The Righteous Ones
The garage door slammed shut in tandem with the ringing of my cell phone. It was Dale. I picked up.
“Get up. It’s three o’ clock.” The heavy wheeze and voice of a pirate was the promise of a fine afternoon.
“Hey! What’s going on dude?” I asked.
“It’s time for your shot.” Dale wheezed.
“Alright. I’ll see you in five minutes.”
I grabbed my shit and hit the road.
“Vicodin Dave!” he sang as I ambled up the drive.
“What’s up ya fuckin’ juicehead?” I joyfully barked.
“Are you ready for your shot Dave?”
He sat there grinning, drunk and stoned.
Dale wheezed and coughed as he poured the Cuervo. I took mine with a tap-water chaser. We clinked glasses, toasted the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and Dale’s 28-year sobriety chip that he had accepted just last week. His dedication to the endless party astounded me and his acceptance of his latest sobriety token had me laughing so hard I was in tears. At 57 years old he had three massive heart attacks under his belt, one triple bypass and had been shot off of his front lawn by a swat team 20 years earlier while in a blackout. The aged biker still drank and smoked like a teenager. “There’s a special place in hell for guys like you, Dale. Fucking scumbag.” He laughed and kept ‘em coming.
It wasn’t even dark out when Dale decided to call it a night.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I was drunk and stoned out of my mind, but I knew there was going to be hell to pay to the hangover gods so why not push on for a few more hours.
“Yup- I’m too fucked-up. I gotta go to bed.” he stammered.
“Shit man-you think you could spot me 20 bucks? I’ve got another couple of hours before I can go home. I can’t show up drunk at my sister’s house.”
“Why not? You pay rent. Go home and tell ‘em that you’re sorry and that you’ll go to a meeting in the morning.”
“Quit fuckin’ around. Can you loan me 20 or what?”
“Yeah” he finally answered.
“You got any Vicodin?”
“No”
“Percocet?”
“I’m already giving ya’ a 20 that I shouldn’t be!” Once Dale started to turn purple and bug-eyed, I knew I was being an asshole.
He leaned forward in his easy chair to make a grab for his wallet and almost did a face plant into the linoleum. The situation hit me. He was my future; I was 39 years old and couldn’t go home because I was drunk. It was too goddamn depressing and ridiculous even by my own standards.
There were two bars nearby, so I chose the karaoke free one. I would have just as soon sat in the backyard and drank alone but my sister didn’t want me at the house if I was fucked-up. My rent. Her house. Her rules. Fucking people. There’d never be a bomb big enough. The bar it would be and the bar it was. Quarter games of pool waiting to blossom into childish conflict, ugly women, stupid women, lame misunderstandings, ancient loners, bad speed, amateur drunks, men who couldn’t go home because they were drunk. We were all right where the universe had lumped us, pumped us and dumped us. That special place where everyone’s equal because nobody ever wins.
David Burdett
Fontana, CA.
Used Car Salesman Jim
“Do you still want to rent that back room?” Dale asked.
“Huh?” I was hungover. Dale continued.
“Used car salesman Jim is moving out next week.”
“Five hundred a month?” I asked.
Dale farted then answered in the affirmative.
It felt good to have my own space again. Aside from Dale, my only other roommate was an aged pill head named Dennis. Dennis was a fucking asshole but he always had pills so that made him tolerable. Or so I told myself. It was time to be positive. To enjoy the simpler things like being able to lock my door, jerk off and run the air conditioner. I was winning and it felt alright. I woke up the next morning to the sound of lawn mowers and the television blaring from the dining room. I could hear Dennis shouting about he could “fix his fucking leg wherever he fucking felt like it!” as Dale’s muffled voice backfired down the hallway to my door. “These motherfuckers” I thought as I pulled myself from my bedroom floor and headed down the hallway.
“Fuck you, Dale! You fat fuckin’ baby! I pay my rent so you can kiss my ass!” Dennis yelled.
