Rum Syrup By Alex S. Johnson

My first night at my new

Apartment in 

Davis, I was 20 years old

With a fake ID

I bought a 

Six pack of 

Coke and a 

Bottle of rum

Placed the rum 

In the freezer

Until it turned to 

Syrup 

Then I poured a can of

Coke into a glass

Added the rum syrup 

Fired up an

Unfiltered

Camel cigarette

Tasted the acrid

Smoke

On my lips

Felt the

Fire blossom in

My belly

And played the song

“The Passion of Lovers”

By Bauhaus

On my battered

Tape deck

“So this is adulthood,” I told myself.

The poster on the wall read:

Love

Will

Tear

Us 

Apart.

The next day

I turned

21

I tottered to the 

Cafe Roma

Feeling like

A 

God

Alex S. Johnson is a retired English instructor, disability rights activist, author, editor and publisher (Nocturnicorn Books). He is known for his highly unusual poetry style which combines influences from Dada and Surrealism to hip hop, black metal, industrial noise, T.S. Eliot, Walt Whitman and Rimbaud. His books include the acclaimed collection The Death Jazz, Bureau of Dreams, The Doom Hippies and Bizarrely Departed. His work has appeared in such venues as Horror Sleaze Trash, Black Noise, Bizarro Central and Cease, Cows. His upcoming books include The Junk Merchants 2: A Literary Tribute to William S. Burroughs, featuring a roster of luminaries including Poppy Z. Brite, Caitlin Kiernan, John Shirley and the co-founder of the iconic Goth rock band Bauhaus, David J. Haskins. Johnson ilves in Sacramento, California with his family.