The Wages Of Pascal's Wager

--I’m in a sentimental mood….Okay, now that’s over with.

--Wow. Glad that didn’t last.

--Halfway away, halfway home.

--Like the girl who stole a stole.

--She acted alone?

--Dreamed alone. That’s all we know for sure.

--The ecstatics declare things for us.

--Sure they do. I saw them declaring. It wasn’t much less than genius being declared upon entering a foreign land, a place one wishes at least to not throw up in.

--Glad the old movies are showing though. The same old movies. It’s reassuring. It’s eventful.

--I have a great love for the old movies, for all the old movies I know.

--Leave it to the cinema. Always doing old and wonderful things.

--I who have nothing. I who am so utterly alone. I who am no one. Watch. Watch. Watch. Dancing away. Watch. That’s about it.

--It’s gravitational.

--How so?

--From somebody who is way too interested in his own self, well, let’s just say…well, it’s heavy.

--There are mountains. There are gaps between episodes of galactorrhea in the unwed mothers. If we can get a grip on our own sandy sadness, if we can trash the sleepy bags ‘neath our carefully winnowed eyes, then maybe a retraction we shall get.

--Describe your first love again.

--She had scabs on her knees and her socks slid into her loafers and she could throw a football farther than any guy in class. She was a tandy kleptomaniac with short black hair and a penchant for Lucky Strikes and heliotrope.

--Always. Always you’ve got to mention heliotrope when you speak of her. I don’t understand this one bit.

--Really? I do?

--There you go. Bloated with complacency again.

--If you’re not looking for four-leaf clovers you’ll just find weeds and chaparral. One must exercise one’s sedulity at every opportunity. Squint if need be. Make an effort.

--Visions of heliotrope clouding fear and other sinister claims to fame, while you shuffle the cards of your days, inadvertently in repose.

--Really? I feel like I am always heedful of my repose.

--You’re quite borderless sometimes, you know that?

--Emulating the freewheeling dispatches from Bulgaria, that’s where my payola streams in from.

--I’m glad it comes from somewhere. Still, I think we should hold off on the champagne for now.

--Coffee perhaps?

--If I never sleep again. If I never sleep again. I won’t ever sleep again. My lord. My lord. I been up all night long. Don’t know what’s been wrong. Going to pull down the shades and block out the sun, and sleep, sleep, sleep, all the daylong.

--Sleeping….the day away. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong-ways up.

--Oh. Well, I don’t go in for all that music nowadays.

--You’re right. Something clever does fall by the wayside when all the mockingbirds have gone to sleep. Let your lone thoughts stir some mischief into your boredom’s coffee. Invest some quality time lifting yourself up so you won’t slip so easily back down again. Falling is easy. It’s the climb that kills off the less-than-great of us.

--Ovations come and ovations go.

--Distractions.

--Sleep, sleep, sleep, all the livelong day.

--Come home and rest your weary bones my son. Come home and be calm. Come home.

--Yesterday I thought I saw the girl of my dreams. She was riding in a taxi. A smile was all she was. A glance in the glass. She left before I could smile back.

--I am trouncing the home team.

--Gone before I could say hi or goodbye.

--I am bluffing ignorance.

--What’s left?

--Blue moons and the crumbled wrappers of eaten ice cream sandwiches.

--Make sure my bier is kept clean.

--The ones at the top will see to that. The ones who don’t get paid by the hour. The ones who run the whole show by wiggling their fingers, commanding others to do the work, while they go all-expenses-paid through life, stuffing their pockets with the gold of others’ sweaty labor.

--They’ll see to it?

--Probably not. But, there’s always a chance.

--Efficiency isn’t always the most stand-up way to wow people.

--Leave me in the dust? Well, bravo to that. Kudos and all the likes.

--Change my channel while there’s still a chance.

--A voice strained with chokes of sorrow.

--Saintly patience pays off at last, right?

--If I might melt at the sight of gallantry, well, then the stole was stolen for all the wrong reasons.

--Pass me the collection plate. I’ve got a few pennies burning a hole in my shoe.

--Death won’t spare thee.

--Fuck him then. Fuck him. I don’t give a rat’s ass about Death. Death don’t give two shits about me. Because I did not stop for him? Really? Fuck that. The horses’ heads are always towards eternity anyway.

--Kindly. We must remember, kindly, Death will still stop for you. Play chess with him all you want. It won’t matter. Nothing you think or say or do will matter. Haste is not in his nature. The carriage moves along through the centuries like days.

--And the dogs lose their bark, right?

--Weep no more, says the narcissist, and then dunks his head in the river.

--But we still have the old movies. We’ve still got plenty of reels to watch. A multitude of stock footage. Mirrors and bells. And, if we’d like, there are steam engines to go for a ride on…as far as our fantasies can take us.

--Never quite far enough.

--Oh, that’s just your blue period talking. Let’s bring in some fall colors, some shades of red even.

--Or a saxophone even. That’d pick things up.

--Paint the town burgundy.

--Even that.

--Like a break in a field of avocado trees. A clearcut in the forest of your imaginings. The old movies play on.

--The old cinema has much to say.

--We are creatures of I-don’t-care.

--We hold these falsehoods to be self-defeating.

--We run away every chance we get to split.

--Hurry, hurry, hurry. Chase that dream all around until it’s weighed down with everything you’ve got.

--We’re smart enough to be dumb about most anything.

--A musical perhaps?

--Not in rudimentary times like these.

--At the apex of her philosophic flight the attendant brand-name film critic became unmoved by all things celluloid.

--Apple core, say a lot more.

--We follow plot lines like they used to follow Jesus.

--We get too used to beginnings, middles, and ends.

--Getting used, trying not to get sued, plodding around in piddling tide pools while the sharks circle.

--Enough with all this excogitating. Express something.

--No thanks. The old movies have expressed it all already.

--All twist with no shout. It’s nothing special. I ain’t buying it. Get that pre-lachrymal tickle out of your throat.

--Ah, a life punctuated with frustration and insomnia. Build up your stamina. Hold court among blanketed morons and make your adversaries scream, “Uncle!”

--Too careful. The old movies show us how to behave.

--Tell us, you mean.

--Encourage.

--Bland meliorism preaching moderation and steadfast cooperation.

--Operating with a flying-solo attitude while bandwagon jumping.

--But still, even without the old movies, the smell of home resonates. I was onboard when the captain abandoned ship. I went for a stroll. Saw many things. My mom was driving recklessly on the freeway. The road was Astroturf. I got in a fight with my sister. She called me a fruit fly. I made the shape of ass-kicking with my hands. My personal life seemed a waste of time.

--Take yourself out to the old movies.

--A real treat. The old movies.

--Black leather jackets. Holes in the wall. Glimpses of empty slippers. Civilian casualties. Monsters roaring glossolalia at innocent victims of circumstance. Erstwhile glories turned down to simmer.

--We’re dancing around our fear while the old movies play on.

--Checkmate.

--Damn.

--Yep. Just another example of how capitalism forces us to be nice to each other.

--The dollars they pay make us give our time away.

--Helping others nonetheless. Doing something possibly beneficial…and, also, quite possibly, for the wrong reasons.

--Sometimes I think it’s a sin, when I feel like I’m winning when I’m losing again.

--Gordie boy?

--But of course.

--Senor pie ligero.

--The one and only.

--It takes time to catch on. For each individual to perform her task for the general good. We give so much of ourselves away, yet we don’t think of it like that. Would the bus driver drive the bus, help all these people get around, if she weren’t getting a paycheck in return?

--Buying and selling: The world going around.

--Breathing. Getting involved. Feeling lonely. Making hamburgers and French fries for hungry customers. Smoke breaks. Listless walks home late at night. Using ATMs. Finding love. Texting. Dreaming. Making jokes. A roof over the head when it rains. All paid for out of the pseudo-good-natured hauntings of our hearts.

