metro park

fucking pigeons

winged rats

they don’t give a fuck they don’t give a flying fuck they dance in the street pecking at shit bug shit bug guts mice tails and ears they dance in the street daring the cabs in line to run them over waiting til that last second that urban version of chicken

no orthogonal pun intended

before either the cabbie can step on his brakes or swerve or interrupt his otherwise fairly calm and normal vector through the metro park train station looking for his own pigeon

or it this pigeon it flutters up and away free and clear not a scratch not even a drop of sweat on its brow

how can that fat feathered fuck get up and out of there out of the cabbie space that space that rapidly evolves from asphalt black to cabbie yellow that is the cavalry crossing the bend of the river at wounded knee

how can it escape so quickly

there must be some life lesson lurking about

something deep

the clashing of grand universal ideas of cultures lost in some fathomless history only to rise up as some new age post hippie tie dye fad complete with crystals tarot cards and the dried bones of road kill rodents flipped with the full faith and foreplay afforded such sacraments onto the dusty ground

well she turned me into a newt

and there must be some kind of life lesson here but maybe i’m just a pigeon

not really giving one flying fuck either

i’m down with a good game of chicken and don’t you know i’d love to

flip fly float through the air drop a load at will on any windshield

or hell

even better

on some hipster’s chapeau du pork pie

i do oh i do especially want to splatter some smooth silky chunks on one of those gay-ass lavender lids some skinny jean wearing ben davis shirt sporting shaggy sans scoobee doo glancing up just as i dive bomb down all kamikaze screeching claws all stretched forward like i’m some sort of renegade redtail hawk

pulling up just as he looks up

bomb doors open bombs away load glances lavender lid brim pork pie purple done got spotty

i loop-de-loop to the top of a telephone pole

watching

harry hipster hands wiping at his face lips moving murmuring something foreign and vain betty faux beatnik his soon to be ex-girlfriend

she laughs

but i’m just a schmuck on a bench at the metro park train station somewhere in new jersey somewhere between newark and philadelphia only minutes before i had been sailing along sitting comfortably in my first class seat on the amtrak acela

the conductor dude seeped simmered and boiled in his deep jamaican accent he says

ticket please

i hand him the ticket the one that the guy in newark sitting behind the bullet proof glass that transparent wall that keeps me from him and him from me the guy in this uniform complete with plastic identification badge hanging around his neck on a red plastic lanyard that looked

perhaps because i had just spent five very brownie stoned hours on an airplane from san francisco to newark

strangely like a twizzler

tickets that this amtrak amboy had given me had slid through that little scooped out plexiglass hole

that i had given to my responsible rastafarian requestor his dreds hanging low swinging low beneath his conductor’s cap who said all sing song hey brother man maybe you got other tickets these no good these for different train

and i shrug and he shrugs

and at the next stop the metro park train station stop a sweet little suburban stye with lovely shops and green leafed trees and jersey shore refugees japped out moneypennies lifting their lifted mugs up from behind the wheels of black mercedes and lexi lined up to pick up the bread winner to provide carriage home for lord and master for he who brings home the bacon

and at the next stop the metro park train station stop i exit stage left grumbling and cursing and embarrassed

to find a station agent adorned with accoutrement similar to his conducting cousin his amtrak associate who is also behind a glass wall that keeps him and his world just beyond the grudging grab of my jealous reach

who says

in his south philly finest tongue twisted up with ancestral gullah

he say

he shouldna done that why he do that he shouldna done that

and i shrug and he shrugs hands me another ticket tells me informs me the next train comes along at eight thirty four i look up at the

clock that cannot be wrong the cocksure chronograph passed down from god herself

and see that it’s only seven oh two

and i stumble around the mini terminal all antiseptic with its red brick tile and post-eighties ergonomically enhanced anti-recline plastic benches i am baffled and bounced between buying gas station coffee and a sara lee cellophane wrapped blueberry muffin from the faux seven eleven only three dollars fifty three cents or a bag of roasted nuts gathered in peaceful coexistence with the amazonian rainforest and all its godly creatures and an aseptic container of caribbean coconut water from the gourmet yes gourmet said so in big orange letters coffee place that had only just now completed the end of day scrub down of its big ass brass brought over from italy on a clipper ship espresso maker and was no longer serving coffee

i finally bite the hook that is baited and set in liberal yuppie school that preaches from pulpits on high that nothing that cost less than five dollars can possibly be good for me i need colon cleansing i need my guilt assuaged i desperately require reminding that i am of the uber hip cool

