152 Peaches

By Paul McGuire © 2002

To find me sitting
In a well lit room,
Is to find me staring
At the swarthy cracks in the shabby wall.

I saw him working,
In a small pool
Full of blissful frogs and other amphibians
But he did not see me
Lurking in the faint twilight,
When the purples and oranges take
Over the sky, and the other colors
Must patiently sit and watch
Them gleefully dance with each other
Their shadows vibrating off
The sour terrain below, and I stop to whiff
The moist breeze.

The alarmed chimpanzee and the hardy zoo keeper,
Would laugh at me when I
Walked over to them with a
Tiny notebook, and a twelve gauge shotgun.
He demanded I hand over the notebook,
But I let loose two bursts.
The chimp died instantly,
And the damaged lungs
Of the injured zookeeper,
whimpered sorry breaths,
As I chuckled like a bastard on
Prescription uppers, and
Spit thrice on the now
Bloody ground.

The hallow buzz that I
Begrudgingly steal from staring into
Space, is the identical high
A sophomoric junkie accomplishes
After religiously shooting
Up a handful of freshly cooked
Smack.
Bought from the slothful man
With the idle dog whom
Sat in an old flat tire,
Chewed on all sides by
Adorable puppies.

He’s the pimp who sold Fried Peanuts
His daily stash.
Which he made me fetch for him,
As well as a jar of
Apple Jam, and poppyseed bagels
Four times a week,
Sometimes more.

The hassle of all hassles,
Trying to cop for a desperate addict,
Was more than I could handle,
So I quit my job, and pawned it off to
A comedian in training named Marty.
His friends called him Marty Farty
Because of all the fart jokes
He would tell to the crowds who
Dared show up at his Open Mic
Performances in the Niagara Falls
Area as well as all over Eastern Canada.

His savvy talents were no match
For his jealous wife’s twin brother.
Who longed to tell knock-knock jokes
In French, while wearing a
Kiwi colored tu-tu.
His small, yet capricious
Dreams, were hastily pushed aside
By Marty Farty’s comedic rants about
Passing gas in crowded elevators
And stealing bowls of chili from
Soup kitchens in the Detroit area.
Great laughs for sure,
But not when Marty Farty
Was poisoned by an ex-girlfriend,
A dyslexic stewardess employed by Air Jamaica.

Peaches was her name,
So her nametag read.
And she showed me pictures
Of her pet snake named Hamlet,
An albino python that she
Loved like a regular pet
Or a third cousin, a distant
Relative that you saw only
During weddings and every other funeral.

The cheeseburger eating fireman
Walked over to the rental car
That Peaches had just wrecked.
She drove it up onto a
Semi-crowded sidewalk
And wrapped the Geo Metro around
An utility pole, and nearly
Hit an express mail mailbox
And almost flattened a fragile
Collection of rabid raccoons
That gathered to pick through
The daily garbage left out
On the slimy side street by the
Pizza shop owned by Greek porn gurus.
Her intentions weren’t to mow down
A hapless crowd of pedestrians,
But Peaches
Pulled a Lizzie Grubman,
And took a single life.
She killed a man.
A divorced man,
A scum bag lawyer,
But a life nonetheless.
People cried at his wake.
Relatives brought flowers and
Pre-cooked Tupperware meals for
The reluctant party afterwards and
Even his long lost son showed up to
Sing a cheerful song.
He, a flamboyant dancer from
Miami Beach, was secretly living with his
Scrappy life partner nicknamed Scooby,
A sloppy bartender
Hustling in backrooms
Each savory night, and he
Held a job
As a terrible pool cleaner
By day.

The keen Vietnam veterans
That throw multi-colored water balloons at the
Catholic school kids walking home
Each afternoon,
Would pretend that they
Are Charlie.
And each exploding balloon
That wets an up and coming
Hearty Christian, is a twisted
Game of selfishly acting
Out their morbid shell-shocked
Nightmares of endless tours in the dismal jungle
Cracking branches from leaves
The size of small farm animals.
The machete men would
Shout like lunatics to the insects
That landed on their
Muscular tattooed arms.
Sometimes burning them off with Zippo lighters.

The vodka crazed taxi driver showed up
And offered me a ride to the airport
To get me away from the insanity of my
Waking dreams.
I try to catch myself
And talk to the gloomy walls,
Like I used to,
When the harsh days were shorter,
And the lines to the methadone clinic
Were not as crowded
Like they were back in the 1970s.


Paul McGuire is a writer from New York City.