On the departure of an old friend, by Tony Cox
"If they don't pull those tubes out of him soon, I'll do it myself," I whisper to my old friend. It was hard seeing Keno that way. He'd been in a coma for 22 days. The small room at the trauma center was filled with "nice" white people, much crying and gnashing of teeth. "Who the fuck are these people?" I ask. "Some guy who used to date his mom before she died, long time ago. These are all this guy's church people," says my old crazy friend. Wait. Now I recognize that dude. He was just another crack head, is how I remember him. I guess some people have to attach themselves to a tragedy, like vultures, for their own self-serving reasons. Polish up their good-guy badges, maybe get some sympathy for themselves out of it while they're at it.
Two teenage girls are crying at his bedside. I am 100% positive they've never even met the person they're crying for. One of them asks the doctor, "Will he be able to breathe for himself when the tubes come out?"
I interrupt them and say, "I bet if you put a weed pipe in his mouth he'd hit it." My old friend smiles, and almost laughs. The church people ignore me. "What can we do to wake him up?" the other crying girl sobs to the doctor. I elbow my old friend, and say "Did they even TRY sucking his dick yet?" He finally allows himself a laugh.
Long winded prayers are said, scripture is read aloud, these fools actually believe in their promised land. They're even praying for the drunken drag queen who fled the scene, after plowing into him at 70mph while he fixed his flat tire. How Christ-like of them. These treacherous god-heads sicken me.
I'm asked if I would like to say anything. I would.
"You were a true warrior. Always ready to throw down, never ran away, never bowed to any man or god. Fuck this world." I walked into the hallway while they pulled out the tubes that animated his corpse. This was 10:32am on November 27th.
I hope I'm killed before I die. That's all we can really ask for, isn't it?
(c) 2017 Tony Rooster
A lot of what haunts me as a fading man is contained or alluded to within this brief ode to Keno. The length of composition, in my opinion, was perfect.
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