i mean just naturally so

and i fork over the ten and receive a few coins of change and then wiggle then wander out of the terminal out of the station into a little plaza between track and parking lot a lovely little clearing with a ribbon of road looping through

kiss and ride and taxi cabs and black lincoln town cars and black lincoln navigators

and a couple of benches beneath the couple of trees standing watch hessian mercenaries imported by landscape architects working for

the man

the city fathers whose dual purpose is to increase property values and warn the riffraff to keep away

unless of course they’ve come to town to clean in and around the neat little brick houses and their environs

and i claim my bench as dusk dabs its brush across the sky reds and oranges backdrop for black cotton balls bobbing on their threads tied tethered to old man moon

a sky strapped gulliver

he wants to leave her but he just can’t pull himself away

and i claim my bench beneath the tree stretch my arms wide settle back into the wooden slats

they give a little just a little

open myself up to all that metro park has to offer i let her grab me by the hair and assume a dictatorial position over me she has her way with me

as the pigeons they puff and peck the pebbles pushing them across the pockmarked pavement

prudently

preciously

permissively

and the clock it ticks it tocks i need the big hand to click off ninety some jumps around and around i got time i got nothing but time such a modern world in which we live such an era one can wake up on monday morning in san francisco go grab a cuppa

and a few hours later and our hero he is in some town in new jersey trying to make his way to philadelphia

just like old ben franklin i wonder if before he decided upon immortality atop that building in the city of brotherly love if perhaps he too had sat upon a bench in metro park

and a cab driver wearing a turban baggy polyester pants and sensible shoes walks up and down the sidewalk in front of me he walks down to the corner of one end of the sidewalk he turns around he walks up to the corner on the other end of the sidewalk maybe a total of thirty forty yards

i ask him if he’s counting laps if he perhaps needs a trusty sidekick to click them off as he walks back and forth

to and fro

and he smiles he says from beneath a full beard he says no he says no thanks he says he’s just stretching his legs he’s in a cab all day he’s just keeping it real he asks me if he can drive me some place

me i smile i say from cheeks smooth but for a smattering of whiskers pretending to be a five o’clock shadow i say no i say no thanks i say i’m just waiting for my train i’m enjoying the evening i’m not in any hurry

and so we leave it at that and on the next couple of laps he glances over and smiles and nods and smiles but after a few more passes he doesn’t notice me any more and i don’t really notice him any more and we’re simply background for one another

a meditative meme

and i quietly slide a joint from my pocket and flip open the lighter the engraved zippo given to me on my birthday by man pete

been walking god’s green earth for fifty plus years and i know what from what

and the zippo flame it ignores the slight breeze while i inhale the sugary smoke alongside new jersey fresh air i release it moments later my lips tickling the exhalation massaging the vapors to take shape to take form

a ring of course

and a bunny and a chipmunk

and a bag of pretzels

and every once in a while a group of people bursts from the terminal a stream really of those coming from points north or south cell phones to ears briefcases in hand or backpack on one shoulder or another they dissipate into the parking lot the town cars the cabs the awaiting mercedes or lexus

a bustling of activity and languages varied and accented that peaks then ebbs into the relative silence that slowly wipes across the palette that is my world tonight

and this kid this young adult a teenager with baggy jeans exposing boxer shorts a tee shirt adorned with some faded logo he appears in one of the bustles though i don’t really think he came from the terminal but from some other point of ingress i notice him wandering around talking briefly to one or another random adult

his hands in his pockets his shoulders scrunched up around his neck as if he is warding off a chill that can’t that couldn’t actually be

and as this pod of commuters dissolves into stillness he is left standing there in the middle of the plaza looking around slowly looking around

he chats up a young black woman maybe she’s a teen maybe older i can’t tell she talks to him for a minute or two then slowly shakes her head and disappears into the parking deck

and then he spots me sitting on my bench my ignored joint extinguished from lack of attention and dangling from my fingers he strolls my way and i get this sinking feeling

i am to be driven from observer to participant from spectator to player

and he sits on the opposite end of my bench the bench i had only just claimed as my own he leans forward elbows on thighs head in hands and i glance over and he glances my way

and he asks me if i have a cigarette and i say no and he says thanks anyway and i ask him how it’s going tonight and he says it’s going ok and i ask him where he’s headed and he says he doesn’t know he asks me hey how far is trenton he needs to get to trenton he has a place to stay in trenton

