The sudden diversity at local

  made for interesting conversation especially in regards to What is this all about.

  It took people who'd been studying to help explain why buying a hamburger at a McDonald's was okay on a Wednesday, but not so good on a Sunday.  People shared what textbooks and crossword puzzles they had with them during longer and longer waits to get back to cities boobytrapped and bloodied by "slaughters".

  "Ideologies as

  "Say, theories of society

  "And government

  "That form the basis of

  "Political

  "Yes, political

  "Programs?

  "It was pogroms," an interviewer of survivor commented in all the talking.

  What we'd witnessed, a bunch of us, was described as "a democratic orgy", "nothing", "happens every season", and "an indescribable hell".  A cross-section of road, train, and airspace had been fencing us all in.  People were robbed, beaten, raped, children taken, and terrorized.  Outside "le pen" seemed like an ordinary day.

"Your problem is

   that this isn't a Communism." One man had asked another man, "Can you tell me what the problem is?"  There'd been narrow margin between groups walked-back from warring against each other and pockets of enclave.  Limited resource flow had caused hostage taking and some peering into what had become death and destruction situation in our American town.

  "Why can't I get anyone?" A woman asked a public service walkie talkie.  "The chore aid is on hold."  Trash was starting to mount up on front lawns without compound-fencing.  A "witch doctor" had performed another "surgery".  And without definitive on the vote counting and a president with health issues, citizens were commenting in lieu of making investments, stuff like this feels like a bazaar, and, here's a quarter call someone who cares.  The quarter saved more than a few lives when someone could get past flesh-eating dogs guarding drugs and sex for sale and contact the authorities. 

  "Captain Wallace, why are those people sitting on shelving?" A person in a Star Trek costume asked a rabbit.  The answer was complicated and unfolded through "channels" over a few days.  It essentially had to do with "troops" and "homeland".

He didn't have his legs yet.

  So we kept stashing him.  A lot of our generation's people were still high school and college age.  And were on the poor side.  Certainly most of us hadn't seen field hospital surgery.  Nor health care that wasn't okay.  Advocates and friends and neighbors were the ones saying, that's NOT okay.

Back then

   we had some serious issues.  For one thing the Korean War had left some armed forces in various states of suspension.  That translated to chain of commands being potentially compromised.  And regular citizens holding piles of potential evidence in crime that had been underreported.

   For people of my parents' generation there was a formidable loss to overcome in losing the "greatest generation".  Whether or not people were actively acknowledging that didn't matter as much as the effects of loss.  Other civilizations and cultures had had similar experience.

  The LIbrarian's Index Card just read, yours crumbled

     "Well, love, it wasn't a good racer," an egg tapped on it's ricepaper ink lei line

An elephant ardvark, the weakling

  lifted head just enough to unpress cheek on cheesecutter wire.

 

'Mr. McGaha,"

   "You were like Sweetpitati?" 

  This as the starry space night air crumpled the transpirter's nose into jungle-covered library books.  Rubbing my neck because I'm getting a wee bit tidy.

  The bright whites, socks and cuffs, had been deposited into our best laundry baskwets.  A strip of theatre curtainage stapled to our new band leaders side pants.  The neked were buttoned into their showah cuttin' dressbarn ware.

  A shot out transformer had sparked a galax of fuel path on the ground and while it wasn't exactly telling the whole story de todo, the surviving wounds

                   inkling

Tings of dis and dats.  A downed like a Space Needle to a chalked aerial.  Spires and art decos never shall be "quite the saME".  Watch the wires inside my yammie colored dog.  Why?!? Goes.

     The lightbrightblack papers spiralplitchart a llama's foot and debris.       Gal  AX     ing 

Sucking oxygen, heliym tank giggles, a diveboard into a dunk tank.

              .  

The tile word game

  was passed over the handcuffed man's seatback tray.  "It's not exactly cheating to use dictionaries." Some of us gimme'd whoever could reach one of the beach bags.

