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Check out one of my favorite West Coast writers, Zarina Zabrisky, at her site (ZarinaZabrisky.com), and maybe if we’re ever in the same time zone for a night, you might see us doing a reading in some tipsy, bombed out, poetic room.

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For Sunny Days  

             The tense, melancholic dips of clinical depression have become more or less expected, like a constant morning when you know you have to wake up to walk the dog otherwise it will piss all over the carpet. You can feel these dips approaching, slowly coming on, like a begrimed blonde in a lousy bar who’s sloppily playing with the zipper of your jeans after you’ve bought her a half dozen drinks upon request. You begin seeing your beard spreading onto your neck, lower and lower like an inverted turtleneck; like a coldblooded, vulgar army employing a scorched earth policy. No quarter will be shown to those captured.

            The distress you’ve felt in the surrounding world becomes a mutiny, an enemy, a tempest, an idea with a drill head, an entire armada of emotions that has outmanned and outflanked your sanity – bombarding the synapses of your psyche until there’s nothing and no one left but hatred wearing the bloodied captain’s robes.

            You hate the teenagers buying teal packs of American Spirits at overpriced Manhattan delis for $15 dollars.

            You hate the late MTA buses and the commuters that wait patiently and sigh like fishermen.

            You hate the smell of the decrepit Hispanic men on the subway, coated like ablution and shame in garlic and the rancid sweat of yesterday’s drink.

            You hate the military recruiters handing out pamphlets outside the entrances into our universities (30,000 sexual abuse cases annually as something to look forward to, hidden in the small print).  

            You hate the J.P. Morgan Chase employees that stand around like panhandlers in suits stalking gullible prey with business cards and promises of a low APR if you fill out an application for a new credit card today.

            You hate the girls that look too innocent for this city, except for an Upper West Side trust fund; coddled into psychoanalysis at the age of twelve as a rite of passage, walking barelegged and high, unaware that they’re destined to make a vocation out of dating assholes throughout their jejune years of pale beauty, while constantly waiting for the reincarnation of an approbating father to arrive and embrace them.

            You hate the rising real estate prices: to buy or to rent or just a quiet place to die in like a suitcase; you hate the beggars that sleep in the only shade left in the street; you hate the lionized manner in which everyone tries to wear a unique hue while finding nothing interesting to say at half-time; you hate the honest liars, the WASPs with their over-groomed children and the good pew on Sunday morning, the guy that hands you a coupon for a titty-bar at 10 am on a busy weekday every time you walk past Church Street, the awkward smiles, the dying light, the mounting work, the constant bills in the mail, the lovers you can’t seem to forget, the dinner date forced upon, the familiarity of it all…

            And most of all, you hate the inevitability. The goddamn inevitability. It never seems to change. 

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