THE COMX BOX OBSERVER

Radiance

While waiting in Coronado’s Park,

there appeared a staircase of warmth & light,

there in the middle of a concrete picnic table

& had I been drunk or in a dream

I’d have stared straight up the railing

& would have seen some Victorian Light Being, 

pocket watch & vest, noble woman by his side,

gesturing for me to climb the staircase,

join them for tea.

********************

Dan the Handyman

Dan the Handyman was telling his co-workers about the trauma suffered by fish. The damage done to their jaws by continually being caught and released. His co-workers chuckled at the strangeness of the thought.  Then he talked about the trauma of hunted deer.  How their delicate animal minds could suddenly snap.

“Picture this psychotic deer hauling ass through the fucking mall.  45 miles per hour past obese shoppers, tiny children and grandmothers. Finally they catch the poor beast, sedate it, put it in a hospital for mentally disturbed animals---maybe after a while release it back into the wild. But with a prescription for Prozac.”

That night Dan returned to his rickety mobile home, cracked a beer, thought about his mother. She’d killed herself when he was just 17.  Then he thought about his father, the man had cracked under the strain of 7 children and a wife who was steadily losing touch with reality.  His old man had just started living in the basement one day. Eventually he just faded away like breath on a mirror.

Dan sat there in that rickety mobile home drinking his last Bud Light of the evening, thinking of his mother, father, traumatized fish and unbalanced deer.  Then he smiled to himself as he clicked on Conan O’Brian. 

This was a good night.