I looked to the head of the portable, blood drenched table to see Dale, purple and fat. His hernia pulsating to the pounding in my brain. I side stepped Dennis, put my coffee in the microwave and stood ready. Ready to what, I couldn’t tell you.
“What’s all this fuckin’ blood and shit all over the table?” It was my attempt to inject some levity and find out why our mutual dining table looked like somebody had thrown a tray of lasagna at the ceiling fan and let it rain. “Jesus fucking Christ” I thought.
Dennis wheeled around and shouted, “It’s for my fucking leg!”
Be nice I told myself. Chances are he’s got dope. Be his friend.
Dennis sat back down at the table in front of his tampons and syringes and took one last go at injecting lidocaine into the bloody ham steak that lay weeping down the length of his shin. I poured some milk into my coffee then offered Dennis a cup because I knew Dale didn’t have any dope. And before you could say “You got any pills you want to sell?” Dennis had retreated to his room leaving behind a trail of blood and an emerging pattern of being batshit crazy, crippled with anger and never understanding, why Dale and I came to believe, him to be, an irredeemable piece of shit.
David Burdett
6/01/10
A Chaotic Evening Behind Bolted Curtains
Everything I focus in on zips into a fuck scene. I sit sweating and clenched on the couch and give myself a half hour before I lay myself down to a wasted bed and oily pillows. The stench of everything that my body has been ingesting and pushing out over the past 11 days is glued to the walls. The glow from my cigarette burns my eyes and lights up the room like a road flare. And here comes another fuck scene to fuck me. I’m cracked back good and clean. Everything is dropping. A web of snowflakes through a sky filled with mind bending god just let me cum screaming fucking paranoid shove your way through the madness tears my brain apart. The filthier it gets, the filthier you want it. Gang banged in the sewers of hell. I am being raped by my own mind.
It’s thought and unrelenting fantasy. Fragmentation in the schism. Violent and dark. Buckets of worm people. Everything is sticky as you reach for that malt liquor shutoff valve. The bottle tips, the handle snaps. The hours of pornographic sensory overload will not be forfeited. Fuck, fucking, sweat, pull, lean, splinter, moan. Voices whispering. Party girl. Lick, chase, drop. Everyone is watching and laughing. And people are insane and hate you. And cancer dying alone. You are a victim. Digging your own grave with a syringe.
Keep it
Rolling
Don’t stop
Now
Everything
Fucking
Stop
Screaming.
My loved ones
Are weeping.
My loved ones
Are ashamed of me.
My loved ones are dead.
David Burdett
12/14/02
Cudahy In a Nutshell
A pretty day. It would be outdone a thousand times before sunset, but still beautiful enough to make you think for a second, that waking up the next day, probably wouldn’t be worth your time.
“What’s with all this going out on top ‘philosophizing’ bullshit?” he asked.
“Fuck you” I laughed. He shot me a weird look. He looked like what “tomorrow” would feel like if we made it out of the driveway and halfway to the gas station.
“What the fuck are you giggling about?” he asked, as absolutely nothing happened, to help us to the shore, and keep our rapidly deteriorating hosts from sinking into the void even further.
“I just told myself a joke” I answered.
“Get your mind right” he instructed, while keeping his eyes on the hallway, “These people are trippin’ and I got shit to do today.”
“Yup, yup” I softly blurted. As I watched him listen to the hallway, a woman I couldn’t see screamed from the other room. Within seconds we were out the door and within minutes we we’re halfway to the gas station.
