FORTUNES by FRED

        or

        The BUZZING TIME

        Rick Weaver

        “Fix your bulbs before I swallow the vapor. My grotesque maw is widened, drawing in cathode coating skein shaved dry down to Autumn thanks to enamel neglect. Under your fluorescent flickering, the raceway of my circular thoughts spirals into bouts of stroboscopic convulsions, switching off, in the precise and grim moment of total eruption, all my racing thoughts and leading left into nothing but nerves and anger. Please fix your bulbs; your red shoes…”

        …I seem to be saying to the rookie cashier, a teen delegated to monitoring the automatic activity of mercantile maneuvers between machines and humans. The nominally compensated teen referee stands at her lectern, hypothetically ready to respond to any hint of “foul play” at the point of sale.

        I seem to be pleading with her to fix the “bulbs” while I simultaneously penetrate the self-serve’s money mouths with cupronickel, coupon, and cash. The machine is easy, built for collaboration, its common core sharing with me the fragrance of sanitary plastic. A mood ring of scanners and visual cues, its consistently medium and monochromatic voice tells me what it wants, at what torque, and in what order. The cuckolded surveillance cameras turn the exchange, an otherwise pure act, pornographic. Before the day is done, the well-versed machine will have engaged in intimate transactions with thousands of humans of varying temperament, rough or gentle, cursing or compliant, impatient or submissive, clumsy or skillful. At the moment, I am granted the privilege of one on one contact with the supreme and inanimate servant. I am graceful, taking my turn when prompted, following its commands with tender embellishments. I am as graceful as the machine is absolute.  

        The cashier, on the other hand, is a tough nut to crack. I’m screaming my head off at her in anguish about the flickering predicament. She’s politely pretending to not hear me. She’s swabbing her tubes with ear buds and blowing green apple bubbles when she could be signaling to the plainclothes cop to “put me away.” For her indifference I am grateful. Her cool and passive resistance balances my ever-increasing hysterical and desperate vocalizations:

        “Look, you dim bulb, who’s in charge here? I’ve swallowed the vapor, now you want me to swallow my tongue? I’m in no mood for mercurial swings…”

        …as I think to myself, Thank my lucky stars she doesn’t flag down that cop.

        “I’ll rip every tube lamp out of their fixtures and shatter them and swallow every shard per tongue in this shop and rip down the rafters while I’m at it! I’ll pull every closed circuit vulture down off of its perch and chew up the currents and spit their electric roots back in their leering faces!”

        Humans fuss over Dole barcodes, triggering a staggering volume of scanner blips sustained and staccato. The accumulative effect of their civilized, non-musical rhythm is crippling. My machine spits coin at my midriff. Flickering lamps blend and blur, hit the methyl methacrylate coated concrete and mingle with the reflections of scuffed sneakers.

        The black burns warn me that I’m two flickers of my red shoes away from a terrible amnesiac trance. In the nick of time, though, the machine’s thermal jaw muscles contract and deliver the receipt - the evidence, fully digested and final, of our intercourse.

        I jackrabbit across the black top. Lofty sugar rushes from my matador mix turn my head and spin my wheels in a brand new way. I am fully equipped for a morning rustle down TARP LANE. I ride the dividing line, prepared to do so until the tank is drained. I count three oscillations and one rattle. The connectors remain; the radio is missing. I lick their ends to catch a buzz. I chew gummy matador cud. Hot white wired ignition flashes the two eyed wink to oncoming traffic. Steer clear, too close to shore.

        A swipe of debt at a self-service pump hours ago, “bathed” in frontier dusk and mural, is my fee for a speedy therapy session. Flat, dark, dull, and predictable, I settle down to a gentle, low heat boil. The nerves and anger retract into their soft purple nest. The “blurry thinker” yields to my “flatline philosophy,” that is, “no thought, best thought.”

        Brain-dead as the road is flat, as the milestones are even, as the Jersey wall is monolithic, as the route is dull.

        I am a dull corpse. Nobody’s son would catch a tinge of Playmate in this cruising cadaver. The oscillations intersect, sacrificing their independence, and descend in unison. The blower exhales wet fever breath until its lung is deflated, as occupied as Mack Sennett’s banana peel. The parched belts crack down to a whimpering halt. The speedy kilometers become slow, mysterious miles. I jump shadows. Everything is one, and boring.

        No sound lingers in the complete darkness of the BLACK FOREST MAZE on TARP LANE. My flatline moment enters, as all my moments do, the “buzzing time.” The prophet Hornet Fred is with me, humming in my ear:

        “your blood lies between the old and the new

        between the hours of 4 am and 7 am

        a jackhammer whispers in Hamburg

        harming Vim

        stroke white retching duplicity: ice and ink, across the title loan

        cover-up vaindal’s ad

        with a flash brush streak

        of the state of TN

        .

        sandal films of Inglewood

        fantasy shields, the

        pistachio shells

        silent riders

        saddle-up

        the “death; defeat” league of Fonte City string-along

        abject equine performers endure

        tellus. flicker features unlike clap

        ablate impetigo in projectionist’s booth where projectionist

        opens a fist        

        full of homuncules

        her fist fronds readings alert

        those who would be harmed

        .

        silent riders

        surrender

        the bulge

        their fine weeping cherry loss jogs

        fall-out nagger

        hormonal and follicle fall-out

        hormonal thumpers

        leg risks start up front of fronds expose top

        front of a fantasy clue

            and even Hammett

        couldn’t guess it.

        three pictures

        of haggard messianic raiders:

        two photographs

        and an illustration.

        Hammett and Blake’s take on

                                                  whodunnit

        harbinger nag

        &

        angel baby blind

        blunt and  top bun operative

             epilep

             optics

             crepuscular and broad-shouldered

             chiseled and aquiline slasher

             a story of the southbound raft

             puff

             magi c    ink rube of the role play

                      could seem much more relaxed

             if you return my dog to me that you

             won’t return after I’ve asked you ten

             or more times.  have you gone mad?

             why do you presume it’s acceptable for you to

            hold hostage

             court

             and

             cavity and

             follicle?

             it’s a long story, B

             eggar Sam, the commando quarter horse

             a longer limping way to

             cabins

             of

             cavity.

              on our way

           we’ll pony up

        or settle the score

        with deposed riders’ near paralysis”