He had enough cash saved to rent 'my' room in Mia's home,
Dollars he had taken into prison with him and some
More he had actually earned in there for doing those chores
Of shit/blood/vomit-mopping only half-blind dogs could bear.
‘But whatever the job,’ Raimonde wrote, ‘you’re paid to stay poor
And needing more money’ – like a clerk in a retail-store
Who needs two other jobs to be able to pay his rent
*
With the dough he did
Have when he got out of there, he rented ‘my’ room and hid
His face, like the Ugly Duckling, from the rest of the world
That took no note, had no knowledge, of his life as it swirled
(The world, not his life – which was now a stagnant slough) about
Its worldly business of getting on with business without
A moment’s pause for losers too slow to keep up with its
Relentless race against The Clock as though there were a blitz
Forewarned and on its ruthless way over a horizon
Of dark noons threatening an eclipse to keep our eyes on
Before it gave way to the most glaring midnight ever.
~
Jane had dumped him for the same guy he’d tried to ‘save’ her from:
She had written Raimonde a letter while he was incarce-
rated: Dear R., I can’t take it any more, it’s a farce
That isn’t funny, I don’t know what else to say, it makes me cry
Just to think of it, I don’t know, I guess I’m just too shy
A girl underneath everybody thinking I’m sexy,
Or is everybody right? (smile) When I look at Rex, he
makes me feel something I never felt with you, that is free,
And everybody needs free Raimonde so please let me be
Happy for once in my life with someone who can help me,
And don’t…’ et cetera et cetera et ceterass
Raimonde had thought, feeling redundant, like a donkey’s ass
*
So he lit up Jane's letter to smoke it like opium.
Myopia-opium: into his eyes went its black smoke,
– And, inhaled, the smoke made Raimonde choke, cough and miss the joke
Of his self-pitying knee-jerk reaction to Jane’s note:
The joke of her freedom’s price being his sore eyes and throat.
He managed to douse the letter’s flames in his toilet-bowl,
But what little he’d read was set like a scar on his soul,
A scar he would spend the next few months licking like a cat
Whose paw had been crushed and who couldn’t get enough of that.
In many people lurks a masochistic martyr just
Dying to have its blazing moment that transcends disgust
At itself for repeating and refining one old pain
(from *fatima solagua arterra’s nudes* by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 