  Had been warned about Stumps.  Wrists still only thin drumskins of layers.  And not smoking so much.  And picking up somebody else's trail of bread crumbs.  Mama rolled her eyes at the amount of reading we need to get to.  "Let me finish understand this first," she sketched a psalmist's hand.  Before the co-piloting person could finish warning, LOOK OUT FOR THE BARRIER a front tire clipped it.  Some of the barriers on the overpass road had come from New's in Albuquerque as heavier and heavier planes needed to stop circling like ducks in a barrel and attempt an approach.

  We'd been gulping choke.  Tunnels so thick with black smoke people rolled deadweights close to shinies--paints decrying smothering cement colors and tokens placed like golf game putting place holders.  Spit and drool covered the tubings used to un-Daniel's Farm us.  Whips offa big trucks had been mounted on sides of tunnels and passageways to tap floating fuselage in a wrathful flood of stillness.

  Pitching.  Would be warming up the battah, battah, battah but that's a boy job ever since that stadium wall was laid down and we had an impromptu skating party.  The weather had been that cold.

  "A perfect ten," the emotion checker Okayed our mood.  Couldn't tell if the wink was for those cheerleaders or the prouding loved ones, but we can really gather our composure when we've lost the dead weight of excess clothing and other formalities.

  Finally the Montreal suitcase floated like a spiraling feather on a chain pen, holy helps and special graces windspeed.  We were off again, a contemporary regular's work day.

  In opposition "to the wording" "at this time" of wees in the know about 

  "Here it is.  It's called Of Cabbages and Kings

     Love the children

  And the poEtry reminded us tweedy types of delicious aromas, fooood the robots' arms led the blankets to the can opening stations.  "Eat quick," Dad gave a thumb's up on work having enough ink left.  A rollerskater stole my hot meal and an old fashioned nunhat like a kite reprimanded.

  Shovel slowly so their template for the Architectural drawings doesn't burn up like these covered in snake oil.

  As those Towers burst black pope smoke through the air, we knew who'd done this to US.

On the Sunnyside

  We'd known the truths about life early so we had some pillow fights to remember our homes and sing some songs to remember you by.

  They'd staged it, the numbskulls, so that the Estradas' CHIP was going round and round on the ramp.  Nobody on the outside knew that so nobody would have to lug those TV cameras up there.  They'd also been putting car and truck batteries powering AM/FM RADIOS in the Le Brea Tarpits welcome "cash & carry" to flyover and drop metallic'd plates and bars (weights and measures; ways and means budgetary purse strings).  It wasn't chaos, but the "black" that Rock Hudson was trying to make way through wasn't human-made.  A solar calendar fluke was blocking daylight at the equator parallels as other militaries tried to remove their property from the ownership status of "English Law" hence trips to tents on other Continents.

Some peoples'

   cultures had been very different from coming together as Americans, that was often reminded.  Before 1984 our own Country was, hard to explain the parallels of stage presentation of us and anxiety.  

  "How could it have been CLASSIFIED?" A family of guys who looked alike had kicked us out of the woods.  We single filed behind a yellow ribbonless oak tree and claimed the tree as "not the woods".  "It was stamped so Fadder." 

  Taking the long way round to the Seminary the Soviet-raised reported on their friends and family.  Our group leaders had Doctorates and such plus training and field experience to recognize such behavior for what it was.  And after stolen everything had facilitated notorious world criminals having tea parties with our children we could be rest assured that the Allies were on it.

What kept us going....

  A ship stewart interested in what makes creatives tick once asked us how we could possibly have that much energy.  We didn't of course.  We had habits like licking the last drops of tea and coffee out of our cups.  Pretending nourished.  Opening one door to check for possible monsters under the bed, he saw a man with woman's legs re-enacting the punches that had been thrown that started that one.  The upside down midget handstanding on the man's oversized on backwards rubber boots was still spinning in his brain from a knife throwing episode only managed ondolay, ondolay.  Called Little Man helped him feel better.  He was bossy when he wanted to be.  But the taller fisherman in front examining a swordfish scar could pull a shoulder wooden fisherman's string and honor don't put me down 'til this place stops spinning.

  The steward crouched beside the midget's better ear and notated on a clipboard like Patches' smells another nurse wrote like a brewery; only speaks ondolay.  Feels safely attached to a Big Fish's Friend; and in denial about getting sober. 