--When all you want is for the hours to just go by, for time to just be gone, and for that bell, that magical tintinnabulation to set you free.

--Getting the least out of life. Ignoring things, letting moments escape with no chance of ever getting them back.

--And then that rather corpulent rug salesman starts whistling The Prelude from Carmen.

--All’s ill that starts sick.

--Quite.

--It is only in a moment of stillness that one can become aware of another life within one.

--To always be attentively watching.

--To discover what it means to be you.

--To go bounding out into life again.

--An interior silence behind words.

--Not grasping, only open to a fullness which is all around.

--Bad news. Bad news. It creeps through the alabaster. It murders the glassy marbles in our eyes.

--But we’ve still got Margaritaville to waste away in.

--Stay there all season. Maybe get a tattoo.

--Nah. Too permanent. Don’t you know? Everything passes. It’s all a continuum, an ongoing process that never ends. Time will take care of us all in the end.

--But there is no end.

--Sure. But still, for us, speaking from our own tiny glimpse of things, there is.

--While we blow out our flip-flops, step on pop-tops, cut our heels and have to skedaddle on back home.

--In a manner of speaking.

--Always got to mind ‘em, don’t we?

--In this case I could disagree with you less or more, agreed?

--See that? That’s me waving the world’s smallest white flag above my head.

--Oh. That’s what that is? Surrendering at last?

--At last. At long last, silence will, maybe, come to us all.

--Oh, to ponder nothing would be serene, everything portending nothing, lost in a smile, gazing langorously at forever-fleeting shapes that mean less than we’ll ever get to know.

--The old movies.

--Yes. The old movies. They’ve got it all.

--And they don’t even know it.

--Of course. That is too rare a thing for which to hope.

--Of course.

from "A Field Guide To The Symbols Of Love Serenades"

“My name is Cinderella, god damnit!” screamed a vexed Cinderella.

Nobody looked. The fans were on full blast. A man with two beards said, rather vehemently, “I want those things on full throttle all the fucking time!” His satin pants were checkered with gold golf balls.

“Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat,” a freshly tonsured woman chanted. Cinderella looked at her with what Cinderella thought to be a menacing glare. The newly shorn woman was feeling too clean to care. She chanted some more, and then said, “Ablution? Absolutely!”

Cinderella became fed up. Many things were occupying her thoughts. A train went by. “I hate you!” Screamed Cinderella at nobody and nothing. It was just something screamed into air.

There were always beetles around, scattering crumbs with their little insect feet and their pointy feelers. Cinderella wanted all the beetles to die.

Cinderella had two sisters, a dog named Peachy, a black eye, a baby whose father was unknown even to her, a ma and pop, a silver shoe, and had to take out the garbage every Tuesday and Friday night. Mopping was, fortunately, out of the question now. She saw a psychoanalyst six times a week. His name was Pecker. Pecker loved Cinderella. But Cinderella had no idea about his love. She just thought he was very concerned for her welfare, which he was. He asked Cinderella many questions about her childhood.

“I was in a cage,” said Cinderella. “It was a silver cage with gold bars. That wasn’t all the time. There was fascination to be had, that’s for sure. Fuck. Fuck! I mean. Shit! My name is…what?”

The psychoanalyst, who was very serious sometimes and had a nice bushy handlebar mustache, told her, “Pitter patter. What’s the matter?”

Cinderella thought about her shoeless left foot.

“You look peeved honey. What’s with that? Flirting again, are we?”

The psychoanalyst, who dyed his hair blue-black and had thin-rimmed spectacles which often hung off the edge of his long nose, sat back in his psychoanalyst chair and smiled slightly.

“Fuck!” Shouted Cinderella at the framed picture of Chico Marx on the wall. “What the hell’s dancing got to do with anything?”

“Dancing? Where’s the gift?”

“You!” Cinderella, at the height of menstruation, leapt up and pointed at the smug-faced psychoanalyst. “I will not let you tell me how to run my affairs. No. No. No way in hell, buddy. My name is Cinderella for fuck’s sake! Give me a fucking benzo already, will you?”

The psychoanalyst remained calm.

Cinderella hunched her shoulders and sat back down on the couch which she had been sitting on up until that point.

A decade went by.

“Where did my love go? Where did it run off to?” Said the prince.

A century went by. Then another.

Not much changed.

“My name? My name’s Cinderella. Who’s asking?”

A cloud shaped like Alfred Hitchcock’s profile went sailing by.

“Who?”

“What is it to you?”

“Everything.”

“Oh. Well then…”

“Yes?”

“Nothing. Got any shoes?”

A clarinet played Wild Man Blues. Cassius Clay spit at a butterfly and kissed a bee. Levers cranked to the sound of zebras chewing.

“Cinderella? Who’s that?”

“You.”

“Leave me alone, will you. The flowers are not for you anyway.”

The butcher cried. His tears smelled like Fritos.

The prince exclaimed, “I don’t worry about sweat. I worry about the government. King me!”

Cinderella was walking. Somebody was reading aloud from THE BOOK OF LOVE. It wasn’t too long, nor was it too boring. Something about it didn’t make any sense. She listened for a bit as the person read, “Coffee cups and butter knives. Promises to unkeep and whisper us to sleep.” That was decent enough for Cinderella. She walked and walked. She walked up hills. She walked down hills. She thought many transcendental things. She forgot them too. She walked over rivers. She walked in the middle of the street. She picked up stones and threw them at pigeons. Cinderella lifted her dress above her knees. She splashed around in gutters. She got her shoes wet. Tigers turned into lions. Detroit was to blame.

“Turn the light back on.”

Cinderella was mad.

“No. Bitch!”

“Who you calling bitch, bitch!”

A great struggle ensued. The prince didn’t come out of it so well. Then again, who needs every one of their teeth?

The bedding was rent. The bed seemed flayed. Cinderella kissed the mirror.

“Your balls smell like salad dressing.” Said Cinderella.

“Creamy Italian or ranch?” Asked the prince.

“Thousand Island.” Answered Cinderella.

“Oh.” Said the prince. Then he snapped, “You wanna go for a ride? I got wheels, baby.”

“Sweet. Let’s do it to it.” Snapped back a lustful Cinderella.

The sun set. The moon made a dashing appearance. A pumpkin imploded.

Cinderella looked deeply into a store window and said, “I will only wear black from now on. Reclusion will suit me very well. Let’s bring the party to a standstill.”

Chicken marsala was served. The prince vomited up a mushroom, then he said, “All I really want is to feel connected with something outside of myself, with something real, with something that matters. Not all this bird-chirping bullshit I wade through every fucking day. I want teal skies and buttermilk thighs. I don’t believe in the ground beneath my…beneath my…” He stopped and mumbled something unintelligible. Then, rather glumly, he said, “Shoes.”

Cinderella was cutting her toenails while watching The Greatest American Hero reruns. A fly landed on her wrist. It stilled its frenetic wings, shook its head a few times, looked up at Cinderella, and said, “You can’t handle the truth.”

“I don’t miss you one bit.”

“Second chances only come around a second time. Don’t chase away your benefactors too soon.”

“Wake me up when the world cares.”

The fly screamed, “Wake the fuck up! Wake up! Wake up! Cinderella wake up!”

Cinderella said, “Shut up, fucking fly.”

Everyone started singing, “Her name is G…L…O…R…I…A! Gloria!”

The sun rose.

“Pick a side,” spoke the prince. “We will win no matter what the cost. Nobody chooses to lose. Take my hand…please.”

Henny Youngman turned a handspring in his grave.

Fortune turned an adelite eye to the events. With a mild voice, a grocery clerk chimed in, “Don’t lose your shirt without taking off your pants first.” Nobody was listening. The days were just racecars going in circles. Plastic turned into edible tubers. A mastiff whined, “The Errol Flynns of this world have taken all the biscuits, and all we are left with is gravy.” Cinderella made her bed.