David Burdett
5/30/2021
While You Were Away
I was having a joint hallucination on my motel patio with a couple of tweakers who were not aware that they were in a chemically induced psychosis and that there was no devil. “Evil doesn’t walk separate and independent of us” I explained, “People get lost and polluted.” They couldn’t stop at that point. If you think talking to a drunk person is bullshit, try talking to somebody who is in high gear in a meth induced psychosis. Drunks cannot make you drunk by being drunk. Crazy people can make you crazy by being crazy. I’ve seen and experienced it too many times. It’s fucking horrifying. But I stepped back that night as all three of us witnessed, at the same time, demons and ghosts flying, floating, fucking, cackling and inviting us to follow them, preying upon our darkness and vanities. To come back home with something in our eyes that others would respect is very tempting. But that isn’t reality now, is it?
David Burdettellflower Ca.
Bellflower Ca.
1999
A Bunker Full Of Corpses
I was horny and paranoid. The dope and the alcohol had sent me over the edge again. I knew the drill. I knew that I was crashing. I know this territory. I’m breaking down. The pills and the alcohol are gone. I’m alone in my apartment. I’m supposed to be. I’m seeing people. They’re seducing me. The television is dismantling my psyche. My mind will not shut down. There is urine and vegetable oil all over the floor and my body. Torn clothing. I cannot stop pacing. From the living room, thru the bedroom and into the bathroom. I carefully remove the shower curtain. There is nobody behind the curtain. There is no one in the closet or the cabinets. I have not slept in 72 hours. I have been awake drinking Cobra, ingesting meth and inhaling Kolonopin. I don’t deserve this hell. I earned it. A bunker full of corpses. Death sentence fantasies. This is beyond too much to drink and I should have known better. This is self-annihilation. This is brutal truth and zero honesty. This is where God drops you off and whispers “Good luck”. Terror. There is shit under my fingernails. My penis is bleeding. My rectum is sweating. They want me. I want them. I am beyond shame. This place, and myself will never be clean again. The attempted staging of a crime scene to cover the warp and the aroma. Putting things back the way they were. The way I remember them.
David Burdett
3/26/21
Rotations
I swear to God if you stare at it long enough it’ll make you stupider. I unplugged the fucker and threw a blanket over it. Fucking thing had been talking to me all night. These walls are yellow. Light another cigarette. Resin yellow. Navajo white. All shitty apartments are painted beige. And the carpet? Asphalt brown. Oily green? I don’t know the names of carpet colors. I know I was in my living room. My television wasn’t in the parking lot and I don’t own a car. The parking lot doesn’t have a ceiling. The ceiling is stained with dried blood. We shoot our dope. Draw water back into the barrel and blast the ceiling. Better a stained ceiling than a clogged syringe. The light switches are old. Noisy fuckers that pop when you switch them. The kitchen is rolled linoleum and no pilot light on the stove. We don’t eat. We don’t waste money on toilet paper. I know every inch and sound of this place. The blinds are a tweaker's nightmare. Vertical and warped. Ten till Four in the morning is a fucking nightmare. The liquor goes on sale at six. I plot my route. I don’t like most people.
Redemption
“I don’t have any excuses for the things I do; hell, I probably can’t remember half of it.”
I am pregnant. I give my vital being to my manifested desire. Dark and twisting its life nurtured by my being. My child, my heart I name you hate. Moving through the night my van hums and sways. The lights outside are swimming outside me like twisted deep sea predators, so beautiful to prey, but we are much too deep and there are only predators here. I know I’m just a little fish but I’m using myself as bait dragging my hate beside me hoping to coax something really dangerous from the dark water. I swing the van to right on Artesia, and I can hear my hate is singing. The darkness is moving as I drive into the black of the overpass. I’m almost there, just a little bit more will push me over the edge.
There in the darkness just one misplaced foot in a well-timed dance and the light on the other side of the tunnel hits me. I’m there, I am over the edge. The van careens forward and I see my destination just up ahead. I swerve to the right and stomp on the brakes, grab my bag, turn off the lights, open a door, grab the keys and jump. All this happens at once and I’m not sure how many hands I have but the darkness is demanding movement and I, I sacrifice. I pass the entrance and follow the path left under the road, to the place I can be secret, to the place I can move free.
