our very own patron saint

he was a doctor

Goddammit, they were looking at

a doctor

He came into the casino in a suit,

the same suit every day and night

dark gray

shiny with grease around the

elbows and lower back

smelly

patched up in places

he kinda forgot what it was like to be

sober

and lately he kinda forgot what

it was like to win at the slot machines

he forgot how to perform surgery

how to diagnose a patient

forgot what the company of a woman felt like

forgot what love was

he was a machine that consumed cheap

but strong alcohol

Rubbing alcohol filtered through bread

That stuff was 70% alcohol

his liver knew it

"Ah, pleaseeee, for the love of God, don't

make me work with this

stuff again," he would scream while

playing at the slot machine

and the bouncer would walk up to him

and say, "Hey, hey, doc. Everything all right, man?"

"Oh, sorry. That was my liver shouting

through my mouth. He's a pussy."

They say companies that deliver food

get very suspicious when their

regular customers,

the people who order every day,

stop ordering all of a sudden

They even check on them

Well, we don't deliver food

but we got really concerned when

our favorite doctor stopped

showing up

all of a sudden

Maybe our managers would've checked

up on him but

there was no phone to call

and no door to knock on

Still, one of our boys went to the nearby

park and asked the homeless men around

for our favorite doctor

and the man handed him a

newspaper

Shit,

it wasn't even on the front page

there was some political shit on the

front page

Nobody gave a damn about that article

The real thing was a few pages

after, not even colored

HOMELESS MAN DIES AFTER TRYING TO

PERFORM SURGERY ON HIMSELF

IN PUBLIC RESTROOM

That was a doctor with guts

Guts pouring out of him

straight into the sink

and another cluster found in the toilet

We framed the article and pasted

it on a board in the back room

of the casino

our very own patron saint