“The wool over your sight has worn thin,” said the butcher. “Do not mistake my trade for a pejorative verb. I have sliced meat more thinly than you will ever know.” Fog hung low like dresses over the buildings. “Lights less green than this have led you on. Trouble is, well, nobody listens.”

A documentary filmmaker was shooting a scene for a documentary about princes. The light coming in the window was what he would later describe as being, “honey-gelid-gold.” The prince was lying on a couch. A nimbus of sunlit dust seemed to float above his head. Everything was still and silent. Shoes shined themselves. Cobblers got the day off. It was a moment like none other.

“Smart enough to be a fool, only my hate survives the crazy-about-you principle,” pined the prince. A flatiron building crumbled. Crowns broke. The prince, now lying supine on the terrazzo floor with his legs crossed at the ankles, speaking over his shoulder to the documentary filmmaker, who was down on his hams smoking an unfiltered, hand-rolled American Spirit cigarette, said, “The oracle of my passions is beyond all understanding. Lose the beard, chump.” He paused and held his breath for 28 seconds. Then he exhaled with a throaty wheeze, “I’m going on the lam.”

Cinderella was singing the blues. They were catchy. Everybody was humming them; when they were running on a treadmill, when they were frying eggs, when they were smiling into the microwave’s glow, while they showered and shaved, on the bus, sitting in traffic, standing on one leg, picking up dog shit, watching the coming attractions in movie theaters. A caterpillar died in its sleep.

Will the gown fit? Will night fall and never get up again? How does a shoehorn work? These were questions nobody was asking. Instead it was like an inquisition of pillows and sheepishness.

“The street is only surface. Nothing can grow on its barren face. No depth shall be explored within it,” said the merchant marine to the card sharp. “Only the sewer prowls below its vicious grin.”

“Cheese it!” Replied the card sharp.

“Why…I am an honest character,” came the strangled voice of the prince. He was chewing three pieces of Wrigley’s spearmint gum at once.

The prince slightly choked on his own spearmint-tinged saliva, but managed to blurt out, “Dance with me.”

Cinderella bade all of her suitors farewell, with an axe. Blood splattered everywhere; some even got on the toaster. She winked conspiratorially at the prince: “You make me more than happy.”

“Romance is hopeless, when it comes to sentimental reveries and mass slaughtering,” said the prince as he was spinning in circles with his arms out for balance. He stopped suddenly, almost toppled to the ground, and, while holding both his hands to his head, told Cinderella, “You make me dizzier than this.”

“I keep talking to the picture of you on my nightstand.” Cinderella rubbed her temples. “Let’s grab a six pack of Hamm’s and get our asses to Reno, pronto!”

“I’ll drink to that,” replied the prince.

A year was lost. A month happened. A day stayed and stayed and then stuck around for a while.

The documentary filmmaker was following a maroon Studebaker on highway 99. It was a time of frosting footprints on the tiles of kitchen floors, of topping off gas tanks, of perpendicular motion and real-time clay-mation, of origami earrings, of chalk stencils on black construction paper, of Hollywood bungalows festooned with yellow newspaper clippings, of calves beaten by barrel staves, of plants and patios and Pee Chee folders. Being gone was all there was left to want. The Tanguay Tangle played on the documentary filmmaker’s radio, and he thought, ‘I don’t care. I don’t care. Plus…well, I don’t know. Is that better? Fucking hell. I need some damn personality.’ Nothing was coming back in style. ‘I will wear black to-morrow,’ he thought, and then became bitterly engaged with Indian-burning the steering wheel.

“My name is Cinderella you fucking bastards!” howled Cinderella. The sky was piebald, checkerboard cloudy black-and-white. Nobody was listening. A car alarm chirped twice, then fell silent.

The prince was crawling on all fours over the front lawn. The sprinklers came on. “The architecture of everyday life is paneled with fritted glass,” mused the prince. “My thoughts are wandering no more.”

Tallying up the points, a duty much sought after within the various districts of Anhedonia, fell to the pushup kings. They tousled the papers good, before shredding them, and bragged about the shape of their shoulders. Anhedonia thrived on nonplussed momentum. The people did what the television commercials told them to do. An exaltation of larks swept through the meadows. A parliament of owls awoke. Nobody started a war, but it went on ahead and happened anyway. The prince screamed, “Dog Garnett!” at what was left of the moon. The untranslated Russian novelists grew restless. Anhedonia exploded. All the inhabitants died. All points became rather useless. Cinderella made her bed.

The prince was living underneath a freeway overpass. He’d started smoking clove cigarettes at night. Sometimes, while lying alone in his ratty sleeping bag and staring at the odd shapes splintered into the concrete above him, he’d get to thinking about old rap songs, like Freaks Come Out At Night and Parents Just Don’t Understand. The lyrics didn’t always come back to him, but he’d make up his own when this happened, and soon he had his own rap songs that he’d rap under his breath to the music of those old songs. “You’re only 16. You don’t have a rep yet,” sang the prince into the gut-punched wind.

Along in the sun and the rain came an old man wearing a straw cowboy hat riding a pitch-black horse named Charisma. He blew kisses to all the girls. He made balloon mermaids for all the boys. Magic was in his blood. They called him William The Grownup.

William The Grownup galloped over the hills on his horse Charisma. He hid in alleyways. He slept in the basement of an abandoned building next to the freeway overpass where the Prince was residing. A fountain pen was his gun, and he wanted to grow a beard but couldn’t. “Fuck these damn genes!” screamed William The Grownup from the 3^rd story window of his abandoned-building home.

“What’re you gonna do, sucker? Write me a letter?” scoffed the prince.

William The Grownup was pointing his fountain pen at the sleeping-bag-bound prince under the freeway overpass.

“Git,” said William The Grownup. “Fucking prince fancy pants.”

“Ha!” The prince choked on his own laughter. “That’ll be the day. Scared off by a pen wielding cowboy wannabe pansy. I think not.”

William The Grownup let go a sly smile, and a rather rambunctious fart. “Seems it’s time to wean you off the milquetoast, buster.”

The prince was laughing so hard that he rolled off the ledge he’d been lying on in his sleeping bag and went tumbling down to the bottom of the overpass where there was just dirt and rocks and a small stream of piss-yellow water.

“I told ya. Fucking assmunch,” sighed William The Grownup at the sight of the prince lying bloody and dead in his sleeping bag at the bottom of the ditch. It was just a body in a dusty bag. He then became thirsty for grape Kool-Aid, and hastily returned to town on the back of Charisma.

“I am Cinderella motherfuckers!” shouted Cinderella at the starry sky’s speckled sable belly. “I am my own fucking moon! Underestimating leads to madness. Pleat my soul why don’t you, you fucknuts!”

A week came. A week went.

“Hurry babe. We slept too late.”

“What? Where…huh?”

“Don’t worry. Don’t worry. Don’t you ever worry about a thing again.”

“Fat chance.”

The sun squinted into their lives.

“Oh well. At least we’ve got each oth…”

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And my name is…my name is…”

“Exactly.”

Calling In Well

Kafka: What do you know about the Hot Dog Show?

Santa: The Hot Dog Show?

Kafka: Yes. The Hot Dog Show.

Santa: I know that it’s catching to the eye.

Kafka: I catch you. I catch the mood. The mood is everything. Emotionally speaking.

Santa: An emotional striptease?

Kafka: That’s asking too much.

Santa: No it’s not. It’s asking more than some would ask.

Kafka: Same thing.

Santa: Let’s not dawdle around in circumstantial muck.

Kafka: Okay. So. The Hot Dog Show. When it comes down to what we all want…

Santa: From the Hot Dog Show?