and i say i don’t really know can’t be that far probably too far to walk though

he says he’s in some program something called youth services they have a place for him to stay if only he gets to trenton and we talk for a while about school about how hard it is about work how hard it is to find a job for the summer we talk about the phillies and how good they are about the mets and what a joke they are

he tells me he needs to call his mom he tells me he hasn’t eaten today

my radar goes up my spidey senses tingle i don’t want to be the traveling rube i want to be street smart and cool i want to be hip and hep and cold and calculating i live in the city i’ve heard every story i’ve heard the lines before i’ve walked through the haight in san francisco where all the wannabe punks come in from outer suburbia to sit on the sidewalk and bum bills and coins

i don’t want to be the pigeon from out of state

but

yeah there’s a but

it’s not like some overwhelming wave of sympathy overcame me it’s not like some elitist guilt poked me in the liver it’s not not like jesus sat on my shoulder and whispered in my ear

more like just one of those things that i’m just supposed to do i walk him back into the terminal i offer to buy him some amazonian nuts but he asks if he can instead opt for a muffin and soda

like it was some mcdonalds happy meal hiding a cute little toy promoting some recent movie or saturday morning cartoon

and i buy him a ticket to trenton and give him some spending money

and i watch him smile i hear him say thanks i watch him bound up the steps to the tracks two steps at a time the energy of youth carrying him up to catch the train as it pulls into metro park

and then he is gone passing from sight dissolving into the crowd that exits the train

that exits my metro park world and all that

give me your dirty love

give me your dirty love just like your mamma make that little poodle do

beautiful post earthquake gotham all awash in blue sky dabbed with puffy cotton clouds like the dark side of some teenage girl poetry with all the cute things young and old wearing as little as possible and yet still staying six steps ahead of the fashionista polizei one two cha cha cha

drinks at rockefeller center sitting at the bar with television wannabe and tourist drinking rye and soda alongside comrades who are as faux serious i we all wear this mask of seriousness no matter if it is work or fun because goddamn it we're fucking focused on our fun goddamn it can't have fun unless it's big over the top i'm talking vegas baby the definition of fun

remember when remember when

it's all about the story got to have story if you have no story you've had no fun

period

it’s laid out all neat and pretty in the postmodern man book of rules

and the women at the bar they stare intently into the eyes of their fellow women themselves talking in a serious manner don’t know if it’s mimicry don’t know if they have their own book of rules don’t know don’t know

woman thou art a mystery to me i love you so i worship the power the say thee has over me

and drunken goodbyes laden with mutual admiration and stumbled shuffles take our hero down fiftieth street across madison and park to lexington the mellow ganjaesque coating the throat a phattie stroll through the evening lights that comprise midtown

slipping into the room into bed toying with thoughts contemplating considering a bedtime stroke a midnight masturbation propped up through some pornographic eyelid theater but the mind is distracted clouded by wandering lingering fading desire and i doze fall asleep

only to arise with the sun i am my own dawn

shit shower shave

head to penn station amidst crowds of heads down people as if this indeed is their daily prayer one two three four forgive me father please allow me the freedom to fuck my neighbor it's a zero sum world

i don't get unless she don’t get

roll the dice box cars move me around the board take a ride on the reading railroad if i pass go

line broke monkey got choked we all lived together on a little rowboat

currents of people to and fro dunkin’ donuts tim hortons very serious official soldiers of the realm german shepherds sporting holsters and six shooters on their haunches there to give it all for their masters who wear uniforms dark blue with gold celebration and long black batons hanging from batman style utility belts

holy scowl caped crusader how will we this time rescue gotham from the clutches of albert kayda

their helmets strapped to chin as they stand tall and stiff like proud circumcised cocks titillating the freshly douched suburban housewives post-divorce city jobs in hand chastity belts popped open swinging wide and free nervous giggles muffled by tom carvelle ice cream sublimation to ward off the weight of responsibility known but never previously considered theirs

suitcases and briefcases and flip flops and halter tops and belly button rings and oh so long legs shaved shined and tanned up into beneath skirts of mystery and denial panties of undetermined color pattern and material meh matters not my granddaddy says it’s all pink on the inside

and the board click click clicks a slot machine matching tracks with destination a melodious mechanical messaging amidst a sea of silent smart phones being nurtured like some angry starving infantile tamagotchi all aware of the fact that if they set it down for even a minute some distant idea concept opportunity concept may die a slow and lonely death

