The Loser.

I usually don't sleep very good. It’s usually a short and shallow bout and it’s always been this way.
But every so often comes a time when I find my place in the night.
I try and hold on to it, grasping it with everything possessed and conjured.
And there I defend it with the promise of vengeance.
I will cling to it with my goddamn fingernails if need be.
But then they drag me away forcefully, until the nails pop out of my cuticles and blood splatters everywhere.
And the agony of the alarm clock brings me reluctantly up and out of this evasive, dreamless slumber.


I was electrocuted awake at 5:42 in the a.m. It's dark and it's cold and it came along too fast.
Dim and yellow street lights fade into the room as my eyes are pried.
A quick initiation with my surroundings this fine morning.
Where the fuck am I?


Fridays are naturally those incredible celebrate-and-freakout kind of days that I’m forced to truly live for these days. My mind has been heavy and tired from mute and mild perseverance.
But still, I can’t feel the weekend’s lovely presence or any alleviation of the work week until late into Friday afternoon.
And so, this morning sucked like any other workday.
Waking at that awful hour, it may as well be Monday.
I couldn't find my work boots. Where the fuck is my jacket?
I'm out of the house and on the bike and to the train and under the bay and west to east oakland and down the avenues finally crash landing into the work day. Into a dull and terrible place in the world.
It’s a warehouse. A factory. A loading dock. It doesn’t matter.
It’s a building. Men work there. It will close its doors in less than a year.


I was on time today. I put Mexican cocoa in my coffee. Things were working out fine.
Then, ten minutes into my shift, over the noise of the forklift and the bullshit,
I hear two pieces of information simultaneously.
One is that this dude is getting fired. His name’s Jason Gomez.
Now this is a terrible thing to compact the hard times, etc.
But this guy sucked at his job and while I feel bad about it, I am more selfishly worried, at this point, that he will come back at break time and fuck everybody up with an assault rifle.
He's just the kind. A friendly and generally likable guy, telling jokes one minute.
And then off the fucking handle the next.
You could tell he was the kind of kid who struck out looking and then trashed the dugout with angry tears burning his eyes.
He seems to embody that cry baby fat kid attitude that a lot of these fucking men carry with them far past infancy.
So, I was wondering why nobody else was worried about this. Fuck getting shot at work.
Isn’t Friday supposed to be a lighter load?
A day that some are rewarded for another week of labor by getting off early?
Can we all please evade this mass murder-suicide?

The other thing I overheard was that Les Schultz, some careless business agent from the union,
was hanging around.
The only time this guy ever shows up is for bullshit like union dues. He's a thug for the moneymen
in the local. Useless to those who work. He isn’t the angry and somewhat charismatic guy, the archetypal organizer, the fabled being we naively hope to find as workingmen, coming around to the few remaining warehouses in East Oakland, to give the Friday morning news.
"We should become the parts of a new machine and rise and counter and destroy what
keeps us near dead and stratified! No more, motherfuckers, No more!"
Not this asshole. Not today. No, Les Schultz just collects money.


So, I had to evade this asshole because I owe some past dues I can't send until my next paycheck.
And I don't know what's going to happen with this deranged and recently former warehouse hand.
This sounds like a Springsteen song.

Most of the morning was spent wandering around and getting a headache.
And then I think about the fact that the listless path of my life has brought me to this stupid moment in time.


I found a way to keep busy and to avoid certain people.
And time went on excruciatingly slow. But it went on.
At about ten minutes to noon, I saw the ex-employee leave with the union stooge.
They walked out to a blue late 90s model Ford Taurus. And they never came back.
Then I realized that the firing and the union and the closed door office meeting inside was all over with.
And none of it had to do with me.
I thought hopefully that we’d all make it to five o'clock.


My fucking head throbbed and it was a menacing afternoon, but I made it. We made it. I could go on living, with all my limbs and a tired but non-vegetative mind.
I could evade union dues and go home and sleep like the elderly and smoke dope and listen to records.

Sabbath. Infest. Curtis Mayfield. Waylon Jennings. Dr. Dre. John Coltrane.
Blunt wraps. Light beer. Dark beer. Whiskey poured into beer. All limitations have died.
All my fears have eroded for the day. “I'm gonna live!”

Friday afternoon finally moved into evening and no work now and no work tomorrow.
I ride a hundred miles per down 98th avenue and back the way i came.
Home is where is weed is.




Then it was just about dark. The sun receded and night time would soon be everywhere.
I arrive home in that fine bridge of time. Yellowish lights dimly igniting the street I live on.
It's kind of warm outside.
I open the windows and get high and think about beer and basketball and poetry and film. All kinds of shit.
I’m safe and warm for now.
The world opens up for just one moment. And rests alongside me. And then it smiles and fades away.


The weariness from work is a language everybody knows. It wears us down.
Backs and knees and fingers and feet. Slowly, they become broken and useless.
But the worst thing for me is what it does to my brain.
It fucks with my memory. It constantly blurs any path to glory.
The truth about the things that hide all the time, the ones that are simple and not so bad, it buries itself in the center of my chest. It says it won't go away but I get scared.
I have to remember all of this.
I have to remember things like the ceremony in listening to a record.
The waiting just after the needle drops and the wonderful assault, that first sound.
A holy act if there ever was one, the music, the ending, the reward money.

I remember all of this. Celebration will come.
For now I breathe and think blankly about the fortune in this break between battles.
I listen to another record.
I remember and I revel in the calmness of victory.