Kafka: Yes. What we all want from the Hot Dog Show...

Santa: When it comes down to it.

Kafka: When it comes down to it we all want to be in it.

Santa: The Hot Dog Show?

Kafka: Absolutely. It’s all about clarifying the recidivist moral structure of our well-to-do instinctual guides.

Santa: Hot dogs for a dollar!

Kafka: I saw the sign. It opened up my eyes. I saw the sign.

Santa: Get your juicy plump franks.

Kafka: All the fixings included?

Santa: At The Hot Dog Show?

Kafka: Of course. We’re talking about The Hot Dog Show.

Santa: Of course.

Kafka: All for a dollar.

Santa: Everything for a dollar. A joachimsthaler. A buck. A greenback.

Kafka: Washington! You’re no fun. You’re no fun. Washington! Right down the barrel of a…

Santa: Exactly. Good point. And it’s just handing over some wrinkled paper for a meal.

Kafka: But when it comes down to it…

Santa: And it always does.

Kafka: The Hot Dog Show is worth more…

Santa: The Hot Dog Show.

Kafka: Yes. It’s worth more than the paper it’s printed on.

Santa: The Hot Dog Show?

Kafka: Precisely.

Santa: Oh.

Kafka: All accounts payable to…

Santa: The Hot Dog Show?

Kafka: Not as I see it.

Santa: How’s that?

Kafka: Well, you see, I keep getting these phone calls from Lincoln, Nebraska.

Santa: Who do you know in Nebraska?

Kafka: That’s what I kept asking myself.

Santa: And?

Kafka: Nobody. Not that I could think of. And this Nebraska number kept coming up on my caller ID. It’d happen like four or five times a day. Sometimes in the middle of the night. I had to start sleeping with my phone off.

Santa: Would they leave messages?

Kafka: No. Not usually. Not until this one day. And it was like this rambling thing. This guy reciting passages from the bible.

Santa: Residual wisdom attained by rote osmosis.

Kafka: Not like The Hot Dog Show at all.

Santa: Really?

Kafka: Sure. This guy kept calling. And eventually I started answering his calls. Turns out he was living in the basement of a church. There were some bunk beds down there where they let transients sleep at night. The water heaters squealed. And the creaks of the boards overhead were like sea lions sneezing through sawed-off kazoos. This guy had been down there quite a while. There were exposed light bulbs dangling and swaying from gnawed wires. He could hear people praying all through the night. And all he had to read was the bible. He had whole passages committed to memory.

Santa: Really, though, is that so unlike The Hot Dog Show?

Kafka: “His power and his wrath is against them who forsake him.”

Santa: Ezra? That ain’t right.

Kafka: It ain’t?

Santa: Not if we’re still talking about The Hot Dog Show.

Kafka: Why I oughta…

Santa: Yeah. You and an army of Al Jolson wannabes.

Kafka: Swaneeeeeeee Rieeeeverrrrr!

Santa: Whatever. So. This guy in the basement, he’s…

Kafka: Forget that guy.

Santa: Really? Forget him?

Kafka: Yeah. He’s out of the picture.

Santa: That was quick.

Kafka: Ah, you are too beautiful for silences.

Santa: Look out. I’m liable to direct our attention away from The Hot Dog Show.

Kafka: You wouldn’t.

Santa: Wouldn’t I?

Kafka: You love the Hot Dog Show. You can’t get enough of it.

Santa: Of The Hot Dog Show?

Kafka: Yes. You admire it. You hold The Hot Dog Show in great esteem.

Santa: I estimate it’s worth as being….high?

Kafka: Would I were the relish on your bun.

Santa: It is appraised, by me, to be, The Hot Dog Show that is, an excellent revenue enhancer.

Kafka: Ha cha cha cha….

Santa: Hooray for baby and me!

Kafka: Put a stick in it.

Santa: Say something that matters. Something important.

Kafka: The women on the bus speak of Kierkegaard while holding their Louis Vuitton purses in their laps. Somebody pipes up, “Compliments say more about the person giving them than the person receiving them.” I want everybody to spit all at once. There aren’t many ways left to wipe my ass.

Santa: And still, The Hot Dog Show don’t care.

Kafka: It don’t care at all.

Santa: It’s just The Hot Dog Show. That’s all. There’s nothing more to it.

Kafka: There must be. I mean, it’s The Hot Dog Show.

Santa: Nope. It’s just what it is, nothing more.

Kafka: Something less?

Santa: Not that I’ve ever noticed.

Kafka: But you told me once that your bible’s covered in cobwebs, that the pages are filled with dust.

Santa: No. I said spider webs. There’s a subtle difference.

Kafka: Don’t be so implacable.

Santa: I don’t ever want to be placated or appeased. I don’t want domestication to come crawling up on me, catching me off my guard. Let’s have a party! Let’s have a party tonight!

Kafka: A Hot Dog Show party?

Santa: No. A Wanda Jackson party.

Kafka: You mean like a Fujiyama Moma?

Santa: Shoot out the light, you know?

Kafka: Unfortunately I do.

Santa: Great. So. When’s The Hot Dog Show?

Kafka: It never stops or starts. A dollar. A dollar. Your Cadillac for a dollar.

Santa: Paint it on a sign.

Kafka: Scratch it in your skin.

Santa: Until the blood runs out.

Kafka: Starring?

Santa: Joan Wayne. The girl of everybody’s dreams.

Kafka: Cladding to keep your fantasies safe from harm.

Santa: The inimitable Joan Wayne! The Hot Dog Show’s biggest draw.

Kafka: As it were.

Santa: Loan me a dollar. Please. Please. Please.

Kafka: Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of The Hot Dog Show?

Santa: Singing, “She can’t help it. The girl can’t help it,” for all to hear from sea to foggy sea.

Kafka: An aubergine mood has swept its rascally way over the hollows of my days.

Santa: Being old and full of days.

Kafka: I might lend ya a buck or two, buddy. But if I am a going to go on and scratch your hairy back, well, you better be ready to scratch back at me someday, ya know?

Santa: Maybe I scratch your front. Ya know?

Kafka: Get your own stinking money. Get your salty salary somewhere else.

Santa: Just a pinch?

Kafka: No. No way. No how. Not going to budge on this one.

Santa: We all just want to go…

Kafka: To The Hot Dog Show. To The Hot Dog Show.

Santa: I know, I know, I know.

Kafka: Get your dollar’s worth, oh, oh, oh...

Santa: And so much more so...

Kafka: At The Hot Dog Show!

Santa: Nonononononononononono…

Kafka: The Hot Dog Show!

Santa: Okay. I get my own stinking dollar.

Kafka: That’s all?

Santa: For folks like us.

Kafka: Folks who want to ban all dogs and cars from the city.

Santa: Nothing but cats and pedestrians.

Kafka: Folks who read aloud when they’re alone.

Santa: Who sing commercial jingles and put mustard on steaks.

Kafka: And it’s still all a matter of…

Santa: The Hot Dog Show!

Kafka: Yes. By gum. That it is!

Santa: Let’s all go down to the Hot Dog Show.

Kafka: To The Hot Dog Show let us go.

Santa: Let us go. Let us go.

Kafka: All this while the chromosomes of tears get lost in the omnium-gatherum of canned laughter. How well do we know the show?

Santa: How well can we ever know the hot dog?

Kafka: To go or not to go.

Santa: To the show. To The Hot Dog Show.

Kafka: A collective anosognosia prevails. Nothing wrong here. Nothing here is wrong at all.

Santa: We two-step to our own inhibitions. We cut in line.

Kafka: Temptation calls us by name. It hollers o’er the tombstones.

Santa: And what we don’t say is never heard, except maybe by our own personal Hot Dog Show.

Kafka: The Hot Dog Show will tell all.

Santa: Bounded only by the infinite and the hawkers of cotton candy.

