Master of None
In a moment
Of weakness
I filled out
The application
In another moment
Of cowardice
For the next 8 years
I worked every shitty job
Known to mankind
Until finally
In a fit of rage
And insanity
I excused myself
From the table
Left the check
At the register
And walked out
The backdoor
Without a care
in the world
Goddamn
Had I known
I’d live to see 50
I would have killed myself
A long time ago
David Burdett
8/27/2024
The Whole Enchilada
I had just moved into a new place with a new roommate when the proposition was put forth. “How about this” he said, “if you want, and this is totally up to you bro, no pressure- I can take the tortillas you said I could have and we could use your chicken to make some enchiladas.”
What the fuck? I thought.
“I don’t own any chicken bro.” I said hoping to not involve myself from what was already threatening to get on my nerves.
“You do have chicken!” he announced as if we were live in front of a studio audience.
“Fuck you talkin’ about?” I asked.
He stood looking at me as the creepy sound of exhalations fell from his mouth; something that only a true mouth breather can produce. My brain exploded. He continued.
“Step aside” he said as I measured his forehead to be 3 inches stretched. He popped open the freezer revealing a ten-pound bag of iced chicken flesh. “See! You’ve got a whole ten-pound bag!”
“Oh yeah, I forgot all about it.” Time is on no man’s side and this retard was wasting mine at an alarming rate. As I feigned interest he pulled can after can of ancient sauces off of the shelves and explained to me that some were spicy and some were hot and that spicy and hot weren’t the same. I finally told him I needed to get my room in order and do some writing. Once inside my room I found a Playboy magazine dated September 1984, “Girls of The Big Ten: Let’s Do it Again” then jumped into the time machine and blasted off. Fuck Hugh Heffner I thought as I pitched the smelly cum laden sock into the corner and didn’t write a single word.
The next morning, I rose from my slumber right back into the clutches of the enchilada. “Dude, you know what I was thinking?”
“No”
“Well, since I’m gonna be doing all the cooking maybe you could pick us up some cheese from the 99-cent store. You can get a two-pound block for around six dollars and I’m thinkin’ about asking Robert if he wants to buy the onions so that he can get in on this too.”
“I don’t have that kind of money to spend. Why not just use what’s at hand? I’m not picky. As a matter of fact, if they sold big bags of ‘People Food’ I’d just eat that.”
“Bro. Dave. Look at me dude.”
I looked at him. I saw a ring of brown muck around his mouth. I saw the 9-volt battery operating his brain needed replacing. He continued. A real shit-slinger.
“The ladies love a man who can cook. Because they know if you can cook! Oh, brother let me tell you!” The room exploded into ghoulish laughter as I thought, motherfucker-you couldn’t get laid in a women’s prison with a fist full of paroles.
“Project Enchilada” had officially entered into day 2. And as I thought about karmic retribution and shittier men than me waking up to the gazing eyes of unattached love and supple breasts, I looked across at him and thought if I was an addle-brained homosexual who was hot for 6’8” ex-crackhead ghouls, my life would be perfect.
I excused myself from Betty-Crocka-Shit, got my tools together and as I exited the house was asked, “So, are you gonna be home for dinner tonight?”
“Yeah. Sure. I’ll catch up with you this evening.”
“I’ll leave the porch light on for you if you’re sure gonna coming back tonight”
“I’m comin’ back tonight.” I replied.
He had an obsession with electricity usage, I figured it was probably from licking the wall sockets as a child. An explosion of goofy laughter followed me out the gate. He loved television. Especially the weather bunny, she cracked stale jokes and had huge tits.
I spent my day ripping out a friend’s front yard with a pick axe and not thinking about enchiladas. I’ve always enjoyed the simplicity of dirt work. Alone with your thoughts, one shovel full at a time until the mind has quieted and the body is exhausted.
When I got home, he wasn’t there and the relief I felt at not smelling enchiladas was quickly replaced with the ‘you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me’ feeling that assaulted me when he materialized behind me with a bag full of enchilada essentials and a 20-minute rundown on when, how, and where he bought the rest of the shit to prepare the fucking thing. And when I attempted to retreat to the bathroom, he informed me that he’d just ‘dropped a deuce’ and continued to ramble on about the impending enchiladas.
“Well,” he said “we’ve got it all brother! Everything we need for the feast!”
“Hold that thought” I said, “I’m gonna hit the head.” I decided I would rather hide in the bathroom and smell his shit rather than stand in the kitchen and listen to it.
I got out of the house on day 3 of the “Enchiladathon” without having to hear the word enchilada but it was too late. The motherfucker had already gotten too far up in my head and as I returned to my shovel job the next day his distorted mug danced around my mind with enchiladas and hatred. I worked until dark and when my friend got home, I explained to her my unwillingness to commit a homicide over the whole enchilada crisis. She understood enough to let me sleep on her couch.
I don’t remember the dream but I do know that he and his ridiculous fucking enchilada bullshit were part of it. I relayed to her the murky contents of the dream and was told that I was more than welcome to spend as much time at her place as I needed. I thanked her for accommodating me but I had to go home and see about the enchiladas. There was no other way the spell could be broken.
Back at the apartment I was asked where I’d been? What happened? Fuck you would have been the appropriate response but I made up some bullshit and before I knew what was happening, I was being shown an industrial sized pan of tomato sauce. I fixated on the pan itself and wondered if he had stolen it upon escaping a mental institution. The “Well what do you think?” vibe hung in the air.
“Oh, wow man, looks good” I lied.
“Fuck yeah brother! We got frijoles too!”
