Sticker-Shock

It's another Tuesday and another OLN over at D'Verse.  I missed last week and wasn't about to miss out again this week.  So, with that said, I decided to link up this rather long story-piece.  I'm not quite sure it's exactly where I want it to be, yet I also kind of like where it's at, if that makes any sense at all-lol.  So I figured I'd see what other poets thought about it and where better to do this than at and with all the talent poets over at D'Verse.  Stop on by, get your poetry fix fulfilled and while you're there, link up a poem of your own.  Cheers!

A sordid soliloquy

A softened stance

On bigotry

         Perplexing postulates of persona

Pestering…. festering…deadening the numbed AWAKE

They say, (who they are I don’t know), that sometimes, on certain occasions, perhaps (fill in as many other ambiguous/vague probability indicators as desired) you might just need a jolt to your system to get things working properly once again or at the very least, to regain a bit of the focus you may have lost, somewhere, someplace.

They say, yes, them again, that in rare cases, a complete overhaul is in order….

A diabolic dissertation

Spread out…so neatly…in such a chaotic way

A dedication to destruction

Arranged with proper pagination, citations referenced and cover sheet attached… {Glasses high, half-filled…CLINK…CLINK…CLINK…kiss the bride} but don't drink too much, otherwise it may not end as once surmised.

Circumlocution of character,

Connived by one’s own tarriance

***

A distant man walks down a familiarly unfamiliar street.  His sullen countenance cannot be undermined by trivial description, you know, the sort they write in ink or are spoken ever so slowly, by the fresh-pleated suits behind the anchor desk, to show they care, and to underline their illustration, of someone they never met before, nor, (not being sarcastic) really ever cared to do so. And they do this with a sympathetic tone (Actors)

I can't help feeling, aren't we all?

But even more over, I can't keep away the implication,

 that this person, one day, could be each us all.

*** 

I will not demean the intelligence of the reader.  You can paint your own picture of this man; depict his smell, the clothing on his back, the gait he wears just as well, the lines or lack-thereof…

*** 

He stops to talk with someone he thought he knew:

“How you doing?

A scared look frizzled down this girl’s face as she quickly scurried away, like some forest creature happily foraging the brush, when all of an instant, a bear or some other predatory beast haps the eye…

The man was confused at first, even brought down, if possible, that much more…but the girl he remembered couldn’t have possibly been this girl, after all it had been what, twenty, thirty years and she, here then, looked as she did back that first day, when they made acquaintance so many years before.

His preamble began again and he continued down this street that he remembered much differently than it now appeared.  He looked at his hands, almost constantly; as if he understood the somatic plundering that must have occurred during the time he spent, almost adamantly, ethologically removing himself, corporeally and psychically, from the land of the living.  

***

Emptied building fronts, where, as best he could recall, once stood the finest vendors of first rate linens and silken wares.  

This vast emptiness of landscape jutted much farther/further than he cared, or had the energy, to see/to ponder upon.  

 ***

Finally, to summate another many similar scenes, he arrived at where he intended.   But, as seemed to be the norm, nothing was as had been poeticized in mind. 

He sat on the landing of this unidentifiable remnant of what once was, and realized, he didn’t know, where to go, what to do, what to say and to whom…he just didn't know anything at all. 

It was here when a bus passed him by, spewing smoke and noxious odors.  He covered his face the best he could and recalled, almost jubilantly, “I guess some things haven't changed.”

 ***

As the night grew weary he arose from his landing stoop and meandered about the hollowed out shell of a once proud mecca of civilization, one which he didn't hold many memories for, but those he did, today, had tarnished before his very form. 

*** 

After hours of noticing signs, billboards, advertisements and the crowds outside the shelters, (begging, pleading, for something, for anything, for hope). 

It was here; it was in everything surrounding him then and there, that he then realized,

 that he had been

Sticker-shocked 

into 

submission

How high,

The price of life

Had climbed,

 since…

However long it had been.

 time exited stage right,

all this happened,

while he

was doing

 whatever the hell it was, that he was doing