Go, My Brother

"Go fuck a koi pond," my brother tells some dude in a bar.

I don't really care enough to turn around to see if this is a stupid racist remark or if it's just something drunk assholes say because they think it sounds cool.

I just push my brother towards the door of the bar, which opens, shuts, opens on dark winter night parking lot with a frequency I suddenly feel is synchronized to the meaninglessness of existence in which my brother specializes.

That bar door's fucked-up heart valve.

I guess he has an advanced degree.

Maybe he even teaches. I mean the other dead people in bars. Maybe he studies. They do something with each other anyway. Fuck if I know. I don't believe it's conversation. Maybe it's a college of misery? You have to put in the time. Ninety-nine percent of what is taught is already known. But please get the certification. That sort of fucked thing.

Every time that bar door opens, there is the freezing promise, a draft of escape, and the night sky I am pushing my brother towards.

I'll admit I don't really know if I am pushing my brother or pushing my brother's ghost.

Probably his ghost.

Because for my brother, going home is just a metaphor.

A figure of speech.

It's a house. A little bed.

I make little anime sounds of frustration when he fights me. I know better than to start using words with him because he will use words back.

Everyone knows my brother has been dead a long time, it's been decades. Sometimes I actually get inspired realizing you can be dead a very long time and still push through life.

As I push the drugged livestock of my brother's body towards the bar door, I wonder what would happen if somebody kidnapped my brother, forced him on a plane at gunpoint, and flew my brother to the Galapagos islands.

I wonder what would happen if a team of renegade marine biologists forced my brother into a wetsuit at gunpoint and dropped him out of a helicopter into the rough slosh of tides for which the Galapagos are famous, made him swim with the aquatic bearded lizards, touch ridiculously colored coral, made him dive and collect and then analyze the bacteria which live around the super-hot seabottom sulfur springs of the Galapagos islands.

I wonder if my brother's ghost would be so fucked it could be raped back into life by insane animal traffic flaunting evolution around the Galapagos.

Or if he would just crawl up on one of those scabby excuses of a lava island crusted like a sarcoma on the ocean surface and die whimpering.

But just to have him die in a wet suit!

At least I'd have that.

A photograph I could show people.

I could say, "My brother perished on a scientific mission to the Galapagos."

If anyone reading this is willing to help me accomplish this, contact me.

Please.

Serious inquiries only.