"The Drunk Guy’s Dick" by Mikel Weisser

"The Drunk Guy’s Dick"
By Mikel Weisser, of Kingman

Written March 14, 2009,
read at the Sedona Poetry Slam
on Saturday, March 20

So,
We see this drunk guy
Fucked up
And there he is
Pissing against the wall

Understand,
It’s New Year’s Eve
And it’s right at midnight
And our evening of party has fallen to fighting
And right at the stroke too,
Right at the stroke
So we go outside for air
And there’s this drunk guy
And the drunk guy’s dick

Understand
It’s not just any old wall
And not just any old time
He’s two feet from the front door
Of this crowded downtown bar
And it’s midnight + 30 seconds
The first new minute
Of the New Year 2005
And he’s pissing right at us
It’s splashing on our shoes

Happy Fucking New Year and all that

As I remember it now
And I do remember it
Now and again
I remember we were fighting
Did a lot of it that night
Don’t remember much else of the evening
But I do remember the drunk guy’s dick

Which is kind of annoying

That puff of graying copper wool bursting out of the jean vagina
The nodes and veins
The black of his nails
The way the 2 finger hold of his
Failed to steady the hose
And the shadow on the shaft between them
That odd angle of the Moyle’s work

The arching steam
Neoned globules
Sprinkled into the pavement in a fog
The intensity of his exhale as he released

Huh!

His eyes were closed in concentration’
It may’ve been the best feeling of his entire life
Meanwhile it’s downtown in a state capital on New Year’s, you know?
Cars were cruising by honking
Yelling about New Year’s
Squealing at the guy’s dick
Understand,
It’s Springfield , Illinois
Land of Lincoln, 5 blocks from Lincoln’s house,
3 blocks from the capital itself
It is right at the cusp
Of the next new era

And we’re dodging flying urine

Meanwhile the guy’s stream has reverse tributaried
Into several simultaneous vigorous channels
Blocking the sidewalk better than
Police crime scene tape.
The rivulets are rippling around
Cigarettes and holiday confetti

And those dirty fingernails
That endless urine stream
It must have been a 12-pack
It might’ve been gallons
It might’ve been better measured in acre feet per minute

And it froze me,
I was fixated
And at some point he sensed our staring
“Well, don’t just stand there looking.
What’s wrong with you people?”

He squinted harder and gave his stream more force

“Wrong with us?
You’re the one with your dick out
In the middle of the street.”

“Didn’t tell ya you had to watch”
He blinked once and then kept going

Meanwhile she was gone.

Saw her up the street
Snapped out of it
And walked on
Remembered we were fighting

I saw my wife walk away from me
While I tried to hopscotch through his tributaries
But I didn’t make it
I jerked and spasmed
To shake his pee off of me
And followed her into the darkening New Year night
While his bladder kept splattering
In the distance

And as I tried to follow my wife
As she kept receding
I kept remembering the drunk guy’s dick
And wondering why
I kept remembering the drunk guy’s dick
And what kind of a year
This kind of omen meant

The next day we were wary
And silent except for apologies to each other
We flew on home
And two weeks later
To the day
I picked up the phone and
Her mom was gone
And the world as we knew it ended then

Oh, we stumbled back to the town where the year had started
And things just kept dribbling downhill
By spring the estate was an uproar
By summer the money was gone
By fall they were taking our house
By December my wife took her life.

I woke one Saturday to find her dead and warm
In my arms
Her red-purple rose of lividity
Spread across her lower face
Like a drunk woman beaten
And her panties soaked somewhat
As her sleep slipped into something deeper

By New Year’s Eve I was broke from buying her funeral
And the lawyers and I
Were negotiating my upcoming eviction
I was returning from yet another trip to Springfield
And yet another funeral
I’d driven all day and into the night
The evening blurred into miles
Racing across the desert dark
Heading back home to a home
That was soon to not be mine
Mile after mile driving ‘home’ that way
Till somewhere west of Williams
I saw the apparition of a woman
White dress, white puppy, book in her hand
Splotched snow framing
The way her dress whipped in the wind
No coat, no hat, no luggage
Just ambling down the road
Lost in the middle of the darkness

I stopped and waited till she drifted to the truck
We hardly spoke the next 100 miles
She sold me her book for a twenty dollar bill
It was a battered old copy of “Pilgrim’s Progress,”
But not $20.00 worth of old
I’ve yet to open it to this day

I sat in my darkened living room
In time for my new year’s eve minute
I said nothing at all
There was no one to talk to

And now days the year of 2005 is long dead
And largely buried
In the ongoing stream of time
Most of the year is lost to me now
The way a charred trunk
Leaves only the barest hint
Of the tree it once might have been

Shards of events come back sometimes
The purple rose of that Dec. morning
Most present
Amid the random moments of watching
The life I had known be washed away
And the black under the fingernails
That wrapped round that drunk’s dick
Those lively yellow tributaries
That worked their ways to the gutter

And the taste of the instant I thought
What’s it going to mean
This drunk guy pissing on my New Year
And the forever wishing I had caught
The look on my wife’s face
As she stared
Before she started off into the night
That instant when she stepped across those streams of urine
And into her last New Year.

Mikel Weisser © 2010

From Mikel Weisser's "Over This Mountain"
Available for $10 from:
Cohillican Productions
4490 Sundown Drive, So-Hi, AZ 86413
yzurthemepark@gmail.com