nothing worse than being left out of the loop

conductor sings all aboard wanders the aisle collecting tickets punching holes in some mysterious yet ancient pattern ritualizing one’s mass transit experience enabling the next priest that floats down the aisle providing communion to read translate and understand the message

that will be passed down from generation to generation along with millions of other tidbits of transportational transcendence delivered to saint peter the scrivener who dutifully logs them into individual books of life

collect my two hundred dollars collect my collective insanity on the third day let me arise from the dead up the escalator to the beaux arts lobby of the thirtieth street station philadelphia freedom ben franklin and william penn bless his quaking heart

to the cab line fuck fuck fuck it’s fucking raining early signs of irene yet to come into the cab to the restaurant pulling the prerequisite rollerbag and some nouveaux pseudo hipster bag serving as briefcase but what looks more like the fucking beach sac carried by my mother on panama city beaches in nineteen seventy two check in tip the hot chick in the simple black dress and sweet uplifting cleavage that i swear to god on high looked right at me

grinned and winked

and said yes they spoke they said to me oh kay buddy you’ve had enough move on

meet up with my man mickey marketer and our customer hey hey how’s the world how’s the wife how’re the kids how was vacation yeah that part of carolina it’s pretty nice we chit we chat we dance the social dance we hold hands in that secret way swear fiduciary loyalty to one another how much this much how about a little less how about a little more we both know there’s a spot there’s a sweet spot where this lotto ball will land gonna be one or the other either one is as good as the other the only reason we care the only reason we allow it to bounce is the pure ritual passed down from father to son throughout the millenniums it may be more processed it may be more refined it may be more vicious but it’s the native dance nonetheless

and we break bread and sup we are modern men yes indeed we are men wearing ties and charcoal suits and cufflinks and sharp plastic modern eyeware and as modern men we no longer drink martinis as did our forefathers nay we sip on iced teas or arnold palmers and post lunch cappuccinos said lunch which consists of gazpacho and an organic salad of mixed greens with shavings of some exotic dry italian cheese and we can exist on such rabbit fare and keep our cocks strong and proud because

we are postmodern men

and as postmodern men we shake hands with a spartan hug and an earnest spoken desire to a faith that we will see other again soon

and out to the plaza in the misty rain to hail a cab and these two cabbies stop at the same time their respective drivers both hopping out of the car both hailing me to come to their cab it’s cleaner he’s a better driver he knows the city he doesn’t know the city then they start to yell at each other in a tongue that i do not understand yet i find vaguely comforting in that from the roots redneck ancestry from deep within poking its head up like some stupid fucking turkey in a rainstom some bubba sniffing out chanting fight fight fight i finally simply walk over to one throw my suitcase into the trunk hop in the back my driver giving some foreign gesture to the other driver i believe it is the universal international self-congratulatory self-proclaiming sign for so hey cocksucker take that and shove it up your sorry loser ass

or something to that effect

and we me and my most recent provider of four wheel zim zoom zip through the drops of satanic acid rain up market street to the station

thirtieth street station philadelphia pee aa this cavernous granite fortress built upon columns of the legs of zeus himself marble floors sets of long wooden church pews facing each other in some postmodern podinal new age traveler’s intimate quite quaker group confessional we say absolutely nothing to each other perhaps a polite excuse me pardon me but we do gaze upon one another our eyes wander from pair to pair mutual body scans appreciative yet rarely rude or offensive our eyes they do catch and hold while we talk to someone else on our mobiles

there must be some sort of cosmic energy power surge such crowdsourced transcendental transformation soulful transmogrification multiplied repeated

lather rinse repeat

cycling through across the modern communication network over and over again and again

i believe we are unconsciously raising our mutual respective consciousnesses in a chaotic bursty spiral highway fraught with all sorts of rotted bridges beneath which live ugly ego trolls weak guardrails trap doors and winged goblins which swoop down to grab and whisk away your toto a highway headed to some global self awareness

and we don’t even give a flying jonathan livingston seagull fuck

nor should we give me one good reason why we should

and this huge fucking bronze art deco aztec motherfucker of a warrior god statue stands at one end overlooking the cathedralesque lobby

and it’s as if he our warrior chieftan god had waved his castro street buffed out muscular arms swept his eagle’s wings over the crowd and laid down the law

