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 by Two-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,
reducing 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 with dinner's crystalline granules gone,
offers 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 sneaks
to the down that never comes up,
the next moment that doesn't exist.

A staggering 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 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!