I
want a never-ending supply of toilet paper, dollar bills to throw around like
spaghetti, and a fleece sweater with pelicans on the sleeves.
Whistling
Sweet Georgia Brown all the way to the poorhouse. And everything smells like
wet dog. It’s just that…well, don’t go putting your business on the street like
that. Besides, she’s a pretty snappy dish to take it out on. Just be completely
yourself, at all times and costs, even in the wolfed-down state of affairs that
you’re jostling around in. Me? I wish I had 365 pairs of underwear. And I
wouldn’t wash any of them. I’d just wear a different pair every day of the year, depending
on how I feel.
Alleviate
some misunderstandings with being misunderstood. Better glad rags to go with
the shrubbery. In plumose attire, at least in theory, to match that whole
feather-in-the-hat genuine article over by the cigarette machine. A relict of
weepers, running the banks and the bowling alleys with the same touch, whatever
takes the place of the heart’s gone. Like a wild rye ear with awns, scraping
by. It pouts. It moons. It is not always yours to keep.
I
only need the music of eructation, the swamp song of morose frogs, the blue
that breaks day’s jar and crumbles to sand. If I need and only want, then
want’s need is overcome by torched joy and in springs the bed for the just
needy, or perhaps not.
It’s
not a test. It’s an emergency waiting to happen. Sipping louched absinthe,
dripping with the faucet, bowled under, thinner around the middle, enduring and
erring, most of the ripped-off loonies in this here villa depend upon the
meanest of neighbors to get over being less than substantial in the swing of
things. Too many rounds had gone to the sufferers of lightness, and it was
tread or be trod before the lack caught up with you. The yard was nothing but
graves. Trip-toed, and never a tad heavy on the good news at all. We tapped
happier, after all, when the moon wasn’t so droopy.
“He’s
got his collar half-cocked like Jim Stark in a suit at the police station,
drunk. And The Pickle Boys are nursing their gin rickeys as time sludges on and
the bored fountain angels get their fix. Last night he went out and bought
himself a homemade spatula. The moon’s pants are halfway down. There’s no sleep
left in his early, and he’s jogging Etruscan around the park. Don’t go begging
Mars for candy. Don’t be less than half-full twice around. Around this place
the blocks number themselves while the streetlights jab and jaw. So don’t get
caught with your foot in the grease jar.
“He’s
taking the bread out of canceled reservations. He’s showing off his socks by
law. A cricket hounds him for his story through the broken heart of
thin-skinned walls. Sure, tomorrow’s either on deck or in the hole, but he’s
laughing all in Spanish, with his knees bandaged to hide yesterday’s scars.
You’ve got to listen or you’ll miss almost everything he sees. There’ll be holy
water in his brandy when he finally makes his pleas. He eats scarecrows for
breakfast with a side of steamed dandelion stems and boiled lima beans. He’s dedicating
songs to himself. He’s got Top Ramen in his hair. Don’t tell him what’s his
hurry. He’ll be gone before you even care.”
A
Marabou Stork for your nightmares.
Today’s
special: a slice of baked eagle with saltwater hash. It goes with all you’re
never saying. It takes the pie and chucks it at a yield sign. Ornery robots spill
their dimes and sleep to the noise of their internal fans. The scientists stay
up late counting all the blessings around. The buttons are all pushed. The
ceiling’s falling. The sky’s limit is nothing the robots can’t handle. Buffered
and holding all the rest of everybody’s ground, they nod to battery-powered
life, charged and plucky, and the scientists can’t tell for whom this all’s
getting murky and stained. One of them mumbles, “We’ve had monkeys before…we’ve
had coin-operated lives, too.” The cooperation of numbskulls gets their
mechanical goats, and the robots emit a collective eye-rolling sigh. The room
sparks to life with electric lice. The circuitry of loss is rewired with chrome
tinsel. It comes down to this-- in hoc signo vinces-- for a robot in hock:
“They
seem to like me, over there, like in a tell-them-I-went-to-Alaska sort of way.
The place would fall apart if I weren’t around to spectate. Always a crisis
with those boys. Great sense they make, you know. Lie around and slop around
all day-- maybe a chance to relax in there too, high foreheads and all. Still,
it gets greener still.
“I
grow anxious. It’s about now that it’s about time. My pictures get blurrier.
The lights go down for the count. But hell, over there? Over there they seem to
like me. And that’s where we have to draw that proverbial line in the moss.
Dead leaves conceal what the cement don’t know. Well, drop forge me in China
and call graver diggers. I’m out of ideas.
“Moments
come around. Christ. And here I go taking one.
“Poorly
moneyed, and just a nick above scratched. I stay on. I sit. They seem to like
me. Over there. Roll up my sleeves and pass the job on to nobody else.
“Whiskey
and dead flowers are my companions through pastures of missed phone calls. I
half try almost all the time. I am beginning to wonder. It’s not just a start
anymore. It’s trouble in the lowercase. It’s just a hat to toss from a tomb.
And if it’s swanky enough for me, hell, let’s make a date of it, or let the
wind come around and try to blow it all away. Just let it try.”
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