  So when a longtime land nurse in one of those capes needed to ask me a serious question in the 1990's, personally, I was surprised when she asked, "Do I look like a Dentist?" 

  "Not sure exactly m'am." 

  "Why do you ask of us?" A field commander needed to know.

  She pulled cigarettes from her pack.  Her tallness can be intimadating so she has a personal quirk of crouching then kicking her pant legs out in front of poor vision without knocking over children and/or torsos with stumps. 

  We need to determine why wounded and injured keep being found with mouthfuls of teeth.

It was all in good fun.

  A man used a woman's canvas log bag, carried like a sac o' flour, and never let go of the Colonials' muskets.  While us shirts did housechores to churn the butter.  Another day of learning our history was about to end eras within decades.  We were leaving travel out of it, us slaves in our underwear to the real artistes who'd called for some nudist models.  The various buses on the regional schedule seemed to be running on time. 

  An exceptionally modest man in a certain body type categgory won the necklace toss for our last real sweater--a long coat foxy color. 

  Coming on dusk in those kind of cul de sacs meant a chorus of people activity including crickets and buzz sawz and people learning English by chanting songs.  Woodsmoke smells, clogs and slippers for returning workers.  "Borrowed" tools from the surrounding spaces between major roads were begrudingly left outside the stock fencing.  Well, one of the pieces left. 

  One little boy put on the crossing guard uniform.  He'd been sportscross-training in the running disciplines since Long Hair Lisa found out the categories of prisons where the different teachers were being sent to teach.  The director types had had long resumes so it was taking long time periods to do safe transports "upstate".  A father who was a prison guard but who'd been coughing up black plastic bag ashes warming himself near a cockemamey place to put a woocough, cough, hacking air mucous fight, incinerator had also been prohibited from working.

  Another identified a skeleton mummy by picking his chicken (a mom with a colored bandana head bandage), I gots foods for scruffies, he lowered his head in shame.

I was. ..

  I was investigating the actual tree mulch with a cracker jack box magnifying glass when I got upgraded to a real one.

  "The top gorilla please," a long haired Lisa spoke into the table phone we'd brought on trains from Long Island and plugged into a junction box in Michigan.

  Our operator was in a field communique that looked like a big rubber boot.

  They'd broken through to Big Bear Newspapers.  So people were pressing the suspected press people for infomation like Obits. 

 We had to get the last few drops of oil from Dad's chainsaw oiler out of it's tin to roll ink at Potomac while getting airs into airplane tires at the football game that never happened.

Stick Up/Stuck Up

   The apartment building was on the alley side of boulevard and perpendicular to the train rails.  Taller people would stand on the street corner and piggyback people into open windows. 

  We were earning the maybe enough cab fare home by sewing outfits, "designing" neck ties, and doing chores for "shut ins".  We got to go to the pharmacy, and the butcher for others and smell fried food smells except when trains went by and the air would get stirred and unstank.

  One brother in his Ranger hat kept smelling the gum wrappers to un-smell being buried alive.  Another had drag marks on his arms and legs.  But we were all together again, mostly. 

  "We are." 

  "We're going to get through this." 

  One wife with bird claw hands fluffed the crushed flat wheel of roses, "little silkies" on the wool coat's lapel. 

 "This time," someone read the lips of someone under a lightpole.

  "We have to try," the egyptian boy put forehead to each of ours.  We squeezed each others' hands to start "the pulse".

  The clash of the titanesque wAs gearing up.

  In metropoli worldwide we'd readied.

  Grappling hooks swung us from land to Sea, and back again to 

     yonders and 

          fallow

  Paled rainbow colors hung in Our skies on Planet Earth separating us from Outer Space.

  "I guess some newspaper articles in some blenders

  "Got confused?

....... 

..........

---------------------°¶_________________

     The zombies were twirling levers's worths of quarters to power locomotives and races involving horses.  We Getty groups had to beg, begger, and in some cases beggar coins for newspapers, coffee, and socks.

