bus seat
Thinking about when he got back home
About how he was going to regal his friends
With stories about his Milwaukee brewery adventure

He looked at the day as a scouting trip
Once he figured out what was going on
He could ringlead his friends
On a drink for free Milwaukee brewery system tour

He looked out the bus window
Taking in the half gray late April Wisconsin scenery
Feeling good about himself
Satisfied
Something was finally going to happen right
***

He got into Milwaukee around noon
As soon as he got off the bus
A black guy in the station spotted him
Walked along side of him
Trying to sell him drugs

He told the guy he was there to get drunk
The guy quit on the sales pitch
Gave him some crystal methedrine
Told him he could have it for free

He told the guy it was time
To go get drunk
***

He headed out into downtown Milwaukee
With the guy he met in the bus station

The bus had let him off
In the skid row wino section of Milwaukee
Seedy dive bars open for morning business
Package bag liquor stores
Empty bottles scattered broken along the sidewalk

He told the guy to lead the way
He bought rotgut wine and cans of beer
The two of them walked down the sidewalk drinking

When the beer and wine was gone
He bought some more

He spent the afternoon
Walking around the Milwaukee skid row with the guy
Drinking paperbag quarts bottles cans of beer
Richards Wild Irish and Mogen David maddog wine

Wherever the guy took him to buy alcohol
The place would go up into arms
When they saw the guy walking through the door
Barkeeps customers proprietors
Everybody yelling for the guy to get out
He figured the guy had been kicked out
Of every bar in the area

The guy kept laughing
Whenever somebody started giving the guy shit
The guy would point to the bag with the wine
Then say “Kool and the Gang”

He figured Kool and the Gang must of meant big times
In a backward ass rinky dink town like Milwaukee

He lost the guy somewhere in the late afternoon
He had spent all of his money
He didn't know where in the hell he was at
He had totally given up forgotten about
Trying to find a brewery
***

He decided to explore the Milwaukee skid row
Maybe there was a mission
Where he could get some food

He met up with a guy younger than him
A dirty faced burly kid
With snot running out of his nose

The guy offered to show him around
Took him out to a dry weed damp dirt clodded field
In the back of a factory
Where there was hot air coming out of the ground
Through a vented grating

A board was set along the heat exhaust vent
A half dozen kids were lying on the board
Teenage pre-teen runaway grubby raggedy little kids
Scrunched up together trying to keep warm

The guy he was with told him that
He could crash there with them
He told the guy it was too early for sleep
The dusk hadn't even turned over the dark yet

He split the last of his downers with the guy
The guy swallowed them without asking what they were
He told the guy to take some of the muscle relaxers
To ward off the cramps
The guy got scared
He told the guy the pills were nut house tranquilizers
The guy punched him in the face

He left them out in the field
He didn't have time to waste with idiots
It was just getting to be saturday night
He had a bus ticket in his wallet
To get back to Chicago
***

He tried finding the Milwaukee bus station
It was night
It was dark
The streets were lifeless
It was dead for a saturday
He didn't recognize anything

He finished off the last of his muscle relaxers
He was down to his last pack of cigarettes
It was time to get the hell out of there
***

He walked all over the downtown Milwaukee sidewalks
Fucked up drunk wasted lost
Speeding on methedrine
Trying to find the bus station

The evening turned into the middle of the night
It looked like sunday
He kept on walking
Like a robot

He was starting to pass out while he walked
His eyes would close
Then his consciousness would drop a notch
Transporting him into the random chaos
Of a dream state

He would awaken to a light flashing crash
A sudden face smashed startling jolt
When he inadvertently walked into the sides of buildings
Light posts
Newspaper stand kiosks

He walked right into anything
Blocking the path of the sidewalk
With his eyes closed

He readjusted himself
After each obstacle
Found a clear path to aim for
Closed his eyes
Then started walking again

He kept walking with his eyes closed
Slamming into things
Until he broke out a lens from his glasses

He started to look for a place to crash
Out of the cold damp frost night
A cop saw him turning doorknobs on a deserted building
Trying to find a door that would open

He was arrested by the Milwaukee cops
Taken to the police station
Charged with prowling
And attempted burglary
***

