Purgatory
Rick Spaulding
Ever wonder what you'd do....
if you discovered yourself in something identifiable.
it's that unwieldy feeling you've just opted to ride the bus instead of the cab driven by the guy with lots of philosophy whose shitty english almost enhances it's value somehow...
the trip meter doesn't have to run, you're here with a host of strangers all having a contest
you don't look eye to eye
you avoid talking
because god help the person who makes everyone realize the only reason anyone took the bus
was because they lacked the car or the friend who could take them someone else
the homeless guy smelling like sex and bad tomatoes?
exec reading his 19 year old lover's letters behind his copy of the Journal?
wife holding the groceries for the husband who beats her while he thinks about the receptionist at work?
they're all the same on the bus.
and the silence is like some unspoken chant directed right at me.
in a circle....
It's a round robin serializable transaction
with a really talented circus carney who's playing you but thinks you actually look better out of tune and with the extra broken
strings hanging like some bad haircut
all things in the universe gravitate toward the geometric configurations of circles and their derivatives.
They lick their lips and they don't say
but they do this crazy mime dance -
they _show_ you what they are too afraid to say
or never grew up enough to learn the words for....
Lick...crack....breathe
"you aren't heaven you know........
heaven accepts gift certificates
heaven naturally matches your sign
heaven is the non-implicit match
for the subtle non-euclidean geometry
of another soul's static planar definition"
Lick...crack....breathe
"you aren't even purgatory , son
purgatory has a definitive time table
purgatory transitions as the clearer judgments
on the recent past are collated, stapled,
and run through a newer and more stylish shredder
purgatory is anywhere but here
everywhere but now
nothing like then, thank you, please,
and I'll have the Raspberry iced one instead."
Lick...crack....breathe
"you're actually just a magazine in purgatory's waiting room.
you get a certain amount of time to get read
then you're put down in lieu of the scheduled appointment
with the basic purgatory counsel experience that's been scheduled
but not really reserved
since before you as a a magazine issue could be published.
later
all you can really expect her to remember
are a few articles"
"You know, I really like that stint
that the editor did on taking jeans
out of the refrigerator so the bad guy gets hit"
But of course you did. You probably even looked at the pictures, didn't you?
Didn't you?
Didn't you?
This is not the worst thing that could happen to you.
You're handled by strangers hourly -
so it's at least better than when no one knew you had a subscription plan.
The strangers handle you far more tenderly than a constant reader -
you are, after all
the glory and teenage suicide
of totally new content there.
Until they get to know the authors,
their politcal views on low grade stims,
and their taste in positions not approved by JAMA
Trying to decide that from time to time.
it goes, sometimes I make the bus, sometimes the bus makes me
usually we take each other headlong into the siderail - god I can taste it.
I'd say it figures, but last night I told my figure to go - instead it returned with friends.
She comes back telling me 'Right On' and I find myself saying
"Look - I'm off.
But only Just a little.
Just a little.
sometimes it's enough"
occasionally it's just - so.
off in a little rut I'm somtimes enough
I'm on right but left in judgements
purgatory's definitive transition table
is everywhere and waiting
read - rememember - out
it goes.
Rick Spaulding ©2002