I am sitting underneath the Artesia Blvd. overpass staring blankly out at the grey concrete of the riverbed and its silent, rapidly moving water. I mechanically place the last of the stitching into the poppet feeling the cockroach inside it squirming against my forefinger and thumb. I snap the thread off at the doll’s crotch leaving a length of thread dangling there and smile at my work as I drive the needle into its head. Picking up what’s left of my second 40 of Old English I drink with purpose and inspect my work.
Pulling a length of twine from my pocket I start to carefully bind the effigy while explaining to my victim what I’m doing to him. Once I have finished my explanations and accusations, I finish up my knot. Spitting in its little blank face I toss it into the foot-deep hole to my left and giggle. Two broken beer bottles and a bladder full of beer follow him into the hole before I bury the lot. Looking down at the little grave I think that my curse probably won’t work but if it does; “Fuck that guy, he gets what he gets.”
The sun is starting to rise as I’m standing there contemplating my work. Turning my back on the hateful piece of art still singing in the ground next to me, I look towards the east and watch the light grow. “Just in time” I mutter, and make my way back to the van. Walking up the rise towards the street I’m blinded by the morning sun. As I close my eyes against the light, I think how the sun rises giving light and life to all, and smile because “sinner or saint” the sun doesn’t care who you are.
“Shit, my phone is ringing.”
The door to the Dodge is open and I curse myself as jump into the driver’s seat. My phone is on the floor and the caller ID reads “Brother” so I grab it and answer the call.
“Hey David, how you doing?” He’s quiet and sobbing. He’s probably broke himself again and I’m too fucked-up to care but remember that I want to.
“Everything alright?” Of course, it isn’t.
As he catches his breath and pulls himself together, I think about how I only ever seem to receive two types of phone calls; the first is from people who want something, and the second is from family trying to find out if I’m still alive. I’m pretty sure that this makes me a bad person but I prefer the first and I’m almost positive I know where this one is going. People who want something I understand.
That’s when he gasped.
“I got high and I’m…” Being raped by your own brain?
“It’s going to be ok David; you don’t have to feel like this. Is there any left?” Fuck you, I’m trying to save my brother’s life.
Maybe you can come over and bring some beers? That might actually help”.
“Sure, I’ll be right there.” Hopefully.
I hang up quick and try to get my shit together. It’s been a long night and I’m not sure if I’m completely here. Then I laugh out loud and think, ‘Who is?’
I wonder, how lucid are the people around me? Do they ever venture far from their thoughts of self-gratification and survival? How many of the people I know stop and stare into the night sky and try to imagine the immensity of it all? I know my brother does but it doesn’t seem to bring him the same consolation as it does me. I know there are millions of others in this world who spend their lives in the pursuit of knowledge and are driven forward by their curiosity, but they are a long way from here. I live on an entirely different planet from those others. On this planet the population is more interested in Machiavellian games of power, and getting their daily doses of pleasure. My world is violent to those who let their guard down. It doesn’t care for intellect or imagination, and is the coldest type of comfort to know those others exist because there is no way from here to there that I can see or even imagine.
Enough of that shit, let’s get some beer.
Barry Burdett
2015
Shade
A chunk
Of dope
Big as
A Bible
Creating
The sex
Unhinges
The slut
In lost
Minds
Libido
Wasted
Taken to
Be absolute
Without
Thought
Consumed
By need
Broken
Skin
Plunge
Rush
Dived
Into
The
Flesh
Of other
Lost men
Closeted
Fluidity
Glazed
Veins
Ridged
Dark
Muscular
Grivets
Thrusting
Regardless
Into
Orgasm
And
Shame
I became
A nightmare
Moaning
An emergent
Other self
Of different
Stimuli
Kinked
And
Shattered
Wandering
The split
Lustfully
Aware
That
Sanity
Is not
My friend
David Burdett
6/27/2021
David Burdett 