Kafka: Countervailed by the inscrutable satiation of fair-weather dipsomaniacs.

Santa: We must target The Hot Dog Show’s least known demographic: ice-cream soup drinkers.

Kafka: Stained with steel. Look inward. Take inventory. Make the hubris-challenged swill their own sweat.

Santa: You make a better wall than a wall.

Kafka: A wall built with vain tools, brought on by vexation of spirit, profitless under the sun.

Santa: But we’ve still got The Hot Dog Show, right?

Kafka: Until they come for our bodies. Until our minds skip town for the century. Until everybody’s gone fishing.

Santa: Ah. Don’t worry about that.

Kafka: The Hot Dog Show?

Santa: Yes. That that.

Kafka: Oh.

Santa: Uh huh. And the whole time…

Kafka: All the while.

Santa: It was just civil servants whispering my dreams to sleep, chanting, “The dead are more dead than the living are alive.”

Kafka: Na na na na na…

Santa: Na nanana na nana!

Kafka: Hey! Ho!

Santa: To The Hot Dog Show…

Kafka: We all are going to go…

Santa: Whether we like it or no…

Kafka: In the end it’s only clavichords playing scales of woe…

Santa: Like a fretful fletcher stringing a broken bow…

Kafka: Heigh-ho! It’s only disco…

Santa: Return to the world below…

Kafka: At…

Santa: Theeeeeeeeeeee…

Kafka & Santa: HOT DOG SHOW!

the insulating fibers of particular borders

when it comes down to it there is really nothing left to do except bottle water and move from hill to hill. it is treacherous to think otherwise. we all know this. the plumage is in the feather. the cap fits. solitude is a country we have all kept our passports for. hear the cluck of the razor strop? that is foreboding enough as it is, without all of this buttery froth thrown in for no apparent reason. get the grease out of your ears. it is pounce time.

the girls are grilling salmon out on the deck. sometimes the meat slips from the bone and drips like oil between the grill’s slats and steams from the coals below, and smokes too. oh, there is a lot of smoke involved. always a lot of smoke. it stings your eyes like lemon juice. you become blind for a frightful moment, and then you stagger back and laugh at yourself. because you have got to laugh at yourself. that is a prerequisite of this fiber-optic hissy fit we are all involved in. the foliage tell its own stories. mostly about banana trees in the backyard. boats? boats know better. they keep to the water.

we make plans. there are festivities on the north porches. pinball when it rains. the cats purr and curve carelessly into pillows. waning moons are not too much of a bother. we seem to have light enough to battle damselflies and possums. sometimes a grip will become loose, merchandise will be lost, and then there is hell to pay for those of us who still retain a few toes. the pompoms are filled with dragon teeth around here. don’t be a sucker. we are all out just for love. just for love.

the horizontals are all clipped. it is done after a fashion. a wormy skill that is not regarded highly anymore. though many in-the-know think these things through, and then they tell us how wrong we all are. just a mist to reconsider hindsight. a nettled medicine man with his hands tied behind his head. do not forget shorts weather. it comes around even if you are not looking for it. sometimes dossiers are kept of such things. but mostly we just keep strumming the hard dirt with rakes. listening takes two. also, a parakeet will get caught in the gears a few times a week, and we have got to clean them out with hoses. the list of daily tasks grows ever long.

the pages of our lives are now dog-eared with worry, though the breaks along the barriers of our skirmished creeping-thistle souls have become more frequent in these hydra-headed days. we only want to love and be loved, preferably by the same person or persons. sometimes a spare part will fit eloquently into the works of the pasty maker, and then the girls will be less skittish on the more-than-enchanted evenings, and then nobody will get all tangled up in microphone cords, and then we will learn a lesson in saying goodbye, and then tinfoil music will fill cupcakes with mechanical hearts, and then jealousy will be defeated by candy addicts, and then orphans will weep during an organ recital, and then we will reconnect with nature’s blues.

the points of no return keep getting lost. a purse was filled with shriveling old-newspaper-colored apple cores. we found it on the stairs where nobody belongs. everybody wants to belong somewhere. the moon is losing its class. the pawnshops around here have started selling valor by the handful, and we have got large hands. the shop owners have sworn off gin, but they have not sworn off love. not yet. we mean less than the urine-soaked scarecrows. we play pre-recorded homilies on full blast. the neighbors never complain.

the ruins of dismissiveness come to crowd us. there is a feeling of togetherness mashed with specks of isolation. communities tend to thrive in times of gilded arrivals. do not discount our capacity for pity. there will be a bonfire of empty amber pill bottles when the crows take over lengthwise segments of tomorrow’s yield. in the meantime we will forsake the keeping of records. spinning bottle caps will cover the spread. people lose noses over less.

a copse young in the rain. a fresh lawnmower smell. there is something better than dusk fading leeward, and we all know shadows like that, like capes of indifference. the machines run their man-made course. the levers get cranked. the circle is never complete. we blow bow-tie kisses at ice cream socials, at chemistry events in the town rhombus, at sour-graped girls, at movie screens. our fun days may be over, but we still have inlays of opal threading what is left of our dreams. supper is not quite cold enough yet.

bottle. bottle. bottle. move over. move on. bottle it up. screw the cap on tight. move. read romance into the annotations in the pinch of metal arms. grade the plastic on its capacity to like and worth of being liked. unscrew. open. scrunch. bottle. bottle. move. move. move on.

patents on arm-bending methods are due to expire soon. our ghosts are reliving their own nightmares for all eternity. getting a steel slide for our deliveries has been difficult. grass ceases to grow in rare instances and clear-cut cases of overweening cowardice. diesel stains the conveyor belts. we have got deals to meet and ends to make and mistakes to stumble upon and planets to never visit. and we err by justifying the clover’s honest touch with pellets of hostility. things have become louder than we can hear.

under the awnings we sweat. we sweat and mutter. we catch our breath only to lose it once again. a rate is raised. purchases are easily bought out. those of us with anatomy-model figures make the most of open windows, though our peripheral vision is not what it should be. last night a white bat winged through the makeshift pope-colored curtains in the attic window. everything here is broken and old.

we have been hard at work lately on soul-baring techniques. they come in handy during hailstorms and marching drills, when, of course, we moue with single-file compunction. we have been reassured that reinforcements are on the way, but for the time being we must make do with golf pencils, postcards, and discarded wax paper. the smallest amount of ink spilled for unreasonable reasons can make even the most usurious among us plaintive and ill-disposed. and if in times of doubt we cheat on our small-motor-skills scantron tests, well, at least we never scribble outside the bubbles.

yesterday a wolf cub was found lost in one of the machines. it was gruesome, stretched like taffy by the jostles and pins, and its skin was burnt, its thin coat of tawny hair mottled and sheared through in places as if with a laser beam. saffron and tar came to our minds when we whiffed it, while a hint of berber stubbed the toes of our senses with a synesthetic blur. nobody was quite sure why, but we were suspicious of the lug nuts. they were aligned horizontally. the stench stayed with us all night, and many were those who dreamt in cloudy sepia splotches of flaming tundras. an ordinary man with a rattan cane rescued the carcass from its assumed abode. it was placed in the pink disposal bin marked: “For Laundry Use Only.”

without care we sponge the floors. we mop the ceilings. everybody gets drenched. soapy hair is the norm, though goggles help us remain courageous in all of our endeavors. even in victory we do not speak above a whisper about blood or urine. what goes on in the spirit room is debated weekly, with an almost barnstorming passion. multiplying usually helps even things out. it pays its dividends in leak-proof skies and rubber bands wrapped around the diaphanous skin of empty plastic bottles. we take our fill.

