The Losers

      There's no hope. There's not even a prayer of hope. It's hopeless. Hopelessness, This neighborhood could be described as ghetto, but that wouldn't even do it justice and the majority of the people here are Caucasion anyway, but it's still ghetto. My brain is starting to shut down in self-defense. Like when a rape victim travels in their mind, so they don't have to feel the pain of their hymen breaking and this being the memory of their hymen breaking and the PTSD to come. Like that. It's fading away so I don't have to be here for the pain. Maybe I can block it out with music, but the neighbbors and gun shots are loud. Too loud. I reported mold on the wall to my landlord, but he just put white paint over it, which doesn't solve it. I turn on the radio and the wires on the connector to the wall are fading so I see a blue and red strips which are live. Keep paper and the gasoline away. I hear Rock n' Roll music. I think about where to go if there's a random gun shot. To my right is a white wall with coffee stains, to my left is a white wall with paint spots missing, behind me is a window with a brick wall, and in front of me is a door with a peep-hole, where a shooter would be. This place is a fire hazard, but it's cheap. It's cheap and what I could afford. But, if there was a disaster, everywhere would be a dead end. 

           Then, I look at the thermostat. I'm in Chicago, Illinois. I see the thermostat of the actual temperature on the bottom go down to sixty-degrees. I put the temperature on the top of the thermestat to ninety degrees and wait for the sound of the heating system to start, but nothing happens. I look in the fridge and all of the fish and vegetables from the local Chinese restaurant three days ago have gone bad, so I throw them out. The fridge was supposed to be my oasis. I forgot to tell the reader I have a dog, but he doesn't have to be walked yet. But as I look at her face, I notice she has some lumps and discoloration on her skin, but I force her to kiss me anyway. Good doggy.

           Then, looking at the bricks out the window, I open the window and look straight down. I see heads of those toys kids hit to get candy hanging from one of the few trees in our neighborhood, or the hood, as they call it here. The only things that grow on these trees are poisonous berries, so they might as well be Garbage Trees, but they do provide a place for kids to hang pinatas and provide shade.

* 

           I go to my bathroom. Now, there are three things I keep in my bathroom for emergencies: a jukebox, so I can drown out the background noise, mouthwash, in case I ever get a girlfriend who wants to makeout with me and/or fuck, and gasoline, in case I ever want to burn this shithole to the ground. I also have a pistol underneath my bed, in case some crackhead decides to rob me. Gas prices are way up nowadays. I recently tried robbing someone on the street so I could pay my rent, but he only had 29 cents and his eyes almost came out of his head when he saw my gun. 

           You know, money is real tight here, so I stopped getting haircuts to save money. May sound grotesque, but $20 a month more for rent is better than $20 a month for haircuts. But, lately, I've been thinking about getting one of the haircuts professional businessmen get. Short, trim, professional, and maybe buying a three-piece navy suit. I've been thinking about that a lot. 

           I remember the last girl I dated said Id look sexier that way. But, she wound up using her love machine over my genetals. Then, I broke my leg and asked her to sign my cast, but she just gave me a pair of crutches out of sympathy. Then we broke up and I took a bus home and when I got off the bus, I saw a bordello on the street where young women were being sold for $20 an hour. I was tempted, but decided I'd get a girlfriend again, soon. Boy, was I wrong. 

*

           See, my car stopped working so I had to hitch a ride before I found out about public transportation. That day, when my car stopped working, I had to hitch a ride home, but then, I picked my nose and it started bleeding. No one wants to pick up a hitchhiker with a bleeding nose. Nobody. So I had to walk twenty miles home. It took ten hours. 

*

           I wrote a song on some old paper I had laying around: chords: A E A E B7 A E and the song was about briefcases. I'll play it when I get a new acoustic guitar. Again, I think about going to another town and getting a businessman's haircut. A businessman's haircut and a three-piece suit. 

           My mind feels fuzzy again like I'm spacing out. Something's wrong. The wood on the wall is detereorating, because it's ghetto. I listen to the Rock n Roll music on the radio. Do you, the reader, understand? There's no way out of this place. 

           I'm thinking about getting a businessman's haircut. I'm thinking about getting a businessman's haircut. I'm thinking about getting a businessman's haircut because maybe that's what I'm doing wrong. I'm thinking about gettting real shampoo, conditioner and soup instead of the shit I've been picking up at the Dollar Place. I'm thinking about throwing away mmy torn towels, my old ghetto t-shirts with holes in them I've had since I was sixteen, and going to a suit place and looking good. I'm thinking about rejoining a gym and getting back into shape. I'm thinking about buying a lotto ticket at the ghetto convenient store and winning $1000 a day everyday for the rest of my life, and maybe that starts with me getting a businessman's haircut. I've been thinking about it. Getting a businessman's haircut. I keep thinking about it. 

           I look in my closet to see if there's anything I can sell to get this businessman's haircut and all I see is two things you put records on that has a needle so you can hear them and a microphone. Then, I think about going to the Upper Road where better people live. I remember the street lights were turned down there since people feel safe there. The sometimes here jazz music from the local bars. There are drunks on the street playing guitar and asking for handouts. They're always surrounded by cans and bottles of litterers, but it's better than the hood where I live. I look for the thrift shop to sell my items but I don't know where it is at. I got a microphone and two record players. I see the barbershop where I'll get the t businessman's haircut, but I have to find the thriftshop to sell these stupid things and I don't know where they're at.