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I woke to bastard sunbeams
and the smell of 10 a.m.
There'd been a nightmare
of some nigger who tried
to steal my girl once.
The drool stains on my pillows
proved I'd told him how I felt.
Through the floor I heard
a man carve his day-old bird
to make a sandwich.
I'd spent the holiday alone.
My leftovers were internal.

There was a message on my phone
received at four in the morning--
when the good ones tend to come;
when the coming's all the same.
The area code was as baffling
as the words and punctuation.
An inquiry of the prefix
revealed a western New York number.
My past career of heartache
never spread into that region.
Another unknown psycho
closing in to make the kill.

I rubbed one out, did the dishes
went about my half-dressed business
until the missive piqued my interest
as the song remained the same.
"Who is this?" I asked
knowing there would be no answer.
These vague, clandestine messengers
never cough up their credentials.

I poured a second mug of jet fuel
though the grounds were in the mix.
Had to nuke it for a minute
since it cooled down fairly quickly
with the heat just barely running
to help save on the bills.
There's only one sucker
paying them now. It's equal parts
blood and money.

That's when it came again--
the same encrypted sentence.
This time I noticed a number
at the bottom, presumably a date:
*06*28*08.
I thought back to where I was then
and whom I was inside.
It held no relevance.
Didn't make much sense
as usual, though the message
as the good ones are
was tragically universal:
***LOVE IS LOYALTY!!!!
CAPS and symbols unembellished.

I dumped that cup of coffee
down the sink into the sewer.
The world had no mercy left
to divvy out today.
The sun's angle promised us that.
It was good to be inspired.
I'd have to lower the shades
creating my own fate
in the darkness
between bricks.