  It was 1978 and shortage was plentiful.  We were just a series of states divided and re-divided amongst nations United and gambled away.  By our flags, the dawn's early light was flotsam'd and foggish.

  Whatever had come ashore to collect the "shell" that had left that size divet, well, had been followed by a cast on Broadway and a Press.  Forty hours later we were ready to move out, the trains on that point.  Montauk, he thought it was.

  "Then it's not our county," a Parish person explained.  "Does anyone have a map?" Was the question that went around in the dark while we were waiting and waiting to go.  Our mom had given us all a piece of Wrigley's.  Other kids had found "ABC" (already been chewed) gum and other castoffs on bathroom breaks in the little underpass nearby.  But that caused an au pair to panic when she couldn't wake some children.

  We would've lost track of the days but we used a New York Times crossword puzzle that people taking a turn staying awake wrote the hours down on.  A man in a baseball jacket thought he might take a look see how far other tracks might be from ours.  A lady in slacks helped designate a smoking car.  And when all the whiskey sour breaths had stumbled from a local pool hall to a dining car a shadowy figure looking like a leap frog put fingers in his mouth and whistled.  The sound was even and strong and the loud just above dog whistle.  At first.  Others on down the line also whistled the tune through the bramble alongside the tracks.  

  Before purple-ing skies a smallish car delivered newspapers to a stand not far from that apartment building's corner street lamp.  A tall man already reading one wiggled his re-folded and put it under an arm of his leather jacket and put his copy in front of the new stack.  A wandering wino bumped into him and dusted off the man's arm in his blazer.  Then he pantomimed hiccups and bubbles and woozy head.  Someone else put a lightswitch box slug in the quarter slot. 

  Finally a clancyman in a top hat and old timey circus cape came on the tracks with the loud boy all tied up in little Bo Peep clothes and white rope over his jeans and sneakers.  He was laying stiff across the clancyman's owl perch but it looked like he was strapped to his shoulders with a big "X". 

     "He's the one," a younger girl whisper told an older girlfriend.  Last seen? 

  We'd been in the back of a different train car so when and where we saw our lost boys before we got split up was important enough to get a sip of OJ.

  This one's called Last Seen....

     It really was a warm summer's evening and we'd had a mystery on an express.  "Pass me the paragraphs," they asked while the coneheads watched.  "Ain't gotta licka

Sense /. / Cents

Pica?

          A light rap on a lav door.  "No, that's the loo mate." 

  She'd reluctantly been to Vietnam again though her family now residing in 

The big Mitt  /.  /. Michigan

     The fishnetted stuffed animal fluff leg had deflated our toys but fashioned a special lamp base.

On some of those return trips

   we had to settle on repairing damages and removing our clutter and getting our garbage out of the canals and passageways to work.  It was and wasn't shocking to find halloween costumes in particular floating through ports where some of the world's criminals had previously commandered boats and planes because of rough weather.  Some of the costumes even had bodies in them.

What we did was

   use broom handles to pass the stolen evidence markers over the train tracks.

  One kid woke up and groggily asked, "Are we surrwendering?" 

  So another woke up too.  "What are those?" 

  "Unicorns!!" The small window shade was pulled down.

  Some of the sheets and cones weren't appropriate outfits.

"To demand love

     Is to lose love.  A selfish heart creates its own vacuum.

                   --Fulton Sheen, June 17

There are

   times in our lives that are like that liminal space....you take a cold stick of butter out of the fridge, but it's not clarify'd yet.  

  September 11th had just happened.  

  "I hadn't thought about that in years," a man said of circuses.  

  "I don't like that theme," a woman declared.  

  Some hung in there through mostly quiet working to brainstorm something.  "It shouldn't be just anything," an advisor cautioned.

  In the City people were waves of wearing black.  Subways streamed with us.  Exchanging tidbits of seriousness.  Pearls on a string of wisdom with feelings of imminent.  With images, sounds, smells still fresh hoping for the change to resettle us into complacency was slippery like wanting to sew but only having a piece of silk.  

The symphony salute

  was realism.  Daily Dose OF TRUTH.

  "I honestly can't tell you." 

  "They can." 

  "Can what, exactly?" 

