RC Edrington-

After Heroin 

2:16 a.m. 

2 Latino street whores

ignore the stale, downtown rain 

as though it were the familiar piss

of some $20 trick washing away 

the dime store make-up

off their sullen, sunken faces. 

They huddle together, stay warm

in the glowing desire for heroin. 

2:28 a.m.

 

Still no cab. 

Traffic splashes by

in random, uncontrolled spurts 

like a 16 year old boy

stumbling upon sex for the 1st time

between the sticky pages

of a worn magazine. 

2:35 a.m. 

This is day 7

of my alleged detoxification, 

& this soiled mattress

laying limp on this worn wooden floor 

reeks a bit more of flesh

than it once did.

 

Sometimes I sleep to dream of mirrors 

but awake to only windows, 

as though this city

were some extension of my soul, 

& like the cheap, petty artist 

I search for a metaphor of self

in the broken streetlights 

& trash scarred alleys... 

in the disembodied

& disemboweled voices

that grip me from sleep 

to pull me into

these sweat drenched nights 

to watch 2 whores wait for a cab 

beneath this hotel window. 

2:43 a.m.

 

Seven days & I feel clean again, 

but I still don't trust myself... 

it somehow turned on me 

like a dropped stiletto in a gang fight. 

Turned & twisted like a secret 

whispered into the ear of a lover 

who doesn't need me anymore. 

But I have no lovers now.

No friends.

No enemies. 

Just demons with fangs like syringes

& voices like drunk fathers 

reminding me I'll never amount to shit. 

3:01 a.m. 

2 whores drift like ghosts

into the backseat of a yellow cab. 

I light a stale

hand rolled cigarette

& fall back into bed 

beneath the blinking cliche of a neon sign.

 

There is a "vacancy" here.

 

 

Spent Angel Blues 

In this room of things which strain to move 

time lies overdosed 

on the cold cement bathroom floor. 

There are no cigarettes left 

to ease its passing. 

No songs remain 

to fill the empty spaces 

where once drifted the subtle strokes 

of its blood beat. 

There is only stillness, 

a tea spoon of cheap Mexican heroin 

and memories... 

At 29 

my friends are dead 

strung-out, jailed, or 

trapped in between 

the cynical Styrofoam walls 

of mental institution 

like freshly hooked trout 

in an ice chest 

waiting to be gutted.

 

They've left me here, alone 

to only the stale glow of a butane flame 

in which to perfect this dying art. 

To sing anarchistic odes to our youth 

shattered like a glass syringe 

against a red bricked schoolyard wall. 

Tonight

the memory of Traci haunts me. 

The night they found her 

naked blood caked body 

tossed away like a cum stained Kleenex 

right on the sidewalk 

in front of 100 screaming tourists 

who till this day don't believe 

the pretty bright lights of Hollywood 

are fueled by the charred mounds 

of runaway teenage flesh 

searching to fulfill childhood dreams 

but only end up filling their tiny orifices 

with whatever perverted disease 

the man with the $20 bill wants. 

So I continue to walk 

this death row promenade of memories 

perhaps the way 

a sergeant walks a post war graveyard 

wondering if all these bodies 

should somehow add up to something more 

than a few medals for his chest... 

or a few scribbled lines in my notebook. 

And as the heroin begins to burn 

like napalm through my veins 

blood rises in the thin syringe 

like a scarlet mushroom cloud 

over Hollywood Blvd. 

and for the spent angels of the apocalypse 

another personal Armageddon 

draws temporarily 

always so fucking temporarily 

to a close...

 

 

RC Edrington's latest collection, "Apocalypse Generation", was published by Tainted Coffee Press and is available through Zygote In My Coffee. His website is www.rcedrington.com. It contains links to his previous collections, reviews of his work, and links to journals and magazines he has been published in.