He went through the arrest proceedings
Moving through the Milwaukee jail processing area
With his eyes closed

He screamed at the cops
He told the cops that he was all fucked up
Out of his mind on drugs
Downers speed muscle relaxers alcohol
All he was trying to do was get to the bus station
So he could get the hell out of there

The cops thought the whole thing was a joke
He saw a lady cop laughing at him
***

He was thrown into a brightly lit
Steel door slot cinder blocked wall
Plexiglas observation window cell

He flattened his back onto the thin pad iron cot
Took off his smashed glasses
The black dotted white ceiling tiles
Looked like they were underwater
Swimming with spots
Of hallucinatory blue colors

He was glad to be somewhere dry
Off of the street
Where he wouldn't bump into anything
***

He sat out the sunday
In the Milwaukee jail
He had a court date on monday morning

Half fucked up wasted
Spillover from the day before
The time went by quick

It wasn't like downtown Chicago
Where hundreds of disorderlies
Were dropped off at the county jail
At 26th and California
Paddy wagons from every precinct in the city
All the saturday night derelicts in one place
For sunday morning holiday court

Everybody had a number written on their hand
Everybody was given the same instructions
When the number was called go up
Plead guilty
Then leave

He figured Milwaukee was running
The same kind of vagrancy rap
Sit the night in jail
Go to court
Plead guilty
Then leave

He half wondered if they were crazy enough
To actually charge him
With attempted burglary and prowling
***

He went to the Milwaukee court on monday morning
He was fined 125 dollars
For turning doorknobs on buildings in the middle of the night

He agreed to pay the fine in 30 days
He would have agreed to anything they said
He just wanted to get the hell out of there
He would never come back to fucked up town like Milwaukee again
He wasn't going to pay them anything

He waited after court to get his wallet back
The cops took his wallet when they hauled him in
He had a bus ticket back to Chicago
Inside of his wallet

He waited around at a counter for his belongings
He was aggravated out of cigarettes impatient
He had been detained in Milwaukee long enough

He dug his wallet out of the yellow envelope
He rifled the pocketed folds of his wallet
Tore open the envelope
His bus ticket was gone
***

He wanted his bus ticket back
He stood yelling at the cops in the jail
Stubbled dirty awake for two days tired
Wearing glasses that were missing a lens

He felt suddenly powerless
He was half blind
He couldn't lock hold of somebody's eyes
Freeze grip them in a glare
Let them know that he meant business

The cops threatened to re-arrest him
Told him to get the hell out of there
He said he wanted his goddamned ticket back

He remembered showing the bus ticket to the cops
The night they brought him into jail
He told them he was trying to find the bus station

He couldn't have lost the ticket
The cops took the ticket

Maybe the lady cop he saw laughing at him
Was trying to make sure
That he stayed in Milwaukee
***

He took the ticket mishap to be a sign
He wasn't meant to leave
He was supposed to stay in Milwaukee

Nobody knew he had gone up there
He would just vanish
Never go back
Just disappear
Like he was dead

He thought about everybody back home
Girlfriend
Cousins
Friends
Parents
Step brothers
Sisters
Nobody gave a fuck about him
He was a crazy pain in the ass
He had nothing to go back for

He flash forwarded ahead
Twenty years into time
Heard himself telling a story
About how he came to Milwaukee
Lost the bus ticket home
Been there ever since
***

He wanted to get off right in Milwaukee
He purposefully steered himself clear
Of the downtown skid row area

He found a government welfare office
Went in to find out about getting housing
Maybe some food to hold him over
Until he could get something going

He was told that he would have to wait
30 days before he could have an appointment

He knew that 30 days
Living outside
Without money food or shelter
Was the same as 100 years

He would never be able to make it
***

He walked around downtown Milwaukee
Everything was new
Clean like it all had just been built fresh

The people were scrubbed clean
Well dressed in warm layers
Light skinned light haired
Probably northern european descended

Milwaukee was swathed in an innocence
Naive to the rotting urban decayal
Devouring the maggoty core
Of major cities like Chicago