  Confirm. 

  All the viles and ode du toilets had been smashed with a sword larger than any on record.

  We'd had to establish sleeping patterns and routines to keep up qith being sick to death of chasing fucking SPACE PEOPLE all over the wretched UNIVERSE.

  "You could say," Sherry unfocused on the rosary beads and collected her emotions into composure. 

  "What could they say?" A false madonna knelt without kneeling.  "Mother Elizabeth needs to know." She whirled on ballerina feet to kiss the leading man.

  But this time a real Commander ordered  something like

  "Don't unscroll them until I, we, arrive." 

  "We really don't know.  Father, this man is

             a throat was slit 

Sideways

Not good 

Must've been a different flight

  A child let himself fall out of a trench coated "suit" and he joined other tree frogs.

  "This isn't gambling yet." The grated floor fell away.

  "It splices the skin off their faces

  feces, the little

  "Vie diar we wook as dennis the menaces?"

  "Here stick this up it's ass."  Our Mother fumbled through the purse to find a stuffie.  It just happened to be pinky.

  In order too....

  The Jetson mobile had let us know: red sky at night, drift

  Pinky Patrol

  Turned up more evidence that would be made irrelevant unless

  "Maybe

  not real commies?

  Sinbads?

  "Someone focus this fu

  His own mother kicked the other team's player in the shins.  Sister Rose Immaculatta Krud blew the whistle.

  Total deafness in that ear now.

  FUUUUUUUUDGE the boy said instead

  Someone more like a generator was still training us all out of a crater that caused a flood near Boston's Harbor Light.

  "Pick up the pontoon toys." 

  "I will, but I'm confused.  What sort of mimi golf card is this chores list writ

  "This is becoming a pain in my arse." 

  People being plucked out of the wild turkey pits.  But it hadn't explained the BPT HELIes.

  "That was us again," the mirror image of someone told the wrong someone of The Fuck Up.

 

  

   Standing on a precipice amongst lava flows

  Toxic pollution?

  Fare.

NANA!!¡!naaaana

   Nice, it should report that it was endeavoring to say nice.

  The salt baths had gone up some peoples' butts, trunks and all

  Suckerpunched a historian explained of doing A. Roosevelt.

B. 2, "No, it IS Lincoln's body." 

  "How many vitamins

  That one's mouth opened like a drawer and fists full of votes being "funneled" were deposited.  More pulverized capshules came out 

  "The eyeballs?" 

  "Not exactly," we panted then cranked the train away from the wounded.

  "The organgrindershhzzz 

  "It's called an anus, not a garden hose?"

"It was supposed to be

   "Because since that war of the worlds mediamoviethingie all we could do alone or on our own was throw some papershacks ovah dem tings."

  The men and women of the United States if the World in Emirates clothing slaved to carry all this 

  Fuckin'A "paperwork" 

  up and down these GODDAMNED 

  The woman didnt have a chance to finish the word there stairs.

  So we dropped our shit in the hallowed halls of ye olde

     Supreme Court

     "Thwy

     "They

  They all had to stop writing it and get some skin in "but it's not a game".

  We'd had to leave footprint holograms of where our loved ones had been standing on implosion.

  But in a cyborg v Knight battle between megalopsoses, meteopolis's there'd been more significant carnage.

  "We'll call it METROPOLIS

  ONE SAID.

  "Let me get this straight.  They sluiced an entire civilization?" 

        nodding 

  Ordered "Stop twisting the skulls around on their cortex platforms like that." 

  Buuuut I wanted that one TO LIVE.

  "Oh Charlotte, what does that even mean anymore

           These days. ..

   The furniture had to be moved around.  But there was enough space for folding screens and rolls of exercise mats.

  "Trust me," eye roll "They've been studying at Seminary."

  "Kamp aside," she took the duffle bag.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  Instead of the elevator shaft route, the post people slid down the suitcase mover spinning wheels from old skates.

  "Proposed IMPACT SITES

  ATTENTION:

  Care/of

  "It's in a more modern TEXTBOOK!" 

  DOORS SWINGing      sssssh

  shush honey chile

                                      shut .

