The coffee maker really was broken,
but that didn’t mean much to his eerily calm act
of taking a hammer out of the freezer
and smashing that thing like a Tex Avery regular.

Taking madness into account,
anywhere up to five minutes of putting that hammer
to work would have been reasonable.

It took him forty-five just to erase all the doubt
in the world of who was really running the show.

When he finished,
he skipped over the whole coffee thing
and filled his cup with champagne.

He sat at the table,
warned the sun to keep a safe distance
and thought about everything he had learned
over the course of the past week.

Every single day was inhumanly critical.
He didn’t want to be accused of missing anything.

He had learned to truly hate small dogs
with cute names and any internet dating service.

The Bible was probably right about women.
Television was better when you had to guess the dialog.
Books would be a lot more useful if the print could stay still
and not tumble down the page without a care in the world.

Objects were inconsiderate.
People didn’t know what they wanted.
Dinner was just a waste of time.

He thought about that,
drinking his champagne
and playing with his necktie.

UFO’s were just disappointing.
Sleep was a waste of time because dreams were too lazy
to try and keep up with what was really going on
in the neighborhood after nine p.m.

All those homeless pets knew what was wrong.
Whatever was turning the sidewalks and fake trees
into starving attractions for an abandoned hall of mirrors
probably had some theories to share, too.

Only problem
was that no one wanted to talk.

No one wanted to let him in
on everything he couldn’t quite work out.

He sighed,
resolved to eventually find the graffiti under the wallpaper
and got up to head to the office.

He almost slipped on some of the gasoline
and almost dropped his lighter.

But he got it,
by God,
and he laughed like a fictional character
taking destiny into his own immortal hands
and changing the twist at the end of the movie.

He wasn’t sure what he would do
when he walked into work for the first time
in over a week.

It would have to be a whole other kind of appropriate.
There was no question about that.

01/30/2010

Posted on 01/30/2010
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard