Visions of Janine

Janine was my neighbor

for a long, long time

Janine has been a dope fiend of all shapes & sizes

for a long, long time

Her first son was given to his grandparents

by the power of the state

She gave birth to her second son while in prison

& her lesbian lover took care of him

With chaos bein’ the only constant,

It makes sense she’s dyin’ a horrible

Painful death.

***

There was a constant flow of strippers, bikers, & just generally scary lookin’ folk in & out of her house. Sometimes they stayed long enough to get some sorta drug fix or $$$. Sometimes they stayed for weeks, sometimes months. The only constant was chaos, the atmosphere would get too heavy for Janine to handle, & everyone would be gone, including Janine. Usually this meant she was holed up at the lake house. For weeks & weeks the house would appear to be totally vacant. What we didn’t know was that sometimes local dope fiends would sometimes break in, stay for awhile, trash the place, & steal shit. Occasionally Janine would pop by the house & come by to ask if we’d seen any activity next door. I’d always tell’er no, even if I had seen folks coming in & out of her house. I didn’t wanna fuck with the barrage of questions that would follow if I answered “yes”. Who woulda thought you would have to deal with such problems when dealin’ with these types of crazy characters? I figgered yr biggest problem would be tryin’ to decide which type of cookies to have with tea at noon everyday. Not “who sprayed blood all over the fuckin’ bathroom?”. One time Janine came over to ask if we’d let’er know if this asshole couple that had gotten kicked outta the house, was sleepin’ in the treehouse in the backyard. Fuckin’ wow.

To call Janine a crack monster would be a mislabeling of her character. She ingested a fuckin’ Technicolor rainbow of chemicals. She’d been arrested with crack a few times, methamphetamines, she had trackmarks, and one time asked me & my wife “ya’ll like to do GHB? That shit is badass. It will totally fuck you up.” Then there was the time she was comin’ home from the liquor store, with a big ol’ bottle of everclear, & smashed into another car two houses down from her house. The bottle of everclear busted & went everywhere. The big ol’ dodge ram pick-up truck with the big ol’metal bars on the front that Janine hit, hardly move an inch. Also, the owner of the truck (which was parked the wrong direction) was a cop. Not sure what the outcome of this situation was, but I do know that the everclear was a key ingredient for the “jailhouse” lsd they was gonna make.

***
even though janine

was addicted to drugs, she

was still overweight.

***

even though janine

was overweight, she would still

wear really short shorts.

***

lots of teeth were gone

some teeth were only half gone

& some had turned black.

***

one time i saw cops

crawl on their bellies, through her

yard, with their guns drawn.

***

she’s bisexual

explains all the young, nasty

strippers that stayed their.

***

During one stint in prison, my mom helped janine’s family clean out the house. Trash everywhere. Syringes everywhere. Handcuffs on the headboard. Sex toys. I remember it taking a few days for this small handful of people to clean out the house.

***

at one point In her life

janine followed

the heavy metal band

known as metallica

across texas

maybe further.

***

My wife was sittin’ on the front porch one day, & watched a buncha cops bust down janine’s front door with a battering ram. I was pissed that I missed out on this. If there was any sort of commotion goin’ on outside, I would immediately peek through the blinds. Occasionally you’d get to see somethin’ other than just a few curse words bein’ loudly thrown back & forth. Maybe you’d get to see some girl screamin’ her fuckin’ head off, run through the yard, jump in her car, & speed off in her shitty sports car. It’s like havin’ episodes of “cops” bein’ made just for you right in front of yr house. Yr able to see what happened before the camera crew showed up, & their ain’t all them annoying fuckin’ bleeps over all the cursin’.

Janine is now dying of cirrhosis, hepatitis of some sort (I like to think it’s called the XXX throwdown strain of hepatitis), & possibly a handful of other kindsa of bullshit. some of which may or may not be known to man.last I heard she had blood just oozin’ out her eyes. Just hearin’ about it, gave me the fuckin’ wiggins. And well, if she ain’t dead yet, she needs to be. ‘cuz that shit just ain’t right.