BUCKET LIST
“The Apartment Building,” a poem by Michael Showalter

executiveproducerdickwolf:


There is a whore in my apartment building:

her room smells like dirty sex




There’s a man next door who reads the Times:

his idea of a hero is a handjob and a beer




There’s a dog in that man’s room:

his name is Asshole and he smells like piss




There is also a woman in that man’s room:

she cleans and gets fucked




Across the courtyard a couple lives:

He’s an actor, she’s an actress.

They can’t find work so they steal from the market.

They are breaking the law.

I smoked a reefer with them—

they don’t know shit about fuck—




I like them.

I used to be like that.




The streets outside my window are wet;

A filthy steam rises from every pore in the pavement.

I hate it here,

but I don’t think I could ever leave…




A manuscript lies on a naked mattress that lies in the corner of my two-room apartment

and there’s a coffee stain on it:

the publishers and editors have fucked it all to hell




A six-string guitar rests against a chair in my room:

It has only three strings.

I’m strung out on dope.




Next door to me, a young man is writing pamphlets:

they are anti-Semitic.

But for Christ’s sake, that man is a Jew.




A [guy] lies on a flat surface smoking a cigarette:

I lie dead in my bathtub.