© 2003  John Menesini

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"The Sentimental Creep"

3 dollars and a pack of Doral's, country fried steak, dim diner Tuesday lunch specials.  Furry grease dangles and sways from the extractor fan above the big griddle, years of hamburgs and eggs.  Old man smells like stretched out undershirts, dish water, hot onions over grey liver.  Cigarette burns leave shit stains on the Formica counter top where for years trade workmen broke fast and supped in green mill pants and foam-mesh hats.  Brown overcoats stale from many caught rains hang lugubrious and stiff on the old wood hooks at the entrance, cracked black shoes exposing white sock toe tips up on counter rails resting, shifting, tapping.  Aww, Jesus Criminitly, Bob.

          Shifting on my seat from a boil on my ass I look at my squashed pack of squares and take one bent and light it, blow the yellow headache tasting smoke through my nose toward my plate.  The coffee is old, watered down from inner pot sweat from sitting on the burner being turned off and on too much.  My lips were dry until I licked at them making them moist enough to chew at the skin around the big split in the middle.  That will occupy some time.

          Take my burbling guts to pot in the gloss paint drip cool john near the dishwashers tank, hear the banging of pans in big sinks, the whoosh of water in the Hobart.  The seat is cold against my rosy ass making me shiver a little and giving me chicken skin on thighs.  I empty a dark pile down, Christ, I musta been eatin' good, lookit the size'a that.  Cracked mirror glued to wall over top of small hand wash sink, dried soft soap from dispenser on the top of one corner, old black stopper wrapped with foil because it's to small for the hole on the other.

          Who gives a good look at their shit before pulling the plunger?  Will shitting ever not be taboo?  I think I might be ill, some kind of sentimental creep.  A good eye glued to all miniscule mundane nothings of dust flitting or cracks on wall, grit, grain, and textures.  Meditative musings on the great big non,  silent staring eye fixed, eyes actually leaving the sockets to wrap around tangible figures to stroke, or soothe.  Just the creep in the corner with a staring problem,

 Whyn'cha take a pit'cher, har-har.

Corner sitting, wishing for temporary invisibility to continue my observation of crowded rooms and not upset the candid-ness of simple actions goin on.  Deep eyed, and glassy, nearly always bloody, bugging, I have bug eyes, huge green with red flecks on the iris.  Don't have the right face to stare people down without causing them to fear for something, purse, wallet, insides.  I don't mean to pry.  Really.  I don't want to do anything physical, at all.  I'm nearly a micro-phobe anyway, with other peoples' old wind and skin anyhow.  Not my cup of meat.  I think, perhaps, maybe, shit, I don't have enough sense to even work it out.  My eyes droop from their sockets and ooze along the counter scratching themselves on the stray wee grains of salt shook from the rusted, greasy shaker.  Deep into the cracks, down into the cracks, down is where I'll lie.

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