pass that bottle over here. we need room to move too. too much is enough. enough is not enough. bottle us a smile. no more is more than enough. rain us a body. instill virtues in cucurbits. nobody laughs at brute force anymore. smooth the grooved style of the surface with shallow convictions. call the country. the bottles empty into another alaska-sized flask. get rid of the evidence. move into a valley without fear. bottle no more.

pinch.

my grammatical sentiments exactly

a: All of my favorite memories are photo-shopped.

b: That’s not as passive nor as aggressive as I thought it was going to be.

a: Thanks. Thanks a lot. Really. I mean it.

b: You’re not being sarcastic.

a: That’s what you say.

b: My interpretation of the given language at any given time, attuned to my ear’s way of hearing, my own delicate perceptual delight, while considering a residual factor of…

a: Shut the front door already.

b: I know what you meant.

a: My meaning was got.

b: Yep. I get what was implied.

a: What I inferred.

b: No. What you implied. The inferring was left to me.

a: Oh. What about my inference of my own implications?

b: Oh. Those.

a: Yep. Those. “I’ll know my song well before I start singing.”

b: Those aren’t your words.

a: They’re not? But I said them.

b: But you were quoting them. Bob Dylan said them.

a: Sang them.

b: Wrote them.

a: So. So what? What does that matter? I, just now, said them, therefore they are my words. Words that I’ve spoken.

b: But not in your own words.

a: How can somebody own words?

b: A writer owns his/her/its books, right? He/she/it's got a copyright. They are his/her/its words.

a: But we all borrow. There are only so many words.

b: An infinite set of connections. An illimitable supply of ammunition for making sentences.

a: What about completing one of those?

b: My sentences need not objects. A subject shall do. My kingdom for a…

a: Stop. That was going to be dumb.

b: What?

a: I could tell. I know about such things. I have good editorial instincts.

b: Pansy.

a: That’s what you say.

b: My word.

a: You’d really want that to be “your word”?

b: I’d lease it, with an option to buy.

a: Your instincts for comedy are less than stellar.

b: I quip better than most.

a: Quip off.

b: I’ve won a few.

a: I know what you mean.

b: Where was the emphasis there? Which word?

a: Couldn’t decipher my saying? Semantically speaking, of course.

b: Your saying. What you’re saying. Semantically. I don’t know what you mean when you say, “I know what you mean.”

a: My saying.

b: As far as saying goes.

a: How far?

b: Not so far that I don’t think I’ll be able to catch it.

a: That was horrible.

b: Can’t resist bad jokes. They make life more funner.

a: Funny. Anyway. My emphasis in this particular case, in this context, which for some reason you could not catch the drift of, even though we are speaking aloud, out loud, and therefore it should be easy for you to understand where the putting of my stress was, on which word or words, but for some reason you have failed in this venture…

b: Venture?

a: Yes. So. I will put some quality italicizing in there for you. Some top-of-the-line font change. Some…

b: Got it.

a: Good. So. Here goes no thing.

b:

a: Ahem. “I know what you mean.”

b: That can’t be right.

a: Why not?

b: It doesn’t make sense.

a: It does to me.

b: Not in the context in to which it was put.

a: Who are you? Winston Churchill?

b: You got it. You know what I mean.

a: Wait. Gosh flame it. What do you mean?

b: I know not “means,” fine sir.

a: You mean “seems.”

b: I know what I mean.

a: That makes one of us.

b: Are we not two?

a: Not in the making of sense.

b: A penny for your…

a: Don’t make me slap you.

b: I couldn’t make you. You have your own volition. I do not control your actions. Ever hear about this thing called Free Will? You’re kind of born with it.

a: I’m a determinist. Or at least I’m determined to try and be one.

b: Cause and effect. I am the cause but you control the effect.

a: But if I lose control? Am I then to blame?

b: You mean if your actions are not your own? Whose would they be?

a: God’s?

b: Bullhunky. Don’t believe he exists anymore.

a: Whom are we supposed to pray to then?

b: Country.

a: Like Waylon Jennings?

b: No. I’m still mad at him about the whole Buddy-Holly-Plane-Crash thing.

a: Give the guy a break.

b: I’m giving him a Thumb’s Up on the inside.

a: That I understand.

b: Wait. Did you say, “That I UNDERstand,” or “THAT i underSTAND,”?

a: A lowercase i? Really? Wow. Now you’re playing dirty.

b: Down and dirty, like my grandma used to say. The only way to play.

a: I bet.

b: I will not stand for this defamation of my dear grandmother’s reputation. This objurgation of my sweet lovely grandma’s character. This sullying…

a: Will you sit for it?

b: I’d lie down for it.

a: Thank god you didn’t say “lay.”

b: Thank who?

a: Whom.

b: Waylon Jennings.

a: Oh.

b: What? Now I’m confused.

a: Confounded by the natural order of things.

b: Words. Words. Words.

a: Word.

b: Just like my grandmommy used to say.

a: Really? Grandmommy?

b: Would you prefer “Nana”?

a: Where was that question mark?

b: Outside the quotes.

a: Is that correct?

b: In this instance, yes, it was especially apt.

a: I’m not sure about this “Nana” business. That’s more of a cognomen really. An appellation.

b: A ghost.

a: Did I stutter?

b: Calgon. Take me away.

a: You might need a little copyright symbol there.

b: Nah. I don’t believe in them.

a: So. No god. No ownership. You a damn pinko?

b: I don’t believe in the masses. I’m more of a soloist by nature.

a: You’ve got to be strong to make a go of it alone.

b: Sure do. You’re going to get sued for that one, by the way.

a: Let him try. When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to…

b: Aha! See? Stopped cold in his tracks with another man’s words.

a: Mule shit!

b: Basically.

a: Poor wretches who we are. Stranded here with a pocketful of ungranted wishes.

b: Basically.

a: You said that.

b: Basically.

a: Say it once, why say it again?

b: Because.

a: Good answer.

b: Thanks.

a: What? Was that sarcastic?

b: No. Ironic.

a: Oh. That figures. Irony is always lost on me. I do enjoy me some good pleonasm now and again though.

b: Mao and a gimp?

a: No. The chairman walked without a limp, as far as I know.

b: As far as you know.

a: Yes.

b: That far.

a: Yes. Any further than that, I don’t know.

b: How could you?

a: Don’t know.

b: Are we through yet?

a: Threw? I haven’t thrown anything.

b: Tossed something perhaps?

a: Perhaps?

b: Oh shit. That’s my phone. Sorry. I’ve got to take this.

a: No problem.

b: Hello. 911 emergency and rescue. Please state your name, address, and emergency situation.

the suburbs of life

Euripides--I just can’t stop thinking about her. It’s an addiction.

Hesiod--How many times a day?

Euripides--I can’t count high enough. It’s like…so I’m doing something, like sprinkling salt on celery or walking on the side of the freeway or watching TV or flipping up the tab on a can of Pepsi, and then I’m wondering at the same time, what would this be like if she were here with me? And it always seems so much better, the thought of having her there with me. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing.

Hesiod--Sounds pretty abysmal. You’re giving yourself an unsolvable dilemma on purpose.

Euripides--I know. I’m doing it to myself. It’s self-defeating. I set my sights on what I know I can’t have, and then I become miserable because I can’t have it.

Hesiod--Sit on something soft, and you will have soft thoughts.

Euripides--Hard to say.

Hesiod--Find other things to bring you pleasure in your life. Something can, once in a while, be better than nothing. Replace. Replace. Replace.

Euripides--It’s allowed?

Hesiod--Sure. Why not?

Euripides--Don’t know.

Hesiod--Does it cause you guilt in excess of what reality’s really proffered?

Euripides--Deriving pleasure from certain things comes with its downfall…for me.

Hesiod--Stop putting a guilt trip on yourself. It’s not worth it.

Euripides--Can’t help it. Old habits die hard.

Hesiod--Sure. But we grow more mindful of time as we become more accustomed to passing through it, as we age and get more experienced with it.

