Ezhno Martin

Murphy was a dignified coke smoker

My fondest memories
          are intimate with the same psychopath
who stole my credit cards three times
                      before I turned him in
          and turned my back on rewinding
                     incurable momentums
      towards meeting mortality

                                 On the afternoon we met
                                       soon after we discovered
                         we both had run away from Kansas City
                 and respected nothing and no one
                              he lay in the middle of a busy street
                             an asphalt angel screaming
            Arbeit Macht Frei!
                         and I found myself flailing
                roaring right next to him
                    so loud they could hear us on the balconies
                over the car horns –
                    I cite the synchrony of the rising shutters
                          and stupefied concentration
                                we commanded over the cookouts
                          we didn't set out to crash – 
                    and when the cops got called
                they dragged us back to the sidewalk
                      and threatened to pistol whip us
                            unless we promised to never do it again
        but since there is no law against being
            a stark raving lunatic
                they had to let us go
                      and we went and got rather drunk
                  on rotgut whiskey on my roof
                          and talked about holding up a convenience store
                  only instead of stealing anything
                            we'd show up with a pillow case full of pennies
                       and threaten to shoot ourselves
       unless they counted them all in front of us
                            twice
                        
        From there I was sunk
              because Murphy had the rarest of all neurological conditions
                    Hysterical Nihilistic Gnostic Turbidity        
      something that had gone undiagnosed in me
                        until we broke beer bottles over our heads
                  and asked the checkout girl at the grocery store
                        a lot of questions about enemas
                   with dried blood trails down our faces
                               and the canvases of our plain white t-shirts

    We had so many previously lonely obsessions in common
                                namely laughing through trying to kill ourselves
like drinking through the blackouts
                           till we woke up still drinking two days later
              or how he liked sleeping with multiple homeless women at once
                
           I liked stealing furniture and destroying it in the front yard
                 we both liked making everyone around us uncomfortable
                      and violently ill whenever possible
           I started burning bridges and telling off important people for sport
                            he started smoking crack in his closet
               and committing every form of fraud he could conceive
                          to come up with the money for the dope man

           He ended up drowning in the bathtub
                  when he ran out of crack
                             and the Xanax and Somas kicked in
                He slipped under the water
                              returning to the womb
            never to be reborn                 


                  I wasn't there for the funeral –  
no one was –
and now that he's dead
          I'm free to rewrite history
                   so no one can suggest
       he was just a scapegoat

 


Ezhno Martin doesn't believe in god, pronouns, American exceptionalism, most conventions of capitalization, monogamy, any form of censorship, that 9/11 was perpetrated by Muslims, casseroles, coming to a full stop at stop signs, chivalry, patriotism, hand washing after bathroom visits, rough sex, decorum, the importance of biological families, and/or that The New York Knicks are ever going to get their shit together. Ezhno lives in Toledo, Ohio. Ezhno is now from Toledo, Ohio, because that's how that works.