Joey Whitton
The Dolorous Stroke
I remember poor Ritchie,
when I came to visit his dorm
on the campus of Cal State
San Bernardino to see
if he needed more meth.
I was careful to duck under
the plywood ramp he was
using as a path for a train of
ants. He was trying to lure out
the Queen. I don't know,
maybe like his favorite film,
Forbidden Planet or Phase IV,
when the stars converged and
super-intelligent ants emerged.
I kept it to myself, didn't tell
no one. I followed the code.
Next time I came over, his
guitar sat in the corner, strings broken.
The room was silent. Black Sabbath
wasn't playing. More crisscrossed
planks formed a kind of nave.
I wanted to see if he had
any of that QP left,
but Ritchie wasn’t alone.
He looked like a carpenter
ant that had been stepped on—
paralyzed. He was silent
like a computer
that wouldn’t boot up.
A therapist, like Merlin,
was busily reciting spells
to summon his spirit.
My voice came unplugged,
a shield knocked me down,
a bleed in the dark,
a banishing.
Joey Whitton was born on the East Coast, raised on the West Coast, and now lives in the Deep South. Hardcore punk has inspired him for decades. His poetry is forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, Double Dutch Magazine, and Generation Gap, and has appeared in Flipside Magazine, The Itch Lit, TheNewVerse.News, Neologism Poetry Journal, Misfit Magazine, Sky Island Journal, Poetry Pacific, The Broken Teacup, Trashlight, and BlazeVOX Journal.