The Life and Eventual Death Of DMD

Wally

I don’t know his name, So I’ll call him Wally

Wally is pushing 50 years old

pushing 280 pounds

his gray arm hair is pushing through his faded tattoos

The ones on his knuckles probably say something original and rebellious like

“LIVE HARD”

or

“PLAY HARD”

or what ever

He wears a county issued polo with the sleeves cut off and faded overalls to his county job as superintendent of a warehouse facility used by Goodwill.

In the 35 seconds he saw me, Wally told two different people that I looked “famished” and could probably use a cheeseburger when he thought I couldn’t hear

He was told that his jokes were not funny

so Wally said that people like me

Not people like him

People like me, most of us choose to live this way

And in the same 35 seconds that he saw me

I came to assume the Wally tells

racist jokes

and homophopbic jokes

and anti semetic jokes to whomever he thinks, might not be too “politically correct”

Brushes it off as “its the way I was raised”

Slaps his wife around

Brushes it off as “my old man use to do it”

I imagine he gets drunk most nights

Passes out in the driver seat of his pick up truck and dreams in red white and blue

I imagine he uses a lot of air quotes, incorrectly

I imagine, he has never heard the phrase “you only get one shot at a first impression”

I imagine my foot on his throat

asking him about why he can’t breathe

Saturday mornings were never as bright

as when the men came

I had never heard the door close so gently 

as when the men came

3/30

I crippled the player piano in the hall when all its songs started to sound like the same dirge, the one written by fatherless boys

like the echo of grasping

like the intricate sound of falling

I nailed all the doors shut when the closets in each room started to overflow, or at least, I imagined they were

I ate every bullet I could find so I wouldn’t be tempted

moved out of cities with too many bridges

I replay your lectures 

Sometimes they drown out the ridicule

I want to break the pointed fingers

I want pop the blown out cheeks

I want them to never laugh again

I close my eyes

turn up the music

change lanes

I swallow hard

everything

Like holding it in is the last bit of sustenance

I quit crying

when it stopped feeling like baptisim

what the hell is wrong with tumblrs formatting? or what am I getting wrong about it? I am cutting and pasting from an email… where are my line breaks?