.

There’s Tracyanne,

The husky cashier,

.

There’s Michelle,

The upwardly mobile,

Ambitious customer service clerk

.

And,

Among others,

There’s Grace,

The Amazon shopper

Who looks like a real, live,

Stuck-up bimbo.

.

It’s like something

Out of a movie.

.

In and out,

People file,

In rapid fire,

Not bothering each other,

In this college town in the mitten,

.

Some with kids,

.

Of good nature,

.

Calm,

.

Some with eccentric motives

Involving vermicelli noodles.

.

A semi-sociopathic front end manager comes up

And tells in a serious tone

That it’s a $10,000 fine

To leave the rail down on the ladder

While we’re on it.

.

I joke around with the kid from Detroit,

The lady from Ohio talks to me slowly,

Lets me in the back door,

Where a dude sees me checking out my reflection

In my smart phone and smiles.

.

And I sit out in the sun,

Unhinged,

Wanting to curl in on myself,

Wanting to be anywhere but here,

Anyone but me,

And

.

I learn to put one foot in front of the other

And creep closer to the end of my workday

When I can retire to my hotel room,

.

Can fantasize,

Can heal, and

.

At some point

I’m flanking the refrigerated case with the expensive cheese

Doing some odd job

And I seem to have once again connected

With the rhythm of humanity,

Glancing up and meeting a smile

From a 50-something man who looks like a professor.

.

And he seems like a genius

For his ability to be truly himself —

.

Why would genius not manifest

As appreciation for everyone,

For every moment on this planet,

In complete control and

With complete power?

Sometimes it seems

To me

All my achievements in life

Lead to overproduction of skin cells

And to itching and scratching

And

For all the purple corridors and rooms I’ve traversed

I’m always

Once again

Subservient to those little microbial organisms

On my skin

Without which I would not be me and

Which laugh as I kill,

Kill,

As a necessary sustenance for the universe

After the storm subsides.

Do I want to go camping or not? I have no idea. I have no idea whether or not I like camping. I always adamantly adored it as a youth with my dad hating it.

I was thinking about getting a tent. Unfortunately, anyway, I’ve never pitched one in my life. It seemed like diffusing a bomb.

There’s this girl I want to go with. She works at the Wings, Etc. in Rochester. She’s very friendly and shy, usually laughing at anything I say, and smiling really wide. I like that. I find that presence appealing and think it would be good for my blood pressure. I like her look as well.

I wanted to float down the Eel River, too, in Miami County, Indiana. I’m not sure why that’s important but the fact stands nonetheless.

I think of the reality of being there, at the campground, out in the middle of nowhere, with everyone being very restless. Personally, I’ve never been the restless type. For instance, at the cross country camping trip, after I’d graduated and I was there as an alumni, my coach made the remark that I “looked about the same as (I) always did,” just staring into the fire silently. I’d of course had some good times at the camping trips but can also turn to introversion, habitually. I think of glancing off into the northwest and having a girl look into my eyes. Nervousness would follow, surely. My chest would start heaving. I’m not sure what she’d be exhibiting but I’d be perceiving moral quandary, pollution, climate change and waning resources and housing, as a punishment for having kids. It was just another day as an arrogant casanova, you might say.

I feel as if in the presence of divinity

Around girls who are kind,

Friendly,

Laugh at things sympathetically

And love animals.

.

I feel their hearts

As they traverse majestic space

Like a transcendent multiplicity of identity

That is exciting for its aesthetic beauty

And soothing for its lack of ambition

.

As well-behaved women rarely make history

Or whatever.

I am dispatching to you today from the celestial, eternal glacier of foolishness, whereupon I will forever keep changing my direction, my motives, my disposition, color and shape, and will marvel, always, about how somebody managed to get those creatures so obsessed with sex. They swam around in a circular motion within a closed course of struggle, conflict, harshness and vituperation, constantly putting on airs, constantly infusing false meaning into the unimportant, and all the while, taking off ever more clothing, as a tautological guidance into a base-two existence, an animalistic quagmire. Obsessed with the idea of an unstoppable force moving an inanimate object, they made an orchestration against progress, blinded themselves to truth and deliberately worshipped an act that was frustrating, even in itself, for its intrinsic functional interface of giving, of tiring, of sacrifice and overwhelming sensation. In their eyes was a stupefying stagnancy, passing in and out of tabernacles and fortresses alike, like a still, sordid waste matter the essence of which it was their objective to give away, rather than to harness and perfect. And now I sit watching this watery ball hurling through space, as they might put it, and they are so small they could fit under my fingernails or refuse the soul of another being as a rudimentary defense of their own existences.

There was this girl today in Whole Foods

Issuing an ear-piercing, vitriolic

Peal of screaming for

About seven minutes or so.

.

The dad was standing there

Not really doing much of anything,

Just attempting to reprimand the girl,

Basically.

.

It just made it worse.

.

I heard something she uttered

During the din

And it was

“They’re going to kill me.”

.

All day,

Grown men

Had been ambulating around me

With gaits which I thought indicated

Homicidal essences, like

Grasping for the satisfaction

Of the finality

Of killing,

The transcendence

.

Rampant

In sending somebody

Into the transformation

Of

.

Entrance into the next life.

.

The incident with the girl

Seems to be isolated

For now

But I’d been seeing the same thing

All day

On May 23rd of 2024.

She took the low road

Full of sand and mud

And now her face is but a mask.

.

The camera never really flashes to her

And when it does

It’s like it still didn’t flash to her.

.

She is a walking indication

Of what it’s like to give up,

To set the exclamation point

Malevolently,

In upon the self,

.

To tell the world she’s worthless,

To tell herself she’s worthless,

And

.

She is an entity wholly unapproachable,

Like the end of life,

Like the end of an oblong,

Sun-scorched ordeal.

Birth plus ennui

Equals classical music.

.

Globalization

Plus economic depletion

Equals jazz.

.

Globalization plus

Economic depletion

Plus defunding of public schools’

Music programs in New York

Equals hip-hop.

.

Slavery

Equals

Gospel.

.

Slavery

Plus globalization

Equals rock and roll.

.

Globalization

Plus something

Equals country…

.

I’m not sure what or where it is

But I’m pretty sure I can smell it.

I saw this post

I like on Facebook

But I’m not sure if I should like the page.

.

They might think I’m creepy.

.

And they might be the benefactor of my will.

.

And they might be

The party that decides

Whether or not my life insurance plan

Kicks in

After I die.

And they might be the person who

Turns on the sun,

Maddens the headlights,

Butters the yams and

Flaps the jacks,

Pinches the pennies and

Causes any number

Of nuisances

To fall like

Neutron bombs and

Encumbered patrons

Of the know-how blow-now.