mash mush mope mango mwa mwa mwa

Traffic. Music. On a date to church. Still listening to the Replacements. Again with the bar and the beer and the bass lines making my insides vibrate. Mail boxes and camel cigarette ads. Fences that look like licorice. Cars covered in the grey of winter roads. Newspaper boxes. Piles of snow, dirtied. Almost black. Exhaust. A yellow ribbon on the side of a red Jeep Cherokee. The shop keeper across the way bringing in the morning newspaper. Lines of cars waiting for the light to change so they can go to work or to home or to nowhere. Impatience. Horn honk. The last car in the line has it’s left blinker on. The first car now. Everything sparkles, covered in frozen dew. Like a sugar cookie. Like my hands after I made 6th Grade Saturday Night. Like a super ball. Tired. Yawning. My eyes feel dulled. Scraper marks on windshields. Skinny defrost lines on rear windows. The people in a hurry with just enough gone to see. Inside the heat blasting. Warming up the glass from the back. Waiting for the wiper blade to whoosh the melt away. Bus sides covered in ads for doctors and malls and ice cream. So hungry I can feel the cold hit my stomach. The walk sign switching from orange hand to white walking man and back again back again. No birds. No squirrels. No grass. Artificial tree branches poke up over the window sill. Their bright green shouting out over the grey of today. Of the winter. Of the year. Yellow school bus with it’s stop sign flush against it’s side. Penguins and rabbits and triangles and words written in cursive and more school buses. All go by. No one here except for me and this cd. Trying to sit up straight. Legs crossed. Can feel the skin tight around my jaw line. Can feel the curve of my back. My arms stretched out to meet the keyboard. No appetite. Jeans hang low on my hips. The building across the street looks like it could be made of crackers. They have a mustard and ketchup awning. Muster. Muenster. Monsters. Why can’t monsters get along with other monsters? Why is it that vegetables can’t talk but cats can float? Accordion buses. Accordian solos. Weird Al once sang me a song. Warewolf hair and black leather jackets. Broaches on long wool coats. Customers who ask for skim or decaf or half caf or no foam or whip cream or cream or want to know if the bakery is fresh. I think sometimes I should just go. But I stay because I am strong like that. Responsible like that. Don’t want to leave like that. Leaves. Orange and red and yellow leaves. Fall. Autumn. Atonal. Argyle. Apple orchard angst. Archived. Alleviated. Almost there. Almost there. Done.