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manic mr. murray

by Gabriel Ricard

My conscience will one day be as clear
as the man who lives behind The Estate Theater.

Legends
don’t have to try
very hard around here.

Kids try to interview Manic Mr. Murray
all the time. He’s best known for giving
his millions away to someone
who was able to properly convey guilt in one those
doomsday signs you just don’t see in the cartoons anymore.

I said hi once.
The moon was stuck in the seven p.m. bridge traffic,
and the wind was making it impossible
for me to get across the street safely.

My pockets were filled
with those stupid Canadian dollar coins.
I wanted to see if the guy at the store
was as hung over as I was.

Hopefully he wouldn’t be able
to figure out
my cunning plan to get cigarettes
until it was too late.

It was the kind of day
where you run dangerously close
to stupid while looking for a sign
that you were right to get out of bed
before it finished falling.

I thought maybe a kind word
from Manic Mr. Murray
could be one of those signs.

He wasn’t much of a talker,
and his kids were always trying
to have him put away
for taking their college tuition.

More than a few misguided travelers,
stuck at the inn due to depression,
worshipped him for doing that.

Going that far seemed a bit silly to me.
I just wanted something like the time
that fortune teller was too polite
to finish the story behind my huge hands.

Having Murray even look at you
is a lot like that.

I want to one day accomplish everything
by eight-thirty A.M., and I need that to happen
before it’s too late.

I can only do but so much on my own,
so when Murray didn’t even look up,
I crossed the street
and hoped like hell
that one of those sudden gusts
would clear a path for me.

It didn’t,
but the young woman was sweet enough
to stop and ask me if I was going to be okay.

She was so beautiful
that it was impossible to tell the truth.

She wasn’t impressed.
I don’t hold that against her.

05/11/2011

Posted on 05/11/2011
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by Kristina Woodhill on 05/15/11 at 07:41 PM

A whirlwind of manic here and Mr. Murray at the lead. I really liked the stuck moon, the money given away, pockets filled with Canadian coins, and the ever present tension Mr. Murray creates here, even by not looking up.

Posted by Morgan D Hafele on 05/23/11 at 07:27 AM

another awesome story here. and a great read as usual.

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