The monkey on my back with the golden arm is jonesing for a butt and will engage in debased sex for the promise of a hit.
Want to hear about the patch of Nicorette gum? If ignored I will blow smoke at you from behind dark glasses.
Listen with hungry body language. Tilt head, stretch eyes to the debauchery, recoil at fingernails undercoated with scratched paint.
Roiling in my own filth. I never would have caught the disease if I hadn’t tried the gateway.
All I had to do was press my nose to the glass platter and I was infected.

Glam/Smut I call it. Who knew diving into the slop could be so charming?
Behind sun glasses (de rigueur) at my book reading or trailing after my alter ego at the premier.
My memoir revealed hidden truths of friends and family. All had to be flushed from my now cathartized system.

Did you hear about the time the time it was too pure?
Did O’Brien tell you when it was cut with horse or horse tranquilizer? I forget which.
Did you see the news about my B & E arrest?
Do you have any idea how much a pint of blood per transfusions costs?

Oh, you were doing homework with Dylan.
Did you at least travel when you did it?
I reached the bottom. It’s all up, up, up now.

About the Author

Paul Handley

Paul spent a career as a student and a student of odd jobs. He was born in Oak Park, Illinois and then lived in Madison, Wisconsin for five years, Rhode Island for a year, and then lived in another suburb of Chicago until moving out of the house after graduating from college in Florida. As an adult he has lived in Indianapolis, Idaho, San Jose, Denver and Providence. Paul has had work published or forthcoming in Hobble Creek Review, iddie, Macabre Cadaver, the Maynard and The Smoking Poet.