  He'f saif shutteth the corky wood shutters.

"It's probably Ostrich, but

 it may have been rubber stamped," the man submitted to five o'clock tea time just want a nap headrest "to think" abour it.  The mysterious animal tracks that had been spied coming to and fro from and too the ancient tembre 

  Not a temple temple 

  Forever ever 

  "Quit calling me a princess," the baseball player in a prairie hat bent his tallness to get the colored pencils rubberbanded together with a pony tail holder to plop out of the magic hat's bottom top.

"Doontah opyen

  the wid." Men being dressed as cruise ship magicians were being warned about the pianos.

"What's that special effect?" A

   woman with binoculars asked as different colors came out of the sewer grate around a woman with skirt being blown up all around her like an "icon".  Taxis and box trucks and cars and "limos" blew past in an angry rush.

  "The trick is to have a cool personality," a man was explaining how he'd changed jobs from cosmetic surgery to production consultant.  

  "Don't you dare!" A mother whapped at the air near her daughter with her "clutch" purse.  The daughter looked at the purse still being carried from the night before.  "Awwww, you had a good time last night."  The mother swayed in her sneakers a little bit remembering dancing for the first time in a month of Sundays.  The wait to use the piddle room had people remarking on the unusual home decor, rock and iron, "and this!" A little kid slipped into the conversation about what he'd have in his castle.  Another little kid slipped her hand into my mother's as a hypnotist put a silk scarf over her eyes so you won't be scared of the Ray Gun.  "The what?" 

  "Yeah Cher, the martians are coming," a rough voiced Opera singer crooned. 

  "Then I want to see that," our mom put her free hand under the special scarf just as people who'd also been befriended by little kids were being blindfolded.  Large hands reached towards the back of her head to help he whispered.  But the fishing line pulled the scarf ziptight as the little kids handcuffed hands they'd held to iron and rock weights.  A man's foot slid into bended knee position (a yoga thing) as he slipped in spilled coffee.  People started to tilt as the slimey floor past the good flooring revealed itself to be thick plank. 

  "The travelying houdinyi disk?" A very fancy woman put the long-stemmed champagne mimosa brunch drink back on the butler tray.  "We want to see it too," a kid in a Wizard of Oz costume said.

 

  'Twas brillig....

  First steps back to the page

  Same rule always applies

Pen to paper

 

The bodies had been prepped as

  they had negotiated.

  "In the middle of our big beautiful country somewhere, I hope

  The characters acting Mongolians passed by the dining car.  A train wreck had sprayed shrapnel throughout the forest.

  "How 'bout Little Legs?" 

  Brainstorming ind

  "Native. American" 

  Pass me the scripts

         I gotta poop

Deep sleep.

   The clipper ship had popped out of a glacier hole off the Carolina coast like a champagne cork.

  The water spout finally disssipaaapated enough to declare safe air.

  Splinters plunking from clouds and spearing the ground like fenceposts give you a sence of 

 "I just can't get my head around the size and scope of this thing," said a man looking at the cells of the printed version of the map through a loop.

"You cude ah say

   "What?!? We whacked haer with a piano?"

  It wasn't their "fault" it was determined as the tanks rolled between parades and their daughter's legs were pulverized into rubber tube socks of body ooze.

     Holdings, the elevator man called out the divisions of the company on the way to Corporate meetings.

  Their barrack came out of the wind up toy recording device

    "Sing the Bar-ah

  A pebble pinged a bell.  Everyone, almost, ducked.  The machine gun fire blared.

"So you're saying there's no

   communique-tions 

  between them and us?" The question came out of a badly beaten and bloodied man's face that appeared to be on a lamp table.  The little diary with gold leaf edges had drops of blood on the few names under Calligraphy script that said, 

  Please sign in, with a line through it and underwards said REGISTER.  Someone had drawn a football and in it, written TO WIN.

     "WE FOUND IT FIRST!" Some kids had climbed through layers of place.  Under a fenced-in "compound" area, through a circus tent, around trailers, and into a ramp descending through layers of soil to a bunker in the bedrock. 