Milwaukee was waiting unaware
Isolated in an oblivion
Ready to be picked clean torn apart
Ripening for a scourging harvest
Of institutionalized poverty
Homelessness
Rampant widespread drug addictions
Alcoholism
Joblessness

The homey wholesome heartland holdouts
Were waiting to be discovered
By the rest of america
***

He spent the monday afternoon
Tramping the Milwaukee downtown office building sidewalks
Halfheartedly bumming cigarettes
From people he saw smoking

He watched the end of the workday downtown desertion
Files of workers scrambling
The pedestrian commuter maze for home

He wandered into the residential areas
Looked through the front of the house windows
Seen from the passing sidewalk
Lit with the open curtained warmth of table lamps
Televisions flickering the prime time
The neighborhood air marked with the smoky aroma
Sent from wood burning fireplaces

He walked past the houses until they were dark
Saw the occasional switch flipped muted glow
Through side of the house glass block windows
Signaling middle of the night half asleep
Trips to the bathroom toilet

He was shivering in the thin jacket
He had worn for a sunny spring saturday afternoon
It was a late April 40 degree Wisconsin night
A slow quiet rain started to fall

He headed for a highway underpass
Made his way up the slanted cement embankment
Found a flat two foot wide edge of muddy concrete
At the top of the embankment
With the bottom of the roadway
Running over it from above

He wedged himself into the flattened space
The underneath of the road inches from his head
He listened to the wet tire hiss sizzle of the cars
Driving across the roadway above him
The steel belted radial 50 mile an hour berrap noises
Of cars and trucks pushing through the night
Sometimes he even caught the sound of the radio

The roadway vibrate rattled
With the traffic overhead
An unending steady stream
Small vent holes cut into the edge of the overpass roadway
Spray dropped dirty highway rain water down onto his face

He gradually fell asleep
Wondering if a life like this
Was going to be worth living
***

SD533

From pages 150-156 of "A Dungeon Of Days"

****************************************************

MENTAL CASE


He was institutionalized for the first time
When he was 19 years old
He was sentenced to spend no less than 90 days
At the state of Illinois psychiatric facility in Manteno
By a judge in the Will County courthouse
After he spent the weekend in the county jail
For missing a drunk driving court date several weeks before

He had went from his mother's home to downtown Chicago on a train
To watch a movie on a cold March saturday afternoon
He had been out of touch with reality for more than three months
That period had been filled with escapading insanity and energy
He wasn't sleeping and he was occasionally eating
He had been arrested for drunk driving
He had his new car stolen
He had lost his job
He had been arrested more than a dozen times
For the kinds of things where the cops let him go after a night in jail
He had taken two bus rides to Miami and walked around down there
With no money
He had pissed off and lost all of his friends
His family was sick of his bullshit and wanted no part of him
His mother saw that he was crazy and worried he'd end up dead
He was unsuccessfully trying to withdraw
From a year long drug and alcohol binge
He had been regularly abusing LSD mescaline and bootleg amphetamines
He had been smoking columbian marijuana hash opium and thai sticks
He had increased his drinking to the point
Where he started in the morning