there will be calm there will be order

and it just seems it just feels that this place this downtown train station hub of humanity is so much more orderly than the chaos the confusion of the airport in all its depersonalized we are all part of the machine run amok converse crowdsourced energy in total disarray with an utter disregard for all others such that it causes an implosion of the collective soul into some pit of darkness

quickly my son fly through quickly hold on to your balls and jump through quickly to the other side

the yen the yang of the human conveyor belt

and on the shuttle from the train station to the airport i share a compartment with a large hassidic family a schlumpy bearded dad a soon to be schlumpy oddly similar mini-me version son complete with whispery dark beard and maybe six kids and a mom and there was this ten year old girl and i envied the simplicity of her future i mean there are six hundred thirteen laws if you can keep up with making sure you are following all these rules then hey ain’t no time for such shenanigans as an idle mind may fall prey to i mean such innocence of a child gently molded into what is what has been and what will always be

is it elitist to envy the simple needs of the peasants

but then i iook at her and feel a sorrow that touches me oh so slightly touches a sadness inside her hair such beautiful brown blonde hair that one day she too as her mother does as her grandmother did that one day she too will crop her hair shave her head and wear a wig

woman cover thy shame before god

and the shuttle pulls up to the terminal and they the righteous rugrats go scattering off the car cute little roly poly’s swarming and then dissipating into the crowd spatterings of crushed iced dribbled dropped plopped into a warm coke

i head in the opposite direction down beneath to the lower floor outside and across the street one last breath of the terrestrial ether through the parking lot my own personal club rasta where i must get righteous with jah before shutting myself into that aluminum tubular goddess dildo trembling through space and time

a zip of the zippo flame flips floats flutters touches the tip of the toke sending smoke and symbolism through the ganja delivery system into lung building courage and when it is of such an appropriate level i meander through xray and security apparati who pray for my soul and my safety they are our first line of defense they are mercenary to none loyal to the common cause the one true path

and I slip into my phat fat seat up front where the lovely waitress in short skirt and high heels and pearls hands me a warm chocolate chip cookie with a stepford wife grin and an implied suggestion of consummate cock worship service in the forward toilet

and i slip into a cannabis coma whilst watching the latest action super hero summer blockbuster and drift off thinking of german deserts deep nebraska pineapple upside down cake lip smacking goodness twirling of dreams and tongue dozing in out eyes open closed

whilst witnessing the setting sun cast a glow across the western skies I am my own sunset

i gaze upon all that i can see from here to there and back again and i know that it is good and i know that it is all that

Jesup, Part the Fourth (a re-write)

ron johnson who just this last year walked into the dorm one night

he and his friend hoss big old hoss

the pupils of their eyes wide open and bouncing glimmering flickering oh so slightly in the overhead incandescence

walked into the dorm up the stairs to find chrono kevin eddie sitting idly in their room an album cover sitting on the bed double album unfolded a number of seeds sitting in the crack of the fold some loose shake and tight dry seeded bud decorating peter frampton's blondish tresses casting him further into some sort of three dimensional jesus wearing the crown of thorns

chrono bong in hand he said looking up he said click click clicking his bic he said hey click click clicking his bic he said taking a moment to gurgle up some smoky salvation he said

hey want to play a little twenty one we're about to put on a little lou

ron and hoss they smiled they grinned twenty one being the number of minutes a certain lou reed song would steal from the clock start to finish twenty one being the number of bong hits a participant was expected to complete to execute before that last audible downbeat of said lou reed song

ron and hoss they smiled they grinned they answered with a deafening nervous silence looking from chrono to kevin to eddie glancing and grinning at them at each other

they stood in the doorway shivering two days of freshman growth on their faces faded black swashes of grease or ash or dirt streaking cheek throat hands clothes kevin said what the fuck happened to you where the fuck you been they shuffled they rubbed their hands together on their pants into their pockets then together again ron he said

wiping a sleeve across beneath his nose sniffling back a phlegmy run for the border

he said

we hopped a train

eyes wide eyebrows raised lighter poised above the bowl

ron and hoss they said hoss he said so don't you know we were walking back from dinner just having scarfed down a couple of dagwoods feeling good feeling nice and full and happy lighting up a jay when some sort of premonition came over us like we had been thinking about it the whole time like we were cassidy and kerouac with an ethereal plan with a command from elijah

ron he said yeah there we were all soaking in this evening love when here comes this fucking freight train

