The Madness I see
I witness from behind closed doors.
"The store is closed for the day,"
The sign reads as my eyes pass it over for the second time.

Pencilneck Popcicle sticks crowd around a square table.
Each one has its own personal assistant toothpick.
None are without paper umbrellas but only one has the Golden Thumb.
Why have they gathered here, today of all days,
By the left side of a spherical shaped container of snow?

Why the laughter? Why not the suffering, smoldering
Sound of pain? Or can laughing be caused by pain?
One of the core human responses to extreme stress.
Laughing for masochism! would look good across a bumper sticker
Or the side of a bus.

I wonder why I thought of the word "Japanda"?
I don't believe it existed before tonight.
But who's to say the words wasn't scrawled down
On a tiny shred of a fiber of a napkin on the bottom of a homeless dog's shoe?
Smaller words have happened upon the written page
While the author has been dancing across the olympic-slice of water near the back of the hotel.

Blurred vision causes many typoghrahpical errors.
Though I can always correct them,
Some tend to lead my fingers across the board.
Single symbols, collaged across a mostly blank, white screen.
A tiny tap upon these silver slivers of shiny psuedo-steel.
One
   Letter
         At
           A
            Time

And even now I censor my sensations,
Only to deprive the provider of the full revelation.

Thinking of thumbtacks...
All trying to hitch a ride across the great Bowl of Pudding South.
None of them have anything to offer
But one knows where to get a single serving sandwich.
Always on the house at Tub's place.
He just happens to be held up behind some bats of steel windshield wipers.

Free Tub!
Free Tub!
Green Rub!

Slacks, slacking about the laundromat,
Tug a sleek sadness from the bottom of the barrel,
Only to be surprised by the hissing of the change drawer.
Sandwiched between bananas belonging to no one
And a Piece of Lint the weight of a melted snowball.
What was it to do?

Could have been writing for hours?
Could have been eating more flours?
Could have been stealing more cowards?
These answers, plus many more,
Only to come when the last sundown has fallen off the Earth.

Tinseltown was the tattoo of a fat guy who once had folded bottle caps over the edge of his hoodie.

Don't think.
Just type.

Suspender powdered monkeys play with the South Bronx
While a lemonade stand built from the bones of Satan
Rises in the east to cast its shadow across
Not a thing.
But not even a non-thing, something other than emptiness.
Darkness running through the woods,
Lost for its own shadow has become enlightened with the sounds of howls.

Places which eat people are the people-places one is always trying to meet.

A straight line, dividing light grey from nearly black.
A haze.
Blurry without being distracting or contradicting.
Flashes of a box-faced killer.
He's hiding under the table upon which the line has been dividing the space above.
Crooked drawing, snapping his head from side to side,
But mostly looking forward.
Always forward.
Is that a grin or a crudely executed excuse for a mouth?
Hardly a sound, mostly a gust of still air as he turns from side to side.
Always shaking, up and down, up and down.
Up and down flights of stairs.
They lead to the dead.
Floors below the table, lofted away from the light of the day.
He is tip toe tapping down, down, down.
Stairs for the eternity of existence
Without a place to stop and rest.
And endless shaky click-clacking down the dark well,
Finding no reward yet no punishment either.
Just shivers off the spines of shadows.
Until the bottomless pit of stairs hits the Eject button back into a life worth living.
Until then will the Box-faced Killer saddle up his doomhorse
And ride the last sundown off the edge of the Earth.

2008.09.26 5.57.AM