Going to a movie seemed like a safe thing to do that Saturday
He left with enough money for the movie ticket and the train fare
He had enough money to get there and back
He went to see the movie version of Hair
He had been listening to the Broadway soundtrack album
Since he was a kid
He thought that the hippies had been a bunch of fakes and wimps
He wrote the words Sid Vicious with an ink pen
On the back of a tight fitting army jacket
He left the jacket in the theatre after the movie was over
He walked out into the cold still freezing early spring evening
In a t-shirt
He had been unable to feel the cold that winter
He often went without a coat
He went back to the train station and headed for home
He handed a pocketful of coins to the conductor on the train
For his fare
He was told by the conductor that he didn't have enough money
To buy a ticket back to the stop in the town where he lived
He was a dime short
He remembered the dime he had thoughtlessly and happily tossed
Into the dark noisy theater air
When a commercial was shown on the screen featuring a local radio dj
Making a joke about giving somebody a shiny new dime
He was told that he could buy a ticket to the stop before his town
There was seven miles of railroad track between the two train stations
A on the train woman offered to pay the extra dime he needed
For the ticket
The conductor told her no and refused to take it
He was put off the train at the stop before the one where he lived
He grabbed on to the side railings of the train when it took off
He jumped off the train when it suddenly stopped
After going a few hundred feet
He thought about walking the tracks back to his town
He decided to break into the locked station instead
A cop arrived after he tore off a window screen
The cop said that the train had called for him a half hour earlier
He was handcuffed after the cop ran his name over the radio
He had a warrant out for his arrest for missing a court date
He was taken to the Will County jail in Joliet 15 miles away
He was placed in a large lockup cell with some other men
He was yelling and screaming at the jail guards and corridor cops
He was climbing the cell bars and spitting on the floors and walls
Outside of the cell
He kept yelling that if he had to be in a cage
He was going to act like an animal
He stuffed a roll of toilet paper down into the toilet bowl pipe
He flushed the toilet
He watched the water flood over the sides of the bowl
He told the other people in the cell that if they had to shit
They were just going to have to hold on to it for a while
He took off the jail issue shirt he was given to wear
He ripped the shirt into shreds
He tied the sharded strips of his shirt around his waist like a belt
He was allowed to carry on like this for a couple of hours
He had been in this jail before
The cops knew he was a trouble maker
He was taken out of the holding cell and thrown into an isolation cell
He was put into the isolation cell naked
He spent the night and the next morning in the cell
Singing rock songs at the top of his lungs
He liked the way his voice sounded in the small concrete room
It was cold in the cell
There was nowhere to sit except on the toilet
He smeared his breakfast all over the cell walls
He tried to cover the small plexiglas window of the cell with food
The guards came in and smacked him around
When they saw what he was doing
It was sunday afternoon
He had to wait until the next day for court
He tried lying on his back on the cell floor
His tail bone hurt
It dug into the floor and it made him uncomfortable
He saw the deep scratch marks in the paint on the iron cell door
He started thinking that people were put in here forever
Never to be let out until they died
The sunday afternoon dragged on into sunday night
He was not given any lunch or dinner
After what he did with his breakfast
He was cold and uncomfortable naked on the cement floor
He started banging his head against the floor
Trying to find relief in the explosion of lights and colors
That he saw each time his head pounded into the floor
The monday morning jail guards kept looking in the small window at him
Naked and sitting on the floor
Like a captured animal
He finally went up to the window and let loose
In the loudest strongest and most powerful voice of his life
He shouted that if he wasn't given a blanket to cover himself
That he was going to kill everybody that worked in the jail
That got the attention of the guards
Six guards and a woman police officer stormed into the cell
He stood before them naked
He was ready for another round of sadistic beatings
He stood there with the guards for several minutes not saying anything
The guards had guns and clubs and handcuffs and shoes with heels
He was told that he would be given a blanket
If he agreed not to tear it up
He sat with the blanket over his head until it was time to go to court
He was given another set of jail clothes
To wear when he was taken into court
With the other prisoners
He was handcuffed to a jail guard when he was brought into court
He had been through this routine many times before
In the course of just a few months
He was convinced that he would be walking out of there free in an hour
When his name was called he stood before the judge
He was told that the court was committing him to a mental institution
He was taken out of the court and into an area in the jail
Where inmates talked to visitors
On a phone with thick glass between them
His mother was there waiting for him and she was crying
He yelled and cussed into the phone and across the glass at her
For having him put away
He told her he never wanted to see her again
He was taken back to the holding cell where he had spent the weekend
He was put back into the cell naked with only a blanket
While he waited to be taken to the mental institution
He was hoping that he would get there in time for dinner
Because he was getting hungry
***

He had heard about Manteno when he was a kid
About ten years before
His father was sitting in a drunken hung over stupor
With a cigarette dangling from his mouth
Squinting his eyes as the smoke trailed up into them
His father had recently been discharged from the VA hospital
His father's mother was yelling at his father
His father's mother kept asking his father
If he wanted to go to Manteno

He kept thinking about this
While he sat in the jail cell
Waiting to be taken to Manteno
****

He was driven in a police truck
From the Will County jail in Joliet
To the state psychiatric institution in Manteno
It still hadn't dawned on him where he was going