  "I'm not an IT." The head said into a crackling microphone.  "I'm STILL A M, MA, mmmmm, mammmmm, mah mah mahn.  MAN!" 

  But the warning came as yet another body fell into the heap ordered to walk the plank.  When those bodies cleared the sagging ramp board between sandy mounds, a strangely booted foot weighted an end of it to erect it and swing it away from an out.

  Pilots and stewards were waist deep in slime.  "Are they frozen?" A child asked a catatonic elderly man and woman.  "Dey are so Wyeth," said a white papersuited person framing the postcard photograph with hands made into "L"s.  A goon picked up the child by the clothing on his back and slung him like a sack of potatos onto the edge of the next hill to be climbed.

  "There's no anything where it was, Sir." He showed the latest survivors what looked like a moonscape on a grainy little TV.

  "What hit us?" A split-lipped Father from the MASH show asked us in person.  "Or did we hit them?" 

  Our mother wiped the bead of drool hanging from our stupefied father's lip and put the tissue back in her purse like it was normal.  An ordinary gesture amidst a sea of glimmering molten ground shaking sea of liquid metal.

  "Where did you come from?" The macaroni man asked a man with only part of an arm.  The MASH person pointed way up high to tree roots above the manhole cover he was standing on.

  "So it could be like the year that never was," a droning voice recorded whatever he can remember.  "I will authenticate," a computer voice said what was being typed out on stock market "ticker tape" paper.  The Cone Heads futzed with the creamy seams of stiched skin on each others' heads.  "Put him in there," they moved a severed arm's fingers to pull the "dog tag" bathtub cork chain away from the rusting bathtub drain hole.

  "To get AIR," Mellie held the gramophone conch to "the next level", contorted rebar and cinder block corner near the Lear showed at least seven layers of ground gone.

"Whoa," the kid said.

   A teacher grabbed the photcopies of the stolen photographs asking if it was smut. 

  A normally calm and cool priest was red and sweaty and trembling. 

  Several parents were locating their children in the church and parking lot and school.

  What the hell is going on here? 

  Boxes and boxes and boxes of files and folders and newspaper clippings.  A hoard. 

  The teacher got a papercut as she grabbed the photocopies and a "reader" who couldn't stand the sight of blood passed out and knocked over the already organized stacks of "catalog".  A woman stepped backwards as he passed out and got stuck in the miniblinds. 

  "It's TOTAL CHAOS!!!" A kid whose parent worked on a different team concerning this mess relished.  "Total incompetence," a suited grown up agreed.  Another boy tackled what seemed to be mocking MISSING PEOPLE.  They smashed into stuffy academics who'd been boring students too old to be in grammar school anyway.  "What is this Watergate?" 

  "Cool.  I'm all in."

"Something I found in my travels,"

  she'd say as she gifted finds. 

  In 2025 there's good music and records (for a "record player").  Albums like Sonny James, Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette, and "March Along With Mary Pippuns.". 

  Movies, home decor, jewelry, books, clothing for every age person, greeting cards (some almost as funny as the ones at Teague's in Maggie's Valley).  

  At Rachel's they also sell designer purses, perfumes, "and lots of toys for the kids to pick from," says Teresa.

  Generally open seven days a week. 

"They think we're strange."

   The man shut the taxi cab passenger door with his cup of coffee.

  "Of course they do

  "We're wearing each other's body parts

          Skins 

   The quarter landed in the man's hand.

The debate for writers at our school

   was focused on reality and imagination.  Other kids were doing Science Fair and the Mind Olympics.  It was then that people started to carefully probe and delve into friends and enemies.  It was also then that people got more into quasi-mechanics and aliens.  And the term age appropriate came up alot. 

  "Ma, how long did it take me to walk across the world?" 

  "Don't call me that."  With multiple children our Mom felt compelled to be diplomatic about most of what she said.  Her first answer to almost any can I, can I was usually no.  "She'll come around," one of us would try and maintain thr optimism (hope) for the one having a crisis of authority.  If she didn't there were options before "defiance".

  "I'm watching my show," a boy slurped the cereal.  "Let's teach," head jerk at, "to ask why".

  Sometimes the whys became an opera.