I've been sitting here all day trying to remember the time change from here to Germany.

I sit here watching Christmas lights twinkle dumbly above my head, surveying the kingdom of my apartment like an idiot lion, sipping warm beer and spitting mad rhymes, lacking both rhythm and rhyme scheme. Remembering instances of the night too strange to be repeated:


At the end of the world I had to pee squatting up against rusted chain link doors, fenced in by dying semis sagging on heavy cinder blocks. And the urine soaked through my dress and it was only okay because this is the apocalypse and certain measures may be taken in apocalyptic times that aren’t taken in the average, humdrum day. I also had to pee. Bad.


Here they are, One fish two fish red fish blue fish style: ( edifice )


At age 89 she aspirated a powder-sugar donut and gave up her will to live. All of the piss and vinegar of life had disappeared along with the donut in that morning’s bowel movement. Her gaping stoma glittered like a wet diamond under dim lights. One pack too many of Chesterfield Kings had wreaked this havoc of tobacco on her turkey-like neck. She slept with the grace of an ancient stone, moss covering the hills and valleys of her flesh, veins popping out from underneath paper-thin, old woman skin. She was disgusting.
Her grandson hovered over her like a vulture, or maybe like some other carnivorous animal of the Sahara, hungrily smacking lips and tonguing gums, eyes transfixed on the infinity that is the stoma. With the grace of a puma, he slowly lowered thin, weather beaten lips to the moist, tender hole and sucked.
He sucked with his entire body, conjuring up (but not limited to) mucus (the body’s natural gravy), but also swallowing her repugnant thoughts, her sexual desires, her first born, her ugly maturity, her last consumed meal (turkey, beans, and potatoes, all mashed together in a blender since she had long ago lost her ability to chew (what was once a liquid is always a liquid/ashes to ash/dust to dust)), her spleen, her splintering fingernails, her soul( if one so chooses to believe in the idea that is soul, which she did), and finally, her life.
All of these things squeezed out of the putty-like fissure and all of these things had the consistency of warm squid to the grandson. While utterly appetizing, his grandmother’s contents were not enough to stick to his ribs. He continued to foam at the mouth, spittle caked in the corners, slobbering like a dog (or Jesus Christ) at his Last Supper.
To Grandmother with love, he had done this for her anyway. And he began testing the flexibility of her limbs and no-longer so limber joints with his hands, first carefully and then increasingly more ravenously.

It was time to move on.