He thought a lot of things
During the hour drive from Joliet down to Manteno
He felt like he was being broken out of jail
On some wild escape adventure in the night
He thought that he had been the victim
Of some sort of sinister renegade government
That had taken over in place of the real government
And that he was being rescued by the real government
That had went underground and into hiding
He thought that he had made some kind of breakthrough
A psychic mental telepathic cosmic revelation
Brought on by the large quantities of LSD and sleep deprivation
And that he was being brought to place to be studied and tested
He thought this was like the movie
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
And he was being sent to free and liberate
The nuts that had been locked and withered away
In Manteno for years
He thought that this was some kind of initiation
Into a mental-physical guerilla army
That was one day going to do battle
With the evil government
That had silently taken the place of the real government
He thought that he was involved in something important
And he couldn't wait to find out what it was
It still hadn't dawned on him
That he was being sent to Manteno
Because he was dangerously fucking crazy
****

When he arrived at Manteno
The first thing they did was
Take his clothes away
He traded his t-shirt and levis in
For an oversized pair of green checkered polyester pants
And a brown acrylic shirt
He wasn't given any underwear to wear under the pants
He told the guy that gave him the stuff that
The pants were falling down and made his balls itch
The guy told him to stop acting
Like a punk popster
*****

He arrived on the ward
At evening medication time
He saw all of the patients
Lined up sheeplike
To take their medication from the nurse
The pills were swallowed down with kool-aid
Poured from a stainless steel pitcher
He started thinking about Guyana and Jim Jones
He wondered if
That was how the kool-aid was dispensed in Jonestown
*****

He noticed the people on the ward
A lot of them looked like foreigners
Dark bearded arabic jewish
Speaking in different languages
To themselves
He thought that maybe they were
Smuggled-in newly arrived under the table immigrants
That freaked out when they got to America
That had to be locked up until they cooled out
Until they got used to things in a strange country
He started thinking that the whole place was a front
For escaped russian dissidents
That were waiting to be assimilated into American life
He thought that these undernourished scraggily men
Were recent gulag escapees
Great intellectuals in the world wide struggle
To take back life from those that had stolen and denied it
And made it wrong
He couldn't understand their soliloquies
But their gestures hand waving restless pacing and quiet tones
Made it sound like they were saying something important
****

He met some of the other people on the ward
They all acted like they were glad to see him
Or any new person
The way people act
When they haven't been around other people for a long time
Then get all excited when somebody is suddenly there
They talked to him like they had known him
For a real long time
He thought that it seemed like they had been expecting him
****

He was told that he would have to go to sleep
By the ward staff
He was given a bed in the hallway
All of the beds in the men's sleeping rooms were filled
He told the staff not to worry or bother with getting him a bed
He told the staff that he never slept
He told the staff that he would be real quiet
And not make any noise
While the rest of the patients were sleeping
Two uniformed security guards were summoned to the ward
To hold his arms behind his back
While the 250 pound night nurse stuck a needle
Full of Phenobarbital
Into the back of his ass
*****

He was woken up at 6 o’clock in the morning
When the morning staff turned on all of the lights
To roust the patients from their beds
All of the patients were supposed to get up and make their beds
Then go into the day area of the ward
The rooms with the beds where the people slept
Where locked up during the day
All of the patients went up to the front desk
To get one of their cigarettes from behind then the desk
Then they waited for one of the staff
To screw the wall lighter into its socket
Then they all stood in a line
To light their cigarettes from the wall socket
The patients were allowed to have 1 cigarette before breakfast
Some of the patients didn't have any cigarettes behind the desk
They picked up the cigarette butts off of the floor
And relit them for what they were worth from the wall lighter
Or they took the lit butt from somebody that was at the end
Of the cigarette
And took it the rest of the way down to the filter
He had never smoked a cigarette before
He didn't even know how to smoke a cigarette
He was used to smoking pot from a bong
Then holding the smoke down into his lungs
Until his eyes flashed with light
Before he would let it go
He never saw the sense in wasting his time with tobacco smoke
****

He waited around for the two hours
With the rest of the patients
For the two hours
Between the time when the patients were woken up
Until they were able to have breakfast
Most of the patients were quiet
He was still dull from the shot
That the nurse gave him the night before
He was starting to get hungry
He thought that if they were going to lock him up like this
Then they would have to feed him
****

