Southern Florida

Our arteries are clogged,
by fear, greed, misguided faith.
People can barely breath.

I can feel the pressure building in my veins,
Pulsing like its own beating heart.
I take another sip of wine
and think "fuck it,
Bring me a Heineken."
So I order one from the waitress,
and screw this $17 dollar glass of red wine.

I eat the tail of a fried shrimp,
catch a droplet of sweet and sour sauce on my forefinger,
light a cigarette,
and pop the benzo I had contemplated.

Then one night in Capt. Tony's saloon, Key West, the end of the rainbow, Florida, in the bathroom taking a leak, and staring at this poem scrawled in black marker on the yellow wall in a black frame. An unknown poet wrote:

I ate the last mango in Paris
Took the last plane out of Saigon
Took the first fast boat to China
And Jimmy,
There's still so much to be done

Key West is a bastion of life, drink, debauchery, color, and happiness,
Painted in yellow, pink, and green
At midnight, I sat down in Tony's
To contemplate and read the stories on the walls.

Captain Tony was a great man, and a man we should remember.
When he won the mayoral election in Key West in the early 80's,
The Key West Citizen said of him, in the article which announced his victory:

[Tony] Tarracino, a retired fishing captain, former bar owner, and a life as adventuresome as Harry Morgan, the sea captain from Hemingway's Key West novel, To Have and Have Not, who fished the gulf waters of the gulf stream and the Florida Straights, ran rum and played the deadly game of cuban politics in the 1930's... An Italian from New Jersey who became a bohemian Floridian, he has dabbled in Caribbean revolutions, sought political office in Key West and wrestled the ocean on a flotilla of small vessels as shrimper, salvager, diver, and captain.

I take this man in, clearly a gonzo spirit, and sit in this quietest of bars, just off Duval street, drinking a Wild Turkey and a Red Stripe, and ask myself about Alcohol.
Friend or Foe? I really don't know.
Yet I know that I am happy, carrying a miracle cell phone, resurrected from the dread depths of jacuzzi death, and I just got kicked out of my home, by way of Fed-Ex from Hawaii. By what sort of witchcraft it reached me in Key West, I can't even imagine.
So I go on drinking this whiskey for Hunter; and let me tell you that the turkey is not for the faint of heart. It's too gonzo strong for me, but I drink it anyway, even though it tastes like a holocaust.

My back aches, but there is always more pain round the corner, so I don't mind; happiness will always arrive shortly. So even though my landlord wants me to go to rehab, as permission to her broad, and luxurious domains, I don't feel guilt, nor worry, nor anger; for I will smoke cigarettes tonight, as a testament to my finite nature, and though I plan to quit, I do not worry. All good things in all good times. I light a Marlborough, as my grandma would, and smile, because I'd rather live in a trailer than not be myself.

A Haiku:
Soft Plumeria
Tropical breath on Shoulders
While the flowers wilt

Then some discombobulated rambling:

Sitting in a hot springs, balls melting off. The future squirms in agony, dying in the testicle cesspool. A silent scream, not even felt in the hot water we're in.