Brian Eckert

The morning coffee is
a toast to the new day, a
ceremonial offering to the dawn.

Making the bed is
hope for a fresh start, setting things straight
for the next stage of dreams.

Whiskers in the sink are
a reminder of my animal nature that
each day I must repress if I am to get out,
make a man of myself.

A tie is the noose I wear
as a cross, a
token of my sacrifice, my
daily martyrdom.

My dress shoes are a
shiny black steed that
carry the hero through
the wasteland.

The dinging that indicates the train is approaching
is the bell tolling
for me.

The train ride is lustful, a
great phallus penetrating the damp
flesh of the city.
I daydream that time stops and all aboard
are frozen, except myself, and
I walk through the cars examining their
Disguises,
comparing them to my own.

Each laugh I hear is a battle cry, announcing,
“The world hasn’t broken me yet,”
but on some days laughter isn’t enough, so I
decide to howl instead.
I rear back, begin to bellow like a beast…
…and then they come for me, drag me away kicking
and screaming, a blow to the head and my world goes black…

I wake up in a hospital bed, the surgeons
wearing Halloween masks and telling me,
“Things will be fine, m’boy, now we’ve got
just the thing for what’s ailing you.”
They gouge a long shank through my eye socket, and
there is no pain,
only blood….
It spills out like a
river overflowing its banks. Soon,
the room fills, a drain opens on the floor, spinning us
around, then
down, down down…

I wake up to find myself reading the newspaper. The front page headline reads:
Lobotomies Making a Comeback as a Way to Ease Worker Discontent
The weather is mild and unemployment sits at 8.43679%.
The price of real estate is up, but should soon steady.
I laugh fully, deeply, hysterically,
until a pleasant looking woman comes in with
a steaming cup of coffee that I
slurp down with a gilded straw, then
with one leap vault from the table,
land perfectly in my shiny dress shoes, and
blast through the wall.

“The drugs!  Ditch the drugs!  He’s coming!”

When Pete doesn’t immediately comply with my frenzied request to jettison the narcotics I grab his backpack and attempt to throw it into the brackish water.

“Take it easy man,” he says, wrestling the bag away from me. “We’re gonna be fine.”

Stanton has no reaction. He silently and expressionlessly pilots the boat from his position in the back.

Seized by terror I pull my knees into my chest, bury my face between them, and tell myself that if I don’t look at the boat creeping ever closer this nightmare will somehow end. Read the rest of this entry »

When black dreams lead to blackened day, the feeling is one of betrayal:
of the self, by the self.

Unfaithful sensibilities, disloyal reality, are not tolerated here, in the Kingdom of Conniving Fleas. Don’t make me make an example of myself. 1,327 consecutive life sentences. No possibility of Nirvana.
Only conjugal visits with a Sacred Cow.

Betrayed by night, I rue the day. Cut off yesterday to spite tomorrow.
Fear (if sleep is not safe, where might refuge ever be found?) begets uncertainty;
uncertainty reveals complexity.

The complex tears man asunder.
What is simple heals him.
Even if the balm be unctuous.

No, I am not myself today.
Or perhaps I am too much myself.
I spent hours alone in an underground room, trying to prove to myself that I don’t exist, that I’m not
the Invisible Man.

Saved by the bell. Only strangers drop-in anymore.
They tell me to sign on the dotted line and I know
I was bought off long ago.

Or it could be an evangelist, asking me if I’ve read the Bible.
Some say the Good Book is just astrology. Just the other day a man saw Jesus in a pile of windshield bird shit.
He always looks handsome in pictures.
Nowadays he’d be just another hipster,
working at a sushi restaurant
writing a bad memoir.

Poor neighborhoods, like this one, tend to have a high concentration of churches. On Sundays I like to take a long walk. Every few blocks there’s a church from which pours snippets of voices, organ music, clapping hands, stomping feet. I’ve never been a churchgoer, but I imagine what would happen if I opened a door mid-service and settled into a pew in the back. I think of what it would be like to lose myself completely in the preacher’s voice, the crowd’s movements, the high ceilings, the stained glass. To be a believer, just for an hour. I will slip out the door quickly when the service is over and walk home wrapped in a strange calm, in spite of the reinstatement of my disbelief.

Yes, I prepare to say to the True Believer at the door, I have heard the words of Christ.
No, I do not follow them.
But please talk of them…speak friend!
I will become lost in the roll of your voice,
you purring cat!
Your certainty gives me hope that someday
I may too be sure of something.

There is no man with a bible
wielded like a shotgun
at my door.

A slightly-less-than-middle-aged Mexican man stands there.
Hey man. I’m lukeing for Pancho man. A leetle guy. He says heez leeving at this address man.

Pancho doesn’t live here amigo.

Ok man. Thanks man. I’ll check the other houses.

Wait, amigo, I say.
Do you have a minute?
I’d like to talk to you about the message of
Jesus Christ, our lord and savior.

This poem appeared in Red Fez

I.

Went West

with dust of haunted dreams

in my blood

stopped just short of where

white caps crash against the sky

In Denver,

just to get away

because I have to get away from something,

just to kill some time

because I have to kill something.

Pioneers came West to below where

white caps crash against the sky

cuz the grass was greener

Pioneers still coming, like me,

cuz the sky is bigger,

the sky is so goddamned big

you swear you can see clear through to

Home

or wherever.

That something

we want to run back to

when the sky gets smaller,

the grass isn’t greener. Read the rest of this entry »

“$400, all you can drink,” says a young Taiwanese man standing in front of a Thai restaurant in downtown Kenting.

I mull over the proposition—not a bad one, considering that three drinks could easily cost that much. Seth, however, saves me any further deliberation by paying $800 for the two of us.

The charge grants us unlimited access to a limited drink menu offering gin and tonics, rum and cokes, screwdrivers, and draft beer. The cocktails are certain to be watered down and the beer topped off with ice, but all you can drink is still all you can drink. Read the rest of this entry »

“San ping sake,” I tell the server. Three bottles of sake.

When she returns a few minutes later with the fresh pitchers of warm rice wine I pour shots for myself and my friends. Sitting directly to my right is a young Californian who’s been in Beijing for just under a week. I toast to him on this evening, one that marks both his first night out in the city and his first sake experience.

At the table next to ours a group of local men wearing the green jerseys of the local soccer club are also imbibing sake. I make eye contact with one of them.

“Sake feichang hao,” I say. Sake is very good.

With this simple statement the red-faced Chinese man and his equally crimson companions acknowledge the group of foreigners with a chorus of “hellos” and offer to fill our glasses. With cups brimming, my new Chinese friend clinks his sake vessel to mine and says, “ganbei,” which translates to “empty the cup.” All of us drain our glasses and continue to “ganbei” for the better part of an hour.

By the end of the aggressive drinking session the China newbie is grinning a happy drunken grin and surveying the loud, smoky restaurant with a look of awe. We pay our bill—a ridiculously cheap 150 Yuan (around $25) per person for three hours of all you can eat and drink—and spill out into the night, chatting and laughing our way to the next spot, a Western style bar teeming with dolled up Chinese girls.

We find seats among a group of them at a back corner table. Somebody pulls out a hash joint and it makes its way around. Drunk, stoned, and cozied up to a sexy young local, the newb leans into my ear and says, “Man, is this a pretty typical night out?”

I tell him that it is. What I don’t tell him is that he is now one of the Lost Boys of China. Read the rest of this entry »