Euripides--Time slipping away. Will I wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled?

Hesiod--No. But you might eat a peach. You might become splintered in your decision making. Things will seem to be dragging you in many different directions all at once. Time is still there though, waiting, right?

Euripides--Yes. I am absurd. I realize this.

Hesiod--But you seem to accept it too readily. There is always a chance that things will change.

Euripides--Like playing footsie with the weather.

Hesiod--Maybe more like arm wrestling with wind. Would you consider yourself somebody who thinks deep thoughts?

Euripides--No. I’m strictly a shallowender, but I’m in denial about it too.

Hesiod--Have you ever bridled a horse?

Euripides--How dare you.

Hesiod--Calm down. I didn’t mean it like that.

Euripides--How’d you mean it then?

Hesiod--Don’t know. Not sure. The days are getting longer.

Euripides--15 microseconds a year.

Hesiod--Need those leap seconds. About every 18 months.

Euripides--Those IERS bastards. Keeping time.

Hesiod--Calculating. Observing. Making a fuss over the decoupling of the definition of the second from the rotational period of the earth.

Euripides--Are we talking solar days?

Hesiod--We’re talking atomic clocks. International Atomic Time.

Euripides--Sounds like a bad moment in the arms race.

Hesiod--Is a moment more or less than a second?

Euripides--You mean as far as time passing?

Hesiod--That’s what time does, right?

Euripides--It is one of the necessities of being alive. Like owning a luxury sedan.

Hesiod--Like grilling salmon.

Euripides--Like going to a Cineplex.

Hesiod--We say one-one thousand.

Euripides--One Mississippi.

Hesiod--The deviation of the days.

Euripides--It’s all a matter of looking the right way at the situation.

Hesiod--The situation is grave and pot-holed.

Euripides--The situation is gravy and gristle.

Hesiod--Uncertainty thrives. Abolishment is the only answer.

Euripides--Wait a sec.

Hesiod--Hold on.

Euripides--Clock drift?

Hesiod--I think it’s a myth. All is relative.

Euripides--Drifting ahead in time. Always meandering our way into the future.

Hesiod--Relatively. Generally.

Euripides--What about gravitational time dilation?

Hesiod--‘Spose it could be time that changes, not the clock itself.

Euripides--‘Spose so.

Hesiod--If it moos I call it a cow. I don’t let it get the best of me.

Euripides--The worst of you then?

Hesiod--Sincerely, my letters end. And we talk of adorning ourselves with myrrh.

Euripides--Phenol on the breeze.

Hesiod--It’ll bleach your skin after you die. I’d prefer formaldehyde myself.

Euripides--Yep.

Hesiod--And remember St. Maximilian Kolbe?

Euripides--Injection, right?

Hesiod--You got it. Prisoner #16670. Auschwitz. He was starved too. Wouldn’t even let him drink water towards the end.

Euripides--Please make of me whatever pleases you.

Hesiod--We talking the immaculata?

Euripides--Give me strength against your enemies, O Sacred Virgin.

Hesiod--We must’a be a’talkin’ that old immaculata.

Euripides--Gimme that old time immaculata. Some of that old time immaculata.

Hesiod--It’s good enough for me. Still thinking about her?

Euripides--Not sure. My mood is ampersanding its way through difficult terrain.

Hesiod--Maybe a cleft would help?

Euripides--It is difficult terrain that my mood is ampersanding its way through.

Hesiod--Nope. Didn’t help.

Euripides--Damn. Maybe a clef. A nice G-clef for example.

Hesiod--No. That won’t do. Misses the point.

Euripides--Missing. That’s part of it. I’m always missing certain things, even when I have them, sometimes, well, I already miss them.

Hesiod--Dear lord. Ain’t nobody here but us chickens. Ain’t nobody here at all.

Euripides--Well, I accept the fact that I might be in need of some diversionary tactics.

Hesiod--This is tuckering me out.

Euripides--Oh. Come on. Keep your shirttails in.

Hesiod--So it came to be that he wanted somebody to share his life with.

Euripides--Put a sock in it.

Hesiod--He reconciled himself to being disappointed by just about everything life had to offer.

Euripides--Barefoot girls don’t run too fast.

Hesiod--Lemme git me my bb gun.

Euripides--Shoot out yer eye, kiddo.

Hesiod--Fear is nothing shot out of caterpillared dreams. Portions of success avenue to other lends of trying. And we get caught up making reservations for our own funeral. Vomit me a river.

Euripides--I got lost in the fumes of staring. Can’t wish yourself back, can you?

Hesiod--Getting caught in the net of somebody else’s life. There’s no excuse that’ll work.

Euripides--Hyperacusis?

Hesiod--No way in hell. That’s absurd. Quiet down.

Euripides--I still have these dreams where I’m in a huddle, but it’s not with football players. It’s not at a football game. It is in an auditorium that’s jam-packed with people dressed up like kings, you know with robes and crowns and jewels and stuff like that, and all these kings are singing a love song. It’s a song I’ve never heard. Maybe I made it up in the dream. But they’re all singing it together. It goes, “La la la, boo, and a boom, la la la la, and boo, boo, boo, dada, dada, la.” It just keeps repeating like that. It’s the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard. At least I think that in the dream. Not so sure upon waking. But the huddle, in the huddle, there are all these farmers, and they’ve got on suspenders and blue jeans and are wearing straw hats, and I’m huddled there with them, and nobody’s talking. We’re just huddled there together, and it seems really important that we stay that way. I am not a farmer.

Hesiod--It’s only time we're wasting.

Euripides--I’m bored.

Hesiod--I’m boring.

Euripides--Change tips.

Hesiod--I was married once and I had this Eskimo I kept as a butler.

Euripides--You kept a butler?

Hesiod--Sure did. What a wonderful time in my life that was. I had an evil twin.

Euripides--What happened?

Hesiod--He bit the Big One one cool, balmy day at a Texaco station. Poisoned. Rid of him at last.

Euripides--What happened?

Hesiod--Creative differences.

Euripides--What happened?

Hesiod--Love went the way of the passenger pigeon.

Euripides--What happened?

Hesiod--Smoke in the brain like the filling of Twinkies

Euripides--What happened?

Hesiod--Nothing.

Euripides--Oh. I see. There’s a lanyard.

Hesiod--Where? I don’t see.

Euripides--Palling around with that pig-tailed girl ‘neath the shade of that umbrella tree.

Hesiod--I’m tongue-tied with doubt.

Euripides--I want an elevator that goes sideways instead of up and down. It’d be a box to take you all over town.

Hesiod--Still got her on your mind?

Euripides--Not sure my mind’s even my own anymore. It’s gone like Wally Pipp, who touted his own replacement to his boss, and then lost his job to him forever.

Hesiod--I get the feeling you’d rather love than be loved.

Euripides--My heart’s just a canceled check.

Hesiod--Better than a blank check.

Euripides--Dear oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear.

Hesiod--Singularly afflicted with pessimistic tendencies.

Euripides--Meaninglessness.

Hesiod--Not socially inclined by nature.

Euripides--Waving goodbye. Bring me back my girl. Bring her back. Bring her back to me. To me. Waving goodbye for good.

Hesiod--Don’t flower yourself with hurt. I mean, what phase is this that you seem to be going through?

Euripides--A phase. You’re right. It’s just a phase.

Hesiod--Curses.

Euripides--Was bound to happen like that.

Hesiod--Curses.

Euripides--My concern would be with repercussions. The algorithms of the world we live in. Things sinking and rising at the same time.

Hesiod--Don’t forget luck. A role, caution thrown at a pedestrian, to grow accustomed to, like all things, just an acrimonious but well-intentioned step in a formerly unknown direction. Without the moon we’d all be dead in a matter of days.

Euripides--I stand up. I sit down. Life.

