He Ain’t No Nice Guy
VCS
They called him insane, the man of pain
They called him lame
Some just said, ‘You ain’t no nice guy’
But none of that was true,
it was just an angle of the sun
beaming off a diamond
He didn’t ask for accolades
He said, ‘I’m the boy in the box’
They made him the holy ghost
They said he moved through them
They said he spread death on the air
He said, ‘leave me alone’
They said, ‘You ain’t no nice guy’.
He didn’t ask to be put in the center ring
He didn’t ever want to have it be a whole big thing
They copied him in every way
They stole his hair and his poetry
They called him a saint and took away his privacy
They called him insane, the man of pain
They called him lame
They cut hairs into splinters to make each accusation true
Until they drove him into the arms of madness
That’s where I met him
And I could see why they did what they did to him
With his nose broken
His long hair hanging in his face
I found him on the mens room on the floor
A needle in his arm
He whispered to me, ‘get back, I ain’t no nice guy’
I sat beside him on the floor
the tiles were cold, his body radiated heat
the toiled smelled like shit and vomit
‘this ain’t no nice place to be,’ I replied as I sunk down
So our eyes could lock
I wondered if I was his hallucination or if I was his
Either way, he stroked my hair away from my eyes
And I felt his fingertips, as soft and real as a spring breeze
‘They’re always going to do this to you, you’ll always end up where I am’
I nodded in understanding
Looking at him all I saw the preying mantis from the classroom
And he was the bug caught in her grip
‘So what do we do?’ I asked
He laughed, his laugh echoed and then he stopped because
We both knew how it was
He was mad
‘We pray.’
He took my hands in his and started to pray
Yay, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I shall fear no evil
He opened his eyes and I opened mine,
We had each dug half moons with our fingertips
Into the other’s hands
His eyes were the only thing in the room that wasn’t
the color of bile or other exudate.
When we had prayed and I was still there
He said to me, ‘I shall fear no evil; but it still
smells like shit and I still ain’t no nice guy.’
I saw the syringe had fallen from his arm and rolled behind the toilet.
A drop of his blood brightened the room on his forearm.
He saw where my gaze had gone and pulled my gaze back to his and said,
‘Ain’t anyone got to be nice to know this ain’t real and we’re both
being eaten by the world. What’s a few painkillers between me and the Lord?’
That was the first time I met him, when I fell asleep in class
But it wouldn’t be the last
Call him the Holy Ghost
Call him the Angel of Death
Call him a Poet
Call him a Priest
He doesn’t owe it to anyone to be a nice guy but I rather think that he is.