Looking into the Future
It’s all song and dance. Slapdash and balderdash. A magical mystery tour. Handicapped pickpockets on skateboards. Everyone reading from a preordained script. Snow-capped mountain peaks, gold-capped crowns. Long in the tooth, we slide into phase two of the master plan.
Fight the urge to explain yourself, it’s part of a program embedded just under the skin. Hope for a better tomorrow.
I bring you glad tidings. Smokers aren’t the enemy, bankers are, the real junkies who never inhale, thinking ahead to when they might run for office. Money makes the world go down.
If anything I’ve said so far makes you want to meet me, drop a line. We can go out for coffee or, if your sex is right, on a blind date. You bring the killer dog, I’ll bring the stun gun. Together we’ll romp through the market place, upturning apple carts and stalls, soul mates until the end of time.
For years they kept me strapped down and I never yielded one thing specific–I knew what they were after, I’ve got the sixth sense of a lymph node. With the concentration of a werewolf I refused to opt. Not even for illusion. Eventually glaucoma set in, and they set me free; watched from a high window as I tapped my way down the street. They took my children, my wife, my lovers and my friends, but I never looked back, even when I had tears in my eyes.
***
Nine years old on an army base in Wyoming, standing outside the car in stopped traffic, everyone saluting a flag coming down. It was five p.m., we could hear the bugle coming through the speakers, we knew what to do.
A long line of stopped cars in both directions, doors open, soldiers out on the street,saluting at attention, women with their hands over their hearts. Back in the car again, my father drove sitting up straighter, gripping the wheel, jaw set, like we were surrounded by enemies. My mother stared straight out the windshield, and I braced myself, knowing what the future held.