It was culinary Russian roulette. I wouldn’t have trusted this man to babysit a parakeet but here I was willing to risk everything by ingesting this pan of red goop. I thought of Jeffrey Dahmer giving his neighbors beef casseroles. I thought of rivers of menstrual fluid. I thought: Fuck it. It ends here. It ends now.
I took my plate and sat down on the couch. It was all I had imagined: A bland conglomeration of tomato sauce and chicken that had been pulverized in a blender. No cheese. I guess he didn’t have the 6 bucks either and as I complimented his culinary skills and asked him what the trick to making good ‘frijoles’ was he answered back.
“Remember when you first moved in and found those cans of spaghetti sauce and beans at the bus stop and you were worried that they might not be good because they had been in the sun all day?”
“Yeah.” I answered.
“Those are them.”
“The beans and the spaghetti sauce?” I asked.
“Yeah bro! I mixed the spaghetti sauce with the enchilada sauce and next thing you know you’re in Mexico and Italy!”
“No shit.”
A shadow had cast itself across the landscape of my psyche as I saw tremendous storm clouds with brown bellies float over my world. If I could have drowned myself in a river of Pepto-Bismol I would have, right before I shoved a block of salt in his mouth, kicked him in the balls and threw his ass into a volcano.
I politely chewed, swallowed, made a couple of yummy sounds and told him to make sure and save me some leftovers then went to bed.
It was as if my body was being held up by a giant fork through my midsection. My arms quivered liked noodles as I assumed the classic doggy style position. I immediately thought I was in cardiac arrest then realized I was being butt-fucked by a giant enchilada. The stomach acids boiled in my throat as I disconnected from what was being done to me. As quickly as it began it was over and as I lay sweating and spitting bile I whispered, “Thy will be done.”
The next morning, I decided an early morning walk along the beach was in order to cleanse my spirit. I would hand my burdens to the ocean. I’d walk the sands of forgiveness and be happy. After all, far worse things had happened to better men than me I thought as I shut the front door behind and smiled at the idea of burning the place down as I made my way to the bus stop.
It felt good to be out early. The streets would soon burst into chaos as day broke but I was immune. I had a full pack of smokes, 9 dollars and only myself to contend with. Life was good I thought as I smoked and saw the bus coming my way. It was all too perfect. Fuck him I thought. He can’t help that he fried his brain. I had decided to grant him forgiveness for his culinary transgressions. But as the bus pulled to a stop and the doors popped open my asshole belched enchilada shit all over the back of my pants.
She had to have been the most beautiful bus driver I’d ever seen. She smiled for me to come aboard and as I stood there wagging my head ‘No’ she shot me her sexiest ‘you stupid motherfucker’ look that she had, closed the doors then drove off. The ocean would have to wait.
David Burdett
2016
Signal Hill
Another Asshole with an Opinion
Those who
Bicker at funerals
Reside
In calendar
Lined caskets
And those who
Would tell you
A thing or two
About yourself
Are brats
Without
Fresh bruises
Who fear not
Our father
In Maryland
Shifting
Be thy policies
In the land
Of the dead
Handshake
Have we forgotten
That
Reality
Has always been
What you
Can get away with?
In this
New World
Belching contest
Compassion
Is noticeably
Absent
And it is true
But yet to be proven
That Christ
Was not murdered
He killed himself
David Burdett
5/04/21
Die with Your Boots On
The same way
That some are born
Ice cream enthusiasts
There are others
Who are born
With the crippling
Ability to see
How terrible
Most people
Truly are
As they walk
In the sunlight
Of the spirit
With an immortal book
Of poetry in one hand
And an ice cream cone
That refuses to melt
In the other
David Burdett
8/14/2024
People Ruin Everything
A dump truck
Of a woman
Was wheeled
Out of Walmart
Yesterday shackled
To a gurney
For shoplifting
As a younger
Black female
Presumably
Her partner in crime
Cawed and hollered
As the singles
Hit the tarmac
And the rubes
Hit record
Hoping to catch
A glimpse
Of the eternal
Gucci gash
Designer
Saddlebags
Fake tits
False bottoms
Garish digs
Systemic idiocy
Dynamic hysteria
Tribalism
Nihilism
No love
We are poisonous
We are religious
We are spiritual
We are horny
We are pigs
We are lost
We write poetry
We drink
Not to celebrate
But to annihilate
Fairweather gods
And false ways
Of being
So raise your glasses
To the sky
And know
That anyone
Who would try
To convince
You otherwise
May not be your enemy
But they sure as shit
Aren’t your friend
David Burdett
8/13/2024
The Double Headed Scepter of Doubt
Showed me
Blown out parking lots
Full of trash
And disposable people
With their autistically
Charming requests
And bullshit backstories
That no longer
Made my heart sing
Perhaps it never was love
I was so busy laughing
My ass off at the world
Perhaps I gave
The best parts
Of myself away
To the wrong people
At too young of an age
Without understanding
That as we age
We become humorless
Narrowing gutters
Of malice
In a world
That never gave a shit
To try and understand
The hilarity of
The Jaundiced Prune
Or the beauty
Of a $3 hand job
The Swan Song
Of the Battered Dope Fiend
Is all they saw fit
To leave me with
And now
That I am older
Wizened and shot
Brain damaged
From too long
A broken heart
And even further
Gone a pickled brain
If I had the world again
Within my reach
And the cruel hand of fate
Were to give me
One more shot at the title
I would scream
And fuck
My brains out
Way more than I did
And buy myself
My very own parking lot
To be left alone in
So that I might live
To understand
The meaning
Of peace
And die
To spend eternity
Where I felt
The freest
David Burdett
6/28/2021