SD533

From pages 322-326 of "A Dungeon Of Days"

****************************************************

He saw people in the hospital
Older adults
That never worked a day in their lives

Wards of the state from day one
Didn't have to lift a finger
They let other people take care of them
Showed up at meal time
Lived comfortably
Swallowed their pills
Kept their mouths shut

He knew there was a free ride
Just waiting there to be taken
***

He thought the whole mental health thing was a scam
From the doctors to the nurses down to the patients
An insurance racket where people got paid
For doing nothing

A safe haven sanctuary for people unwilling to deal
With the harsh existence of the outside world
***

Psychiatry was an imprecise nonexistent
Fraudulent pseudoscience
Formed around a vaguery
Of ambiguous generalized terms

A ravel of arbitrarily loose
Double-sided word concepts
That could be coerce bent warp weld hoodwink nod framed
Into meaning anything

People getting paid to evaluate explain
The behavior of others
An unquestioned reality consensus opinion

A career scale confidence game
Built out of a phallic symbol mythology
By a coke hyper duplicitous viennese quack
Who thought that everybody wanted to fuck their own mother
***

The doctors didn't do shit
Rich men that bought their diplomas
From second rate foreign country universities
They signed their names on the bottom of forms
Shoved in their faces by the nurses
Asked the patients how they were doing
Then split before they even answered
His doctor ran around like Latka Gravas on crank

The nurses were glorified baby sitters
Filling out the forms
That kept the money pouring in
Keeping an eye on hospital property
Making sure that the patients didn't destroy everything
Keeping the place from going to hell in a hand basket

Most of patients were weak whine babies
Who would have been better off
Getting back out to face life
Instead of trying to shelter themselves from it

The patients that really needed the help
Were so far gone
They were beyond helping
***

He was sent one morning by the hospital
To a day care out patient treatment center
A place where a bunch of tranquilized bloated zombies
Sat around a table in a house
Doing occupational therapy art and craft ceramic work

He was told to check the place out
If he liked it he could go there each day
Then return to the hospital at night to sleep
That would be his life

He agreed to see what the place was about
Knowing that he wanted no part of it
Knowing they were all out of their fucking minds
The people that sent him there
And the people that spent their days there
***

He noticed the cumulative effects of the house immediately
A room filled with heavily downer dosed people
He was put under the stifling sedated oppression

He felt like he had been given a knockout punch to the head
Sock sand sapped from the blindside
His body ache weighted in a down drag
With a thick pounding heaviness
Something was draining the energy out of him

He was in a room full of low running brainwaves
An energy depleted lifeless vacuum
Like somebody had ripped the cord from its socket
He felt the thought torpor malaise saturate him
It would be impossible to combat the force

He started wondering if there was something in the air vents
Aerosol depressant spray chemicals
Surreptitiously pumped out
Into the atmosphere
***

He knew the outpatient house was a mental death
He stayed there for the morning
He was forced at the end of the ordeal
To sit in darkness for the last half hour
While a gruelingly dull film was projected onto a small screen

It was too much all at once for him
He hadn't sat still or focused a thought for six months
Now he was expected to sit quietly
With a table of reticent vegetables
In a crowd stuffed overflown room
Pretending to be comprehending a film

He listened to the moving mechanics
Of the projection machine pulling the film from the reel
Each click of the motor notching him closer
To the moment that he could get the hell out of there
Go back to the hospital and tell them
He wasn't interested in being a part
Of their outpatient daycare program
***

When he went home on saturdays
It gave his married woman girlfriend a chance
To have some quiet peace
Time to herself
While he was gone

She spent the day sleeping
Late relaxing getting caught up
Working on her finger nails
Peroxiding her hair
Doing the kinds of things
That a 32 year old woman thought she had to do
To be attractive to a 20 year old
***

His married woman girlfriend spent one weekend at home
Left early saturday morning
Stayed gone until sunday night

She came back with her husband
In tow with the guy that treated her
Like a stick of furniture

He watched the two of them together
He kept thinking about what it had been like
The king and queen of the prom
The Joe Stud quarterback football american hero
And the pumped up little blonde cheerleader

