Nights of the Absurd

For all of us
just looking in
via cell phone video gone viral
it's Welcome to Lucky Charms and Gatorade Heaven
a stumble down memory lane

Coldwater and Ventura
Ralph's Super Market
after midnight surprise hours
where over weight
under paid
cheerfully happy-for-a-job crews
working their way through whatever
provide color for insomniacs' favorite reality show
super for them
super for the other them
not so super for the Great-Red-Aproned-Night-Clerks

It's "Tripping-at-Ralph's for Junkies" hour
brought to you byTwo legged Krispy Kreme Kit Kats
everyone's consummate sugar coma
searching twisted antidotes
finding salt and vinegar with Ranch Dressing wafer chips

Ode to a Heart Attack

Co-sponsored by

Reality-by-Nitrous
the draining suck of a whipped cream cylinder
bringing new meaning to designer poison
rendering lips to flubber flaps
body al dente boiled

As red aprons take chase
building to the moment
KKKK's hide
and seek

Aisle one
Absolute bottles
Aisle two
Snow Balls and Twinkies
Aisle three
Haagen Dazs
where dinner's crystalline granules gone
offer fast melting imagined clouds of cotton candy
liquid's quench upon spirited tongue
becoming tomorrow's swirling toffee genealogy remembered

Rear of store
swinging doors
refrigeration's cool
stocks for the living remain stored
dreamers" dreams

Trapeze artists  hovering midair
eyeing tomorrow's life line
swinging toward infinity

Grab hold
Hang on
If today isn't the end of life
you can worry about waking up to another day
beneath freeway underpass
or at ocean's edge
where the circling gulls overhead
might appear as shards of white glass
in a kaleidoscope of yesteryear
or might there be white feathers
afloat liquid rainbows

Got to be more suck to the can

Pockets full
Ralph's exit looms
return to the night
darkness that soothes

Detonation's plunger push
the down that never comes up
the next moment that doesn't exist

A short walk
bus stop benches
two mile wheeled journey
another Ralph's
not far

And what of the silent sponsors
Salvation Inc

Such were the stories
later Performance Art
back when the director of a small Hollywood theatre company
provided the only therapy trusted by
these homeless denizens of lonely nights
these vacuous souls wanting nothing
but to survive
and be at one with their audience

And could they perform?
Could they wake up the most cynical?

Oh my!

Oh my!