by David Milligan

This is it : the season of the band-aid ressurection, the cranes never
stopped turning, lifted the liquid sky hole filler more and more, the
leaves turned explosive shades. This is the time of the skinned
knees and the sad sack elbows, black eyes and chipped foreheads.
This is the time when all the tiny inhabitants of vomitville battened
down the hatches and crawled into the beddie bye night night just
waiting for the month to pass when perhaps something normal might
show it's head, the way the groundhog pops out of its whiskers, sort
of. This is when they saw the answer and usually no-one sees more
that a hopeless future in this the time of hot smog showers. But yes
it's true beyond the red mortar, or mortal, brick window outside his
third story window was the universal result; the grand survey answer
and he decided that it was now he must devine the meaning of the
great bingo game he calkled his life. Had he not taken up cooking
he would have surely become an athlete for now as the fry-pan
boiled like hot hawaii lava he cartwheeled towards that third floor
see through and crash crashed through the glass and the bendable
steel frame gave way and he plummeted like a Newton headache
through the wee precipice between his building and the building
beside his. As he falls the phenomonon of life flashing before one's
eyes occured with supreme techni-coded regalia and parade like
precision; like a film unwinding onto the floor he saw everything and
time was frozen in it's relative refridgerator while he tumbled past
the bee nest on the balcony

.

There will always be fat smoking shoppers pushing their carts in their
blind grand prix of super sale saving lanes of that local supermarket
and the no speed check-out is controlled by a small lass who can't
even be afforded the courtesy of a chair while she deals with the
dozo queue and some guy wants to cash in his ninety cents worth of
stink-o bottles to buy some stink-o. Yes these are the sad last
thoughts of he, he who went a-tumblin' in the search for the great
one. Now down and down body hits head first splits crack cedar
timber splinter splat. Now the death beavers flash their morse ripple
tail signals and converge on the mud bank blood red sidewalk to
begin nibbling at the twist tie contortionist. Circus scouts gather with
cameras to shoot the newest bent-up recruit, the latest sideshow
freak, now dead. But the interest in the paying public is the dead,
no? No not at all thinks the roomate staring down the broken
skylight to the fly swarm vulture shadows festering over the ink blots;
the psycho test, the black jack winning deal for sure. There is
nothing now but an empty bed and supper still simmers but this time
there's more than enough except when it comes to paying the
landlord. Yeah. Robbed and gagged and bound as well, there may
be more to that poor flat body than meets the eye. Maybe it was
an act of salvation or a message. Like seeing the bent back
vertabrae rolled up under straight speed metro car; some fat guy
with a hairy chest and khaki work pants decided that Christmas day
was the perfect time to meet his maker; the great baker of the
bloated cheeks, the great sailor of the still black seas, his gifts
disappeared forever under his makers screeching machine. Roomate
is wearing the Bar-B-Que apron thinks back to the day he met his
gone buddy under the ball bark green trees full of squirrels and
pigeons cluck lambada down the fountain steps. Then they all were
happy starting something new; then later it was not new but it still
fit together like a little boys model car that is built in a glue fuming
closet and ends up being used as a smash-up-derby target.

The past, ahhhh the past. What a four star joke, or maybe a four
star hotel with minty green sheets and matching breath mints. No
No No...it couldn't be over for that poor helpless person leaking
precious bodily pints into the soapstone sidewalk. The church was
bellowing bell tolls; the traffic didn't let up and onlyt a few cyclists
now stopped to see firsthand a first rate emergency. Nothing to see
now, only paint speckled broken pane lying over a red outline, color
by numbers falling from windows. There was nowhere to mourn, no
details to attend to only a bowl of hot spicey spaghetti and later
dishes to scrape and scrub. Death don't deter the dishes and life
don't make them any easier. Eventually the tears did come from
some distant fingers that wrapped around the pepper shaker of guilt
and ground out over the late night wide open eyeballs and salties
streamed into the pillow where the head sunk unable to sleep. All
the closed up tight trunk and secret boxes were opened up and
contents were distributed to the floor and regarded with suspicion
and uneasiness for at any moment the dead one's ghost could drift
through the door like the slippery smell of natural gas from a bent
stove pipe. Don't mourn me the ghost would have said for my
choice was that window and I had taken some lsd the night before
and as I contemplated the life that had been given me I became
aware of the acute uselessness of inspring to greatness so decided
that instead a flurry of glass shards and gravity would add spice to
my inevitable disapearrance. Wake up in a sweat and hope that
wasn't true. There on the floor the plastic bag full of drug store
reciepts, mostly vitamins; the collection of underwood typewriters, a
lamp, flowers, a fruit bowl, a collection of coinage tossed I Ching;
from the open window the wind comes in and there is no band-aid
big enough. There are no stitches; there is a huge gaping hole,
tasteless and wide, in his burnt heart.