the train slowing down as it rounded the bend coming onto campus down near the old depot this old rust colored box car just kind of cried out to us to me and hoss with its big yellow letters declaring

goldkist

might as well have been the yellow neon out front of the plaza theater tempered by a bottle of codeine or a handful of disco biscuits

hoss he said looking at ron like whoa where did that come from hoss he said its big sliding door already open like an invitation to some sweet sixteen spread her legs party we me and ron we thought we'd just jump on go a couple of miles down the track then hop off catch the next one coming back toward campus maybe a couple of hours next thing we know we're fucking rushing through the west fucking georgia countryside cold air streaming through the slats the smell of ratshit catshit hoboshit gagging and choking us as we traveled through the night the train not stopping until we were somewhere the fuck well into alabama

and hoss he said nodding at chrono for a cigarette chrono tapping out a marlboro tossing it over with a lighter hoss he said lighting the cig inhaling he said

yeah and ain't neither one of us too comfortable that far down in alabama

got so cold in that fucking train we hugged each other grabbed hold to each other like two midtown fags

ron he said now returning the what the fuck glance back at hoss ron johnson he said yeah fucking cold he said if i had had a knife i would have slit him open and crawled inside i would have got all call of the wild with his big ol' loving self

ron he said and the goddamn train so fucking loud rambling down through those woods and fields we screamed at the top of our lungs couldn't hear a thing couldn't hear ourselves think just the clackety clack and squealing of metal on metal the whistling of the wind

for hours and hours forever it seemed

hoss he nodded hoss he said fuck we stumbled out into that goddamn next day frosty dawn when that fucking shit stained slave ship finally slowed to a squealing crawl smack dab in the middle of a bunch of tracks all coming together in the dull morning light we had no idea where we were trying to figure out from whence we came trying to figure out which track led back to atlanta

the only hint that we were in alabama really the only clue was this glimpse of an empty bama state patrol car parked fifty yards away over by some depot looking shack

ron he said yeah some slim stream of smoke or steam sliding out of and up from a rusted pipe snaking out of kind of nailed to its ashen wooden side

some old black man wearing two sunday coats a brown felt bowler and boots with no strings came out between two trains popped out like hamlet's fucking daddy of a ghost nearly pissed my pants scared the shit out of me but old hoss he asked him he said ha he was we was so fucking cold he had his hands tucked deep into his pockets his shoulders all hunched up around his ears he said excuse me he said hey can you tell us which train goes back to atlanta

the room burst into laughter stoned giggles bursting into guffaws hoss he said what the fuck else was i gonna ask he didn't seem to be in a small talk mood

ron he laughed he pointed at hoss ron he said old hoss he looked at that old black man old hoss he said hey

which way is home

hoss he blushed turned red shrugged the room it shrugged its agreement hoss he said well this old black man

he stopped he looked around he looked at us two pitiful souls standing helpless there in front of him he looked at the direction from where we had just walked he rubbed his chin in that well let me just take out my trig book i'm sure

the answer is right there

in front of me

but he didn't say a word he thought maybe a full-count minute he shrugged he started walking again

me and ron we're like what the fuck but then the old black man

he stopped he pointed

at the train we'd just departed then he walked on his way never having said a word we me and ron scrambled back into our goldkist cruise liner and hunkered down

ron he said with a little bit of after shiver he said

that was yesterday we just got back

chrono he shrugged he flicked his bic he fellated the bong he looked up he said his words flowing into and out of a cloud of ganjaesque concern he said

whoa well welcome home glad you didn't get raped i mean i hear that there's all sorts of queer hobo rapists riding the trains

ron he said where the fuck did you hear that

chrono he shrugged he said i hear things don't you know

ron and hoss they each took a turn on the bong before wandering out of the room and down the hallway the stench of rodent feces hobo piss dinty moore lingering behind perhaps permanently on chrono's comforter on the faux hippie tapestry that hung in the doorway

the taint meandered behind them as they turned the corner past the bathrooms one guy walking out all freshly scrubbed and nattily if not preppily adorned in his ess ay ee monogrammed terry cloth robe scrunching his nose turning pale saying what horse you been fucking

they ron and hoss they ignored him they walked away from prep boy he in the opposite direction walking upstream into yesterday's adventure its stain neutralizing the hai karate

ron he looked over at hoss he said so hoss man we had a big idea we just couldn't figure out how to get there hoss he said what do you mean man we made it there and back ain't too many can say that

don't you fucking know

ron he paused and then he went on into his room