Todd McKie

Don’t Do It

This is for all you crazy, doped-up, screwed-up fuckers; all you useless, worthless scumbags; you lost and nasty fucked-up bums; you miserable pricks who are seconds or minutes or hours or days or weeks away from killing another human person.

Listen up, you goddamn creeps: Don’t do it. Don’t shoot the wife, the cabbie, the clerk, the father, the girlfriend, the cop, or the preacher. Don’t stab the lonely boy, the beautiful girl, the fat man, the crazy lady. Don’t beat the bus driver, the cook, the mechanic, the nurse, the kid with the beard, or that cute waitress. Don’t hurt the weak and the worried, the nervous, the naive. Spare the handsome, the homely, the heartbroken, the totally clueless. Drop the knife, the pistol, the chain, the shotgun, the bat, the ax, the club, the razor, the rifle, and the hammer. Leave every last innocent and not-so-innocent solitary soul on this good earth alone, goddamnit.

Stay away from the young guy walking home down a snowy street in the middle of the night. Don’t surround him with your stinking breath and your hoodies and stupid sneakers. Don’t grab at his worn out leather jacket. Don’t pull a knife from your filthy pocket. Don’t push him, don’t shove him with your greasy hands. Don’t slam your knife through his sweater, through his shirt, through his heart. Please don’t sever his aorta. Please don’t kick him as he lays twisted in the snow that’s tuning pink as the blood spurts from the hole in his chest. Don’t hike up your baggy jeans and run down the street with his jacket, you sick, fucking cowards.

If you really need to hurt someone, if you feel like you’re going to explode unless you do, if you hear a louder and louder buzzing in your head and your limbs shake and voices begin to whisper do it, do it, then please crawl back into your slimy nest and poke out your eyes, cut off both feet, rip your balls from their foul sack, gobble rat poison, drink Drano. Plunge scissors, skewers, giant needles and rusty spikes into your body. Slice off your nose. Saw off both kneecaps. Spray oven cleaner down your throat. Bash in your skull with a rock. Slap a disc of rough sandpaper on an orbital sander, plug it in, and run the whirling, screeching thing up and down your legs and arms until you hit bone, across your chest and stomach until you are one big oozing mass of putrid, screaming flesh. Then hop in a tub full of bleach. Set your hair on fire and howl as it stinks and pops and flares and feel the sizzle as your ears burn off. Get lost, get real, get down, get out. Eat broken glass, drink piss, eat shit.

Let the rest of us live. Let us read magazines and billboards, shopping lists and love notes. Let us walk the dog. Let us fatten ourselves on chips and dips and pies, sweet jam and sour cream. Let us ride bikes. Let us swim in a pond, a pool, an ocean. Let us sit and think. Let us watch dumb shows on TV. Let us pretend to be pretty or famous or smart. Let us turn the music way up high. Let us shake our heads in wonder and regret. Let us smell the sweet stink of flowers, the sour funk of dirty socks. Let us drink cold beer on a summer day. Let us cry over almost nothing, let us laugh for no good reason. Let us make good, make up, and make out.