Hesiod--But the shine of it all, sometimes like moonglow streaking off a sallet before summer dies one more time, still proves its own worth, you must admit.

Euripides--A thief to steal my dreams. Of her. Of her. Of cigarettes. Of a demitasse filled with swan tears. Of her. Of tiny kids wearing tiny bascinets. Of saving the life of crossing guards. Of tossing terrible things out the window. Of miracles in iceboxes. Of her. Of silky scarlet-petaled poppies with black hearts. Of being transformed into a pleasant reptile. Of loamy mounds between snake holes. Of nodding heads fuming to face the sun. Of dusting for fingerprints on cabbage leaves. Of six-wheeled bicycles. Of her. Of cindery blasts of rockets. Of hanging from an observation window in the Statue of Liberty’s crown. Of sea-colored Baltic creatures whose waxy heads pop out of holes in the ground.

Hesiod--Blame is a fixed game.

Euripides--From the highest authority, from already over-delved depths of despair, from curtains, from showers, from the open road, from me, from this to that to there to here, from…

Hesiod--Closed for business until sunup.

Euripides--We purchase mules from sharpshooters and pull cords and make mistletoe tea.

Hesiod--Gone gone gone gone gone…

Euripides--Two characters in search of an entrance.

Hesiod--Ha.

Euripides--The veneration of ordinary things.

Hesiod--Tranquilizers for the overly anxious.

Euripides--Mood music for horticulturists.

Hesiod--And we’ve got hard-hearted hussies screaming sansculotte sermons over the horizon’s nipples.

Euripides--We do?

Hesiod--Sometimes. Like when the doors of perception squeak ajar and let in a fart on the breeze.

Euripides--Oh. Yeah. Those times.

Hesiod--I am nothing but a silent film with the sound turned all the way up. A breath without air. A mirror with nothing to reflect. A pompom lying flat and tangled like a yarn mop on the floor. Describe the state of your mind as of this very moment.

Euripides--Perhaps an example will do.

Hesiod--Perhaps.

Euripides--So. Here’s a conversation we once had…we had once…she and I…um…ok, “ --The moon’s dreamy tonight. --Yes. Its coal-like surface, all those dark volcanic maria among bright crustal highlands and impact craters, of course in synchronous rotation with the earth, our planet’s only natural satellite, always showing that same face to us, with really such a low albedo, though enhanced as it is by the opposition effect of course, is quite splendidly lit by the sun tonight. --I wonder if anybody owns the moon? --We do. The Outer Space Treaty was signed in 1967, and it defines the moon as the province of all mankind, and its uses are restricted to those of peace. --That’s nice. I like that. --Yeah. At least the moon’s not for sale. --Sometimes I think the moon wiggles, or kind of wrinkles its nose at me. --Actually that’s sort of true. Its orbit is rather eccentric around the earth, due to its libration, and we can glimpse almost 60 percent of its surface over time. Maybe the man in the moon does seem to be winking at us a bit because of the diurnal oscillation.”

Hesiod--Now I see. You’re flitting o’er the wide scars of Now in hopes of reaching the pits of Why.

Euripides--More or less.

Hesiod--Put an apple upon thy noggin and she shall only pierce thine eye with silver-bullet dreams.

Euripides--Amply put.

Hesiod--Well, I am in a waning gibbous period of my life.

Euripides--Bossing caddies around and...

Hesiod--Missing root-beer lips and coca-cola eyes…

Euripides--Disappearing under the curling waves of soup…

Hesiod--Chalking leaving the crime scene up to the smell of her mouth…

Euripides--Not like a cold to catch…

Hesiod--Not like lyme disease jumping a host…

Euripides--Not like a dot or dash of Jainism…

Hesiod--Destroy thy passions! Or, well…at least subdue the damn shit.

Euripides--Just this little feeling called love.

Hesiod--Tackle it and shackle it to the ground. Beat hell out of it with a cane. Break its spirit. Crush its will power. Smash its head in. Kill off whatever’s left.

Euripides--I am in opposition to that which holds me in thrall. I creep away while nobody’s looking. I can be stealthy when I wish to be.

Hesiod--Lose it in a bet. Throw it in with the towel. Mash it with some hard-boiled eggs.

Euripides--I am curious about the historical inaccuracies in my own life. I’ve eaten many bagels, but never one covered with coal tar. Get it straight. I am not in love. I am not.

Hesiod--Point and stare. Point. Stare. Lie down. Jump. Start rumors. Shower x-mas trees with gasoline.

Euripides--Badly in need of a razor.

Hesiod--Got it straight?

Euripides--I am a cloche hat thrown in the gutter.

Hesiod--But with sequins to see the stars?

Euripides--Shame. Shame. Shame.

Hesiod--Ty Cobb’s mommy killed his daddy.

Euripides--With a rifle. With a rifle she shot him in his head.

Hesiod--Ain’t got no home in this world, boys. He ain’t got no home in this world anymore.

Euripides--My daddy will bring your daddy back home again. Don’t be afraid if it gets dark and rains.

Hesiod--Something like that…I guess.

Euripides--If there is a mortician, if he sees me wishing I were in his care, if the bells are all tolling for somebody else, if the trumpets are all crumpling the same old benedictions foreboding morning, if my will is hunting cross-dressing baritones, if my lord, my lord, my good lord is supping with a wingless angel, if I’m skimming the Daily Worker and singing those anti-labor Taft-Hartley blues again.

Hesiod--The outcome of many concurrent or contiguous events might seem aberrational at the time or in the times we live outside the circular molecular patterns of the land beyond and then some possibility screaming, “Woe, woe, woe is me!”

Euripides--Not me.

Hesiod--That’s what they all say.

Euripides--Shoot.

Hesiod--Wonderment is achieved at random hints of velocity.

Euripides--I’m plugging the coin slots of my ambitions with dirty thoughts.

Hesiod--Lonesome is as lonesome does, scaredy cat.

Euripides--When is all this going to end?

Hesiod--Whenever you let it end.

Euripides--Can it end now?

Hesiod--Good question. What’s the answer?

Euripides--Well, you know, you know, you know. Plant a banana tree. Put heavy things in your pockets. Become weighed down.

Hesiod--Fruit punch!

Euripides--Loss grows its own achievements, maybe like a chayote, but we must admit, while the show goes on, if it must, a Euler diagram might help, as far as clusterings go, as far as milquetoast sensibilities run the races of your life’s course, as far as seeing it all like a little kid would, as far as far will go.

Hesiod--Wear a helmet. Take a chance. Stay up all night. Write a book on tape. Pitch a shutout with a tennis ball in the gimcrack, hard-to-notice stadium of bad luck badly fitted to the confines of your friendliest tendencies. Get on with it.

Euripides--My train’s leaving.

Hesiod--Get on with it.

Euripides--I’ve got my ticket.

Hesiod--Get on with it.

Euripides--But I’m scared to leave.

Hesiod--Get on with it.

Euripides--Dreaming about the weather.

Hesiod--Get on with it.

Euripides--Love on the tracks.

Hesiod--Flimflam and slapdash.

Euripides--That is all we are.

Hesiod--That is all.

Euripides--Two characters in search of…

Hesiod--A snowy sidewalk.

Euripides--A cowboy hat.

Hesiod--Get on with it.

Euripides--Making believe…

Hesiod--Get on with it.

Euripides--In the reality of business as usual.

Hesiod--Get on with it.

Euripides--The highway goes in both directions. Not too comfortable. The highway goes. Goes and goes and goes. Goes in all these ways. Not too ordinary. On any map. Red and black squiggles. Going in all these ways. The dashes and dots. Yellow and white on the long stretches of tarry road. Going. Going. Dividers. Shrubbery. Promises. Going. Going. Cement and separation. Going. Going. Gone…

Hesiod--Yes.