Little White Crosses

I went to the park today to take a walk in cold drizzle from a steel wool sky. The weather matches my mood.

There is memorial at the park for veterans. Across the lawn in tight rows there are little white crosses, signifying the casualties of war. They spread outward like fingers, crowned in miniature flags.

As I stared at the display, a thought occured to me:

What if I had a little white cross for every drink I took?

What if I had a little white cross for every relationship my disease affected?

What if I had a little white cross for every time I shook the day after, vomited, cried, slept and then woke up did it all over again?

Then another thought occured to me.

It would take a much bigger lawn to bear my crosses.

Mother, Mother

I remember when she tried to beat my ass. We lived in Georgetown in the double wide. She thought I stole her gold wrist watch. In her manic episode, she raised her hand to hit me. I was crouched in the laundry room of our double wide and I pissed myself. My father stopped her. He talked her down. I always knew my mother was ill.

Family Faggot

What made me this way?

I hated my grandfather. I remember the day.

"At least I didn't raise a faggot," he says to my mother (a bi-polar manic depressive).

Faggot

Fag

The only thing I inherited from him was my alcoholism. And my fucking last name. Bastard.

My grandmother apologized, of course. But it didn't matter. As far as I was concerned she could take her Bible and shove it.

My cousins made my life hell in high school.

I remember my uncle telling my father "If he's not a fag, then he doesn't have anything to worry about."

Thanks Uncle Dave.

Blood might be thicker than water, but THEY made me want to drown in both.

Shower

When you are an addict in the suburbs, it's different from the ghetto. In the suburbs, you must mask everything. It's quite the facade. In the ghetto, you see from the exterior what it is. People's proble ms in the ghetto sit on thier front stoop in a broiwn paper bag. In suburbia it's the opposite. Almost like American Beauty. Often, the suburbs are worse than the ghetto. Being a prisoner in the suburbs means you must pretend. You must hide. You must smile. We don't cry in suburbia. We shower. We turn on the water and let it run. We cry as scalding hot beads of water prick our face. We kneel in a ball in a ceramic tub as scalding hot water hits our face and washes away what our eyes seep forth. It's easier. Because you can't taste your tears when the water washes them away and no one can hear you when the shower runs. If you're careful. I know.

I am an Alcoholic

It took me this long to say.

Tapestry

Ass eater
Ass licker
Cornholer
Fag
Faggot
Queer
Cock sucker
Butt Pirate
Poof-tah
Gay
Fairy
Pixie
Friend of Dorothy
Mary
Nell
Nancy
Girlie-boy
Light in the loafers
Fem
Femmie
Girlie boy
She-man
Flamer
Ridin' the Hershey Highway
Homo
MO
Pussyboy
Pussy
I would sow these words together, Wyoming barb wire as my thread. Not a quilt. A cape. ME.