Love-Bug. by Mike Zone

Love-bug? Are your friends gangsters?

I think they might be criminals

why does your friend carry a gun?

I think that girl

you used to date

has sex for money

what were you and those guys in tracksuits sitting outside the café at the table with the checkered cloth talking about?

Who’s Omar?

Why are most of your friends Bosnians or Mexicans?

Those black men sure looked happy to see you

Love-bug, you sure write an awful lot about prostitutes

someone once told me they heard

you did a line of cocaine off a stripper’s backside

is that true?

Love-bug, what did he mean by “move things”?

Raves? Drugs? Bosnians? Punk Rock? Omar?

Love-bug, were you a criminal?

When she left me high and dry

on the edge of eviction

barely food, furniture or clothes left

my mother with  a breathing tube rammed down her throat

“I need 10,000 dollars.”

“Mike, I don’t have that kind of money but I know how to make it.”

five months later

in court

representing myself

I showed up with

4 track suited Bosnians, two tatted up Mexicans, my stripper girlfriend and Omar

Pat the bartender watching

the proceedings with glee

Mike Zone is the author of Void Beneath the Skin, Fellow Passengers: Pubic Transit Poetry, Meditations & Musings and Better than the Movies: 4 Screenplays. He is the co-writer of the graphic novel series American Anti-hero from Alien Buddha Press. His poetry and stories have been featured in: Beatnik Cowboy, Horror Sleaze Trash, In Between Hangovers, Mad Swirl, Rasputin Poetry, Synchronized Chaos, Triadae Magazine and Your One Phone Call. He scrapes by in Grand Rapids, MI