Open Your Fucking Eyes

You lived last in a Las Vegas hotel room, pink and green and blue lights danced through the windows while balloons of red popped as you chased the dragon.

The nerves were gone, you know. A little flinch when warm brown sugar pinched down your veins while you crooned, laughed, and cried in blissful apathy.

The paper boy smacked you bad giving you wings that found no angels or greeted devils blackened and sad. Dropping, you fell like one of the faithful

Wrapped in Mexican Mud and cotton wool. You wanted more but rushed in with forty-four seconds to fall and one second for goodbye.

The tit tat rat a tat of a full heart oozed and cruised slow to a prayer. Nothing to do but lie down and do your part. Bum-bum. Bum-bum. bum. bum.

Now you met your slayer.

There you lay on green carpet, proud lips, drained dry and blue. Your skin flat and stale, wicked brown eyes closed and became shy. Pale and hard, your face could never stay clean.

A week later you came home arms crossed and a face not your own. I lost my voice, no words came out I hated you I wanted to shout.

First off, open your fucking eyes. You would not. I wanted to scream and punch you in the face. I could not. You lay in a rented brown basket and brown clothes while I stood there and wiped my nose.

Your friends came, repenting and full of shit — they were just waiting for their next hit. Mother and sister came to visit but Daddy dear had reached his limit.

I remember when you were small, you were holding a Winnie the Pooh doll. This wasn’t your dream, not your last stand but it was, yours and no other man.

Goodbye, Shane.

_________________________ Michael Ritoch plays at being a poet/writer. He finds joy in his wife, two daughters, cats, one is really fat and the other is neurotic, reading philosophy written by old dead guys, and his friends. He writes about leadership, pain, life, suffering, and whatever comes to mind.

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