I have a friend named Patricia. I wrote a poem about it. It goes like this

there was a dineh named patricia,
so apolitical she joined the militia.
with a thirty-thirty carbine,
a beer back and a lime,
she may shoot but she’ll most likely miss ya’.

Dineh is the right word for Navajo. Navajo is Spanish. You know how the New Englanders messed everything up for the Iroquois and Mohawks? The Spanish did the same for all the folks down Rio Grande way and all points south.

Pat used to be an alcoholic. They say you’re one for life but I think she’s done with all of it. She’d say I’m wrong but in my estimation she’s healthier than most people who never had a drinking problem.

We get along because everyone in my entire family is alcoholic except for me. You can check the Britannica it will say: Every member of the North American Pond family is alcoholic, even the infants. They must’ve forgot to make a note about me not being one too. Pat and I tell each other some really off color jokes about this kind of thing. If a joke ought to be blue, she goes ahead and tells an orange one. I’m just the same as her that way. Nobody thinks we’re funny. We can even laugh about that.

I love kids. I love her kids. She has two-and-a-half-kids. I don’t know her new baby very well so he only gets a half. That’s terrible but it’s how it works. I was gone while he was growing up.

Her kids I know better are Buck and Lylah. I love them so much that I want to cut them up like cartoon baloney and eat them. Now, that’s love. Mustard and Jewish rye love.

Pat was a crazy fucking bitch when she was younger. She’d have a coupla drinks just to manage to get to the liquor store to get a couple more drinks so she could get going to pick up her little kids in the car. That’s fucking crazy and only a bitch would do that. She’s none of that now and I’m glad because I don’t like people who are crazy that way.

She’s having a happy ending like a lot of my friends. It’s still getting written but it’s good so far. Not everyone who lives a hard drinking life has a happy ending though so don’t count on being able to back out of that shit you banana-fish motherfuckers. For instance, her friend from AA, Mitzy, is dead lately. Guess a drink was more attractive than a one year chit. Maybe her sponsor was tied up on the phone. And the art gallery woman I liked so much and thought was cute and smart, Leslie, is also dead. She suicided after the local bar owner got her high on cocaine, fucked her a few times, and got beat up by her husband. He beat the bar owner. Not her. That guy deserved it. He owns or manages, I’m not sure, the Taos S(n/p)ort’s Bar. He sells cocaine and has sex with a lot of girls. Girls seem to like cocaine and sex. I’ve noticed that. He had sex with a girl while I was dating her. But I didn’t, so I don’t give a rat’s ass anymore. I did then.

I don’t know how anyone can deal coke in a small town. Everyone knows. It’s a small town. Cops are assholes. That’s the only answer to a lot of questions. They won’t arrest a guy even when everyone knows in a small town that he drove a beautiful woman with a new baby to suicide. What lousy cops. The police chief just shot himself accidentally while taking a leak. He said it was the gun’s fault. But it was a Glock and those are well made guns. Almost good as HK and Sig-Sauer. Fucking lousy cops making excuses about shooting themselves accidentally.

Somebody will kill the bar guy sooner or later though. That’s the good thing. People who live on burning others usually get burned. There’s a poetic way to say this. I can say it two languages. One goes: chi ferisci di spada perisci di spada. Those Italians aren’t afraid to call a sword a spade.

I don’t know why Navajo have Scottish names all the time. Pat has a Scottish name and so do most of the Governors of the Navajo Nation. Good McScottish hamburger names. I’m sure I’ll get plenty of letters telling me all about it but I won’t read them. I don’t want to know. It’s a good mystery.

Pat has a great sense of humor. That is why we are friends. She gets jokes that are so fucking mean everybody else would look at me like I just shot their dog and then tried to fuck it. She laughs. She’s got a great laugh. I love to listen to it. I only have a few people I can be that mean with and she’s the only one who really gets it the way I intend it so I love her for it.

She’d be upset if I ate her kids but she lets me babysit for them anyway. She’s calling my bluff. She’s right so far. I’m not gonna eat her kids. I’m just gonna take them to the park.

People think Pat and I are lovers because of her kids and we like to go out together and I’ll date anyone who isn’t white. But she called me symmetrical while introducing me at a poetry reading one time. I think that demonstrates she’s never seen me naked.

I hope her kids grow up with a sense of humor as good as hers. I just hope they can never fully understand the jokes that Pat and I tell each other.