Straight off the slick glossy gray black white pages
Of a small midwestern town
1966 highschool yearbook
A whole life together ahead of them

He wondered what happened to them along the way
Three kids and 14 years later
It was inevitably bound to go wrong
***

He was issued a standing pass by his doctor
He was allowed to leave the hospital
For two hours each day

Most of the time he stayed in the hospital
Sitting around with his married woman girlfriend

He took her out with him a couple of times
She had no interest in his boundless wandering

He would start walking with no destination
Getting himself lost on the streets around the hospital
Walking without paying to attention to where he was going
He would landmark building navigate himself back
Not knowing where he had been
***

The two of them usually stayed on the hospital grounds
Sitting in back of the hospital
On the grass
Or on the railroad trestle stones
That crossed over the Kankakee River

He wanted to be there with her forever
He would get caught up in the time
Not noticing its passing
Afterwards sensing the loss
For what was then gone
***

SD533

From pages 326-331 of "A Dungeon Dungeon Of Days"

***************************************************************

The hospital worked with his mother
To find a place where they could send him

He was made to talk to various people
He signed his name at the end
Of stacks of printed forms
Right next to the X
Right where they told him to sign
***

He had no interest in the procedurals
He jam cram scrambled his thoughts
Full of nonsense
Whenever he dealt with the paperwork handlers

He wanted to let them know
They weren't going to break him
He wasn't going to be changed
He wasn't going to live
In their version of what the world should be

They were going to do
What they were going to do

He wanted to let them know
He didn't care what they did to him
***

He was set up with an interview
With an indian guy
That ran some kind of hospital home

His mother was hopeful he could go there
His mother got him going
On the idea

He was told it was place
Filled with people just like him
His own age
With problems like his

It would be a place
Where he could listen to music
Draw pictures
Maybe meet women that were his own age
***

He worked himself up
For the interview with the indian guy

When he heard the guy was an indian
He imagined the guy
To be some kind of hindi brahman
Steeped in the thousands of years
Spirituality wisdom traditions of the Rig Veda
Hare Krishna Bhagavad Gita

He wanted to make a good impression
He thought the man would give him a home
Where he could thrive
As himself
***

The indian guy was in his late 40's
Graying at the temples
Dressed like an american business man doctor

He was flying on three black bombers
When he met the guy
He had a huge wide grin
Spread out all over his face

He bowed out of respect
To the man
And the religious significance
He held for all that was India
***

He had the indian guy interview him
In the hospital radio room

He couldn't keep his hands
Off of the stereo receiver
Switching the channels
Stopping suddenly to quickly roll
The volume knob all of the way up
Then immediately back down
When he knew there was a moment
In a song
Where the sound of a single note
Was going to be left
Hanging in the air

He punctuate blasted the stereo
For less than a second
Amplifying the space
In between the echoes
At the end of Whole Lotta Love
Right before the guitar crunch kicked in
He wanted to show the indian some style
***

He couldn't maintain his excitement
While he spoke with the indian
Wound up hyper sped with overexuberation

He kept a grin on his face
Throughout the half hour talk
Answering each of the indian's questions
In turn
With a question
***

He bowed when the indian left
He felt like he had made a good impression
He felt like he had won the guy over

If the guy was running a home for weirdoes
The guy would have been able to see
That he was going to fit right in
***

He was disappointed to find out
He wasn't accepted by the indian

The indian wanted no part of him
He wasn't getting into the indian's home

His mother told him that
He completely turned the guy off
The indian left the hospital
Thinking he was a complete fucking idiot

The hospital people were pissed
Because they went to a lot of trouble
To set the whole thing up

He wondered what the problem was
He thought he was supposed to be
A complete fucking idiot
***

It was a warm Kankakee May that year
Everything was full leafy grown green

The sun cut a hot knife
Into the leftovers of the cold winter spring air
Letting the dampness escape from the ground

The crisp around the edges
Waited for the wilt
Of summer time's sluggish despondency
***

He thought about 10 years
Of illinois summers

He remembered that he was always depressed
Fighting his way through a struggling let down

