Earlier in the day he pinched his face and said,
“I’m still pretty” amazed at the irony.
And it’s true!
He’s the same as when my love enchanted, fifteen year old, budding, outlaw heart
ran with this beautiful nut case, drug addict, moocher, bungling minion of Naked Lunch,
lover of Bach and Bird.
He pulls long on a throat-raking Camel
unfiltered,
tips to lips shards of Wild Irish Rose bleeding to
tongue, down neck, chewing stomach and says to no one
in particular, “If I have this, I don’t need you”, all the while anticipating brain-soaked,
sweet, annihilation wiping out memories of everything he might have been
promising surcease from guilt, from failure anointed in the
blessed bathe, of the Divine Numb, not here yet, but
arriving soon, very soon.
Something within him crowns plush of childhood
lined with “quality” long forgotten in visceral ooze,
--where days’ wild Irish Rose aims its attach biting furiously like The Rite of Spring’s
wide bloody mouth.
He pukes, trembling inside his own broken beauty, retches
deep from his own hideous wine
when the sharp, summoned Smack God approaches on
scarlet prayers, spooned warm, tied tight—stinging his blood
kneels, “My love”
then holy rush, then bliss turning mean dope nightmares
--haunted hymns, pale bones, screaming lifeless—
mercy intervenes, changing direction to that tiny, sacred spot where  longing
remembers a peace that never was, now, almost real—as the warm hiss of piss baptizes
his pants soggy down a leg in royal splash.
He shapes between stink two trash cans,
sagging until his kingdom collapses into Nod and tight as a chastity
belt, keyed shut, locked safe from nosy entrance, he curls in
the triumph of Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you all, every, one of you!

                                  and

Morphia kisses him gently to bed
Softly spinning a silken cocoon
Enfolding her bloom
Round the hush of his sleep
In the sweet folding fetal
of dreams.

Good night sweet Prince.

E. C. Jones has spent a good deal of her adolescence and adult life attempting to put as many miles as possible between herself and the place of her birth, L.A. Ca. After a tour of duty in a nuthouse at age 15, she took to traveling extensively, by plain, train, and thumb, has held jobs as diverse as waitress, dog walker, cashier for a porn movie theatre and as a pretty good panhandler. She now resides in Mt. Shasta Ca. breathing fresh air and soothing her PTSS by writing, writing, writing.