Nudniks

“Why did you stop drinking?”

“I used to talk too much. It’s like street signs or something. Always telling.”

“That matrimonial glint in your eyes.”

“Nah. Just a lump of mud. Let’s go somewhere and talk about your instincts about guys like me.”

“You ain’t got no mortgage on me.”

“Who’s the deranged one now?”

“I used to brag about my obliviousness. Now I spend hours roaming the aisles at Home Depot, inspecting the higher shelves for signs of wear, listening to the emptiness of long echoes.”

“’Take me to the zoo,’ she said. ‘Take me to the zoo.’”

“Sung without a dash of remorse, I hear.”

“Wink. Wink. A less or more subtle way of approaching oncoming boozers.”

“Not like bits. Not in the pieces. Not the manner of being scripted in all of this garrulity. Be peachy, but never keen.” 

“Like good old Horace said, ‘Don’t get to be one of those foot-and-a-half suckers. Stick with the quick and the brief. It’s good for the liver.’”

“Sesquipedalian bastard. Me? I don’t trust the long or the short of it. Anyway, the clock’s a ticking, like always. Can’t stop it. Even standardized time couldn’t come up with a way to slow it down. All these different modes of control. They don’t stand up to the constant movement forward.”

“I’m playing through the existential pain of it all.”

“It’s practical at least, this waffling over oblivion’s purpose. Forever lost in espial. We brush through other flushes of lost force without a tidy budget or even a haircut. Mostly it’s the loss of some anchoritic charm as you bowl your way into the overcrowded lanes and/or lines of connectivity.”

“Go on and bash your head in somewhere else. I’ve got my own sorry soup to slurp.”  

“This is all really very mature, isn’t it?”

“Juvenilely jejune, at best. Poached insipidity running its course, and then we drown off to more luxurious pools. I’ve been sleeping on such stuff for years. It just leaves me let down and scurrilous. Some opprobrious bastard waiting for an opportunity to hunker down and relax. But I am never ever at ease. Calm is something I can’t get close enough to to really know. Always a bit jumpy and on edge. You can place your best bets on it.”

“Too rocky. Too stuttering. Too distracted and not apropos enough. Spellchecker, on! Right hand, raised! The moon? In my fucking pocket!”

“From eternity to…well…to here. That’s all. Just to here.”

“Some sugar snob sings it like this, ’In the middle of sneeze. In the middle of a sneeze I call your name. Marco Polo. Marco Polo.’”

“The swimming pool is on fire.”

“The sprinklers are smoking.”

“And then, ‘My hate will burn you down.’”

“We’ve got much to go on.”

“Yes. On and on and on. It is not such a splendid thing.”

“Why would anyone stop drinking?”

“An ‘Out Of Service’ sign’s flashing on my imagination. Something too telling to go on about. A glumly stuck gear, or something turned off for good, a blame placed in the ignition. A wanted need gone spoiled and dumb. Dizzy enough?”

“Surely, Shirley. Hand me over them keys now.”

“No. No. No. Base what hits on what never does. Look. Totter. Nice, I am just shaping up not so.”

“Told off too many Wednesdays at a time. Pay off the drafters. Remind the clock watchers to not be so shell shocked. Put a benign spell on something more happening than all of this. The music here doesn’t rock and it is not so fine of a thing.”

“Being you is not such a fine, fine thing.”  

“There’s nothing going around. No. Nothing.”

“A public citizen privately ill with buying and being bought.”

“A most cautious individual, here. A commercial for herself.”

“And now what’s left is a blurted goodbye through your ambition’s ivy’s selfish coil. A twist in the gut. A mind’s leftovers. Just don’t do as you’re told. Drink away the murk around your eyes with a sly twist and a coy shake. Best of enemies, peepers all misty under influence’s draught. A manila folder’s being exchanged through heavy weeping. Nobody’s over a thing. Where’d the sandy stretches go? Who stinks of cheap brandy and boysenberry? Accordion thieves get what’s coming in the swaying chandelier light. That’s what. Crooks. All of ‘em, anyway.”

“Traded in the wind. Left off at the start. It’s like stirring wet cement, this stuff. Grueling. Trying to grip around the edges. The soft fragility that gathers around all middles, it gets you too up and down to believe much, in or of or about.”

“Gummy drips of who you’d be without all these advertisements corroding up the works.”

“The dollar sign’s lost its distinct flavor, for you. And with a pleased kisser you mug for the live video stream. Nowhere left to be abandoned in, to be left alone.”

“I dreamt about my late father the other morning. Some other morning than this or that one, over there or here. About how he held that pistol to his ear and screamed one last time, bellowed all he had left at his own face in the bathroom mirror. Alone at last. Done. I dreamt about my father, wallowing in self-pity and doubt. So recherché in his despair. I dreamt lastly about my father as of late. He always woke up to be just who he was. And then he woke no more. A temper finally quelled. A symptom of intersecting lives left to dwindle out and on away. He went out strong and wild, alone, still dripping from his morning shower.”

“I haven’t had one in years.”

“A shower?”

“No, a dream. My fantasies have grown so tame. I grow old. I grow lame.” 

“To the laugher go the plunders of peace.”

“Sure, just because the grapes of pity have grown sour, it doesn’t mean this bored, disaffected monster called mankind will not stomp them into anything but— kind that is.”  

“Listen. I forgot my mantra last Thursday. Apparently it had escaped me and fled to poorer quarters. I vowed to seek it out, to degrade it into submission and drag it back to where it belonged. And when I found it I put it on a T-shirt so I’d never forget it again. Now I’ve lost the shirt.”

“And leads?”

“Passed on purpose. Guessed the stars to sleep. Lived in a bottle. Lived for another. Let the chords get away with the verse. I am not made of anybody else’s thoughts. Changed to this, born into any other glimpse of what’s not ever here or there. Bubbly or thoughtful? Just a sipping sound selling you out at just the wrong time. Really. Come on. The battle’s not what you get from being simple around the ones who are around. Bounded by these made-up bonds, never so in the clear like here, surrounded at all times. I am nervous and misdirected by nature. Disoriented by choice.”

“Lose the gimmicky bit. Choosing’s all we’ve got. People used to say to me, ‘Well, at least you’ve got your health.’ And I always thought it just a load of platitudinous drivel. And it is, until you don’t have your health anymore, and then you realize that having your health is really all that there is. You really do have absolutely nothing without it. So, take care of yourself, goddamn it. All the rest is eyewash.”

“Yes. That’ll do. I’ll drink to that.”