A low
That he instinctively associated
With melting heat humidity
Sunstruck endless afternoon deadening brightness
***

The high he had been on
The elevated mood increasing energy swing
Since the end of autumn
Early winter
Thanksgiving to St Patrick's Day holiday binge stretch
Was running itself out

Nature would now take its course
The longer hours of daylight
Sent the message signal
It was time to come down
***

His married woman girlfriend was given
Her release date from the hospital

He knew about it for a couple of weeks
He let the time slip by
Unaccounted for
Not really thinking about it
Only the immediate was real

He was living in the moment
As long it was still guaranteed
He wasn't going to worry
About anything beyond that
***

His married woman girlfriend acted like
Her leaving the hospital
Was to be a temporary separation

She told him that as soon as she was out
She was going to come back
To the hospital
Take him out on an all day pass
Just the two of them
No hospital in the way between them

He let her make the plans
He wasn't going to waste his time
Thinking about the future

He wasn't going to waste his time
Thinking about something
He was no longer able to believe
***

His married woman girlfriend left the hospital
He fell into the gaping hole
Her absence left in his daily routine

He found that he was unable
To occupy amuse himself
Long ago exhausting
The hospital's possible potentials for diversions

He was bored aggravated listless
Argumentative irritable
Dried of amphetamines
He felt the hospital downers
Getting a hold on him

He was taking on weight
He sensed that he was sinking fast
***

He spent the days alone
Walking around Kankakee
On pass from the hospital

Walking without direction
Purposeless activity
Anything to make the time move
Seem like it was going faster
***

He hung out sometimes
With the puerto rican spanish mexican guy
From the hospital

The guy rigged up some kind of scheme
Living with a woman from town
As a combination handy man gardener chauffeur

He sat around mornings with the guy
In the woman's garage
Drinking quarts of beer

He quit going there after the guy snapped
Hurled a half full bottle of beer against the wall
Right in the middle of a sentence
Squared off in a boxing stance
Knuckle up fist fight bobbing
Snake eyed slant
Talking about c'mon motherfucker

He was too relaxed off guard surprised
To do anything but try to calm the guy down

When the guy got back halfway to normal
He slowly backpedaled his way out of the garage
Got his ass back to the hospital
Feeling weak helpless
And useless
***

He was put on the Public Aid welfare roll
His hospital bill was piling up
Everyday was hundreds of dollars
Billed to his mother's work insurance
Three months worth of itemized charges
Five yards of continuous paper
With no end in sight

He was given a green card
Which would be used
To pay for his medical expenses

The hospital was working fast
To get him out of there

The Public Aid medical card wasn't going to bring in
The kind of money
That could be had
From a patient covered with an insurance policy
***

His married woman girlfriend came back to the hospital
Just like she said she would
To take him out for the day

He met her down in the hospital parking lot
He was going to reap into the harvest
Two months worth of sown desires
Spent sitting patiently by her side everyday

He had kept his hands off her
He had kept his mouth shut to the other patients
Now he was going to get his reward

He was going to spend the day
In a fourteen dollar Kankakee motel room
With another man's wife
***

The hospital caseworkers were closing
In on a deal
To have him sent
To a nursing home
In Chicago Heights Illinois

It was one of the few long term care facilities
That took in people
Covered by Medicaid

He tried imagining a nursing home
He kept thinking of one story ground level wings
With dormitory type rooms

He wanted to know if he could bring his albums
Along with his stereo
A pair of headphones
And a case of books
***

He thought about the night his car was stolen
He woke up in the back seat of a police squad
The cops told him that they had arrested him
Trying to get into a nursing home

He had tried often to discern the meaning of that
A premonition hidden amongst the unknown
The secret buried in a subconscious act

For one who already felt old
Tired of life
Receding
Ready to withdraw
From an outside society
That he did not want to be a part of

The middle of the night black out
Nursing home break-in abort drama
Would now reveal itself
As an inescapable reality
***

He had several weeks to wait
Before he would be sent to the nursing home

He thought little about the nursing home
Half way looking forward to it
Vaguely projecting occasional scenes
Across an idle moment of imagination
Trying to envision what it would be like

He was too far set
In three months of hospital ways
To think of anything else
***