FAKE MEDICAL RECEIPTS, SAN DIEGO

New Paragraph

I'm drawing a picture in words

something visceral,

so visual it tugs, and you feel a necessity to protect it, gloss it

given it's an anomaly, something shaped by the truth

This drawing is intended to be as intense as the rancour in the heart of manipulation wrapped in lies.

As cutting as the sound of his braying.

It is an exorcise.

Like a bogus cancer scare annexed

by a fictional trip to a San Diego Medical Centre

due to the heartfelt advise of a doctor in an overcrowded emergency room

just next to his third eye, his right hand,

his beloved cellphone left behind with his best friend in Gastown, he says

Broken heart messages and photos tagged with a tender swell across his back

the cause of midnight texts full of things so titanic that it's plain impossible to stop splitting you open, he says

all my friends repeatedly ask me if I've fucked you, he says

we are mama and papa arguing over trivial things, he says

He's forgotten the year long vigil I held,

the pillar stands firm,

the earth acquiesced, and the wind chimes across dense tracks of trees to confirm

he will never ever see the light of a beautiful woman again

they are all too good for him, I told him then and he understood, I said

A footpath of stones that twitch to the mocking sounds he makes

the tick tock of a clock that drills into the peace with his conceit

hubris etched in the curse words scribbled across his fingers 

a fist full of tatts, 

he peacocks to get his pendulum to swing

and the darkness mirrored in the ink on his thumbs blinds him

as does his preoccupation with fight club and a man named Brad

He believes he can outsmart anyone

but he can't

his face sheds uncovering the ghoul behind the mask

the face his threadbare lopsided gremlin adores and shows her friends

Listen here.

I will not give you what you want.

Pack your knuckles, the stench of rotted fruit,

your cyclical bargains and days billed to me for laziness spent

But before you go let's make one last pact

Let's accept there was no rehab or AA meeting even in abstract

that you drink to a sobriety you've never ever met

concede, admit you took the word healing in jest

I see you like a water filled pitcher of crystal clear glass

that you've spiked with vodka

and rimmed with the salt from your apathy, some tears

A spicy Margherita in fact

the ones that blame everyone but yourself for your egregious acts

On the day you handed me your twelve thousandth lie

smoked the Marlboro cigarette

fruit sprouted from a bud 

I'm referring to the rotten fruit that lay awaiting you in that cupboard, 

spoiling the Caribbean oasis 

it also made a pact 

it promised the tree and the earth that fed it

that it would ensure you took in your own scent

that the stench would always last and you would never be able to forget it

Now that leads us all to the ultimate question

the most interesting part of this portrait where all the colour and form is in my possession

where it's action packed

the decaying fruit alone in a cabinet, on an island in fact

what is more noble than sacrificing oneself for the truth,

a counterattack?