It Strikes Me To Wander
From time to time it has struck me to wander,
I am happy there, in that place with no walls.
In that place between places,
Where my shoes drop seeds hidden in the cracks of their creases.
They erupt into trees, that bleed and creak and scream.
They bend and nip at my heels, telling me to sleep.
But I have yet to do so.
… I think about this constantly,
how only in the sage-nous of my dying heaves,
will people stop to listen and forget to laugh.
Only a fool would take young bones seriously
when they mutter such tragedies;
That the world that wants me wandering,
is the same that keeps me wondering.
Even as I sleep, and I do so often,
I can feel my eyes being pulled towards the dirt.
It’s most present with meaningless conversation.
My eyes lock with theirs and want to bury themselves;
but I get through it by smiling.
My mouth picks up my cheeks which hold back my eyes from running away.
A slick trick for a man who loves everything too much.
How life is diabolically insane when I can force flip my natural rhythm for 200 dollars a day, where I spend my time worsening my posture and growing my beard at a desk meant to make the new wave of creative minds comfortable with open ceiling concepts and moss wall oxygen emitters. I periodically slink through my duties like a slug, moving slowly in order to shave more seconds off of my already limited supply. There’s nothing more tartarus than watching a digital clock move from 1:24 in the morning to 1:25 in five minutes, while I slide through these recreation center hallways, only nodding to those who I forget their moniker and asking “how’s it going” to those I remember, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t include their name in my greeting anyway and I sure as hell don’t stop to hear their pre-planned reply. I simply just let it pancake on the back of my skull, let out a generic laugh that sits behind my mask so I can inhale it back in and re-use, re-use, re-use it, and carry on to my next task. What will it be? Oh it seems like the oranges are getting low, and it might be time to find the key that we hide from everyone else because everyone knows that everyone loves a good key, open up the hidden place, grab the bag of oranges and fill the bowl to the top. But wait, no it shouldn’t be that simple… we have a budget to think about and what’s cheaper than more oranges? Hmm.. A smaller bowl! Yes. that’s it, you’re a goddamn genius. Like a rabies ridden lemur I grab the half empty bowl of oranges, pour them out on the table and quickly (so no one sees this heinous crime of sanitation) grab the smaller bowl of tropical themed color flavored candy and dump them in the bigger bowl. Oranges: meet Smaller Bowl, and I sniff out my next kill. Gordian knot: 0 Keegan Shaw: 1. That puzzle took three hours so thank Zeus, it’s finally 4am which means it’s time to meet a man down by the curb and exchange bags of food where each of us only has a nod for the other, like a silent drug deal where talking would just make the act too real to handle so we don’t and won’t ever. At this point we’ve been doing this trade off for 4 weeks and the simple act of trading empty coolers for coolers full of lukewarm food, half of which will sit completely ignored for hours in a hot box that I have dubbed “Beef” simply because of a sticky note outside of it that was meant to denote an area inside and what contents sat there, that we know how the other is doing in life and we don’t need to talk about it. I pack mule the food up a floor where I label them according to who wanted what and what food item would kill them if eaten; judge. jury. and the last one escapes me. After organizing (the bird where the bird goes, the veggie where the veggies go, and the hoofed creature… well.. we all know where that belongs), I sit, like a predator or some divine bloodline upon my mesh throne, rocking back and forth, waiting to match a face to the name I had written on the top of their food box. Just pleading with god and her angels to give me the chance, please! just this once lord!!! Just one chance to ask them: “and would you like your salad and desert as well, I think it’s two mini red velvet cupcakes today. Oh, you’re gluten free, no problem, well then I think we have some fresh raspberries for you. Oh, ok, just the salad, absolutely coming right up. Enjoy it.” As they reach to grab their mock tofu bird, I see something egregious… the tofurkey has been mislabeled as beef?? has this just destroyed my entire organization? Will the happy customer leave their adjective here and just be… a noun!? Will the Earth’s poles shift?? When will Kate McCallister realize that she left her own child, that small little boy, home alone, all by himself!? I know what to do, and thank god my desk is so damn organized because I know right where I’m going: a foot and a half right from the center of the table and down two inches and there it is: the most pristine black sharpie the virgin Mary would have ever seen if she didn’t get involved with all that God Mob stuff. It sits there, yodeling with perfection. “Ah ah ah, hold on there good fellow. It seems as if your meal has been mislabeled. Aahhhtatata I won’t hear another word, I’ll fix this right up for you.” I lunge for the marker with the speed of a fast thing and return post haste. I uncap the bastard, swing my fury limb towards the top of the container and with one fell swoop, a furrowed brow and the attitude of a lioness, I cross out the words “roasted. beef. brisket”. I spit on the floor to rid my body of the indignation and shake the hand of my now rightfully adjectiv-ed ‘happy customer’ and send him/her/them on his/her/their way like the good Cindy Lou Who I know he/she/they are. I rest my bones back in my spongey wheeled throne and wipe the sweat from underneath my hat before it gets too comfortable with the fabric (it’s mostly white and sweat stains are unsavory in the business of winning) and speak thusly to myself: Crisis averted, good job old friend. I clunk my gaze back towards my digital dash and wait for the next big bowl of fruit to crumble under the pressure of remaining what it was an hour ago…the world spins on and my beard gets longer.
