It's a mess

found with the following insignia attached on lettuce parchment: "here is something that i feel is adequate for all of the dearest friends of *** to read. it is based upon trying to find an answer from a forgotten past.................read of that what you will."

The staircase was cold as I tumbled down the mess of heaving hearts on the Persian rug over mahogany drawers inside the lightly colored film of a cathode ray tube.

I was imitating the antics of a Charlie Chaplin, of a Buster Keaton caught on film, of a fortune’s fool/ follied by the frantic fingering of a ¬¬¬¬¬fellated Samuel Beckett.

I had seen the staircase before, tumbling down. The waiter at the bottom sometimes charged me reduced fair, sometimes a ticket for free, for you see, he knew me well. The waiter on the top would grant me wishes, if I could muster strength to stand, wishes based upon the fall through the brushes and yuppie contraband.

I was of course clad in yellow, green and black, snowy bottoms, straight up into my back. Oh, the rhythm of dissension, descending dreary eyes, down a dipped slope, desperate, a dead prize/ rears its head past mine. This sensual gossamer greets with voluptuous reprise, yet I know this titillation of omnipotent preparation will only cast me into ultimate demise.

I sleep inside the box, next to the rancid milk-hat which I call a Book of Journals. The Ideas inside, once so freshly brewed(?) straighten into curd, the curd I see is foul. I remain in a fickled, fickle. A Fickled, Fickle. I remain inside this Fickle. The curdled Ideas remain inside of the rancid milk-hat. This hat, the cap I had worn to many Little Bat ‘n Ball fiascos is a peculiar site. This same cap, the milk-hat which I call a Book of Journals, was at one time stolen from me by a Boricuan chump. I stood, idlely while the PR fiend threatened me and my other chumps with switch-blades, derisive jargon and, also, a clenched calf muscle. My cap was later found inside of the school yard, a mistaken booty. The clenched calf muscle of our assailant was the result of a penultimate prosaic trifle involving the purveyors that fed the misled assailant, observed by the fiend at a tender young age.

For assailant (assailants) they were. Next to my side, that assailant, whom had a sharp edge on life, stabbed the friend I used to have; I have since lost contact with his mind. They only robbed some flesh from his wounded, prostrate outline on the sidewalk. There was an outline on the sidewalk, sideways lain, concrete sidewalk with chalky, chalked up perimeter where my once and gone friend had lain. A payphone call away, the bodega beside where he lay, owner hollering, “Marcharse allá!” Inside the realm of dopamine forgetfulness, I recall Those Words whispered inside his mouth.

“You are just like everyone else. Get away, and follow that sheep.”

He goes to sleep, minutes before the ambulance arrives. He awakes three days later, feeling hunger, pain, post-traumatic stress, a need to urinate and his love for his father. I see him, my fiend assailed friend, only four times more. Graduation is a third time; random encounter in Chelsea is a fourth. I only glance at him on 10th Ave, I have long bade his prostrate body farewell. He walks past, realizes who I am, stops, blinks slowly, smiles and throws his long, thick curls above his maiden-polished forehead. I respond to his aura with, “I thought you were going to die,” from which I receive, “Let us agree that we all died.” His maiden besides him ushers him inside a cavity, a gallery of yuppie-disguise. I jet, away, from this encounter, dead, wondering how should I have been alright. I reach some corner, any corner, trot a waltz, peck into my shins and sing, “Luck Be A Lady Tonight.”