4500. AND NOW WHEN IT'S HAPPENED

AND NOW WHEN IT'S HAPPENED

Why isn't there just a keyboard key for everything?

Happiness, light, love and glory? One for changing

that line you just wrote lower-case as a title wrongly

into the upper-case you wanted. One for changing

bad dreams into the real loves of your life? One

for when the person at the end of your trip, to where

you were going, isn't there when you arrive? I don't

know anything much for sure, but I'd like this to be.

-

One time I said to the clown, the carnival clown in the

meadow, 'You may well be, but you can't fool me.' I'd

seen them pull up, the entire sick bunch  -  all those old

run-down cars and trucks from Alabama  -  and dump all 

their  stuff in the middle of the great big field; for their 

two-week stay as Reiman's Carnival folk. Tents and

lean-to's, everything up in three hours. The grass had

been cut close, small trees cut down, and the old land

scoured before they'd even arrived. Every one I saw

was some sort of strange character. If the guy signed

his name as 'D. Generate', I wouldn't have been at all

surprised nor taken a'back : like firesticks and candles

-

Three days later, I saw them all again  -  the girls had

gone wild  -  perhaps they were wives, I didn't know  -

but I think they traveled with this troupe and hardly

wore clothes. Performed in an 'adults only' tent of their

own, at ten bucks a pop. 'Exotic dance', I heard some

yokel call it  -  'Salome' he even said, as if pretending

to be some Biblical scholar would make a difference to

his Soul on Fire fury. I wanted to say 'Onanism' right

back to him, but didn't. Damn, I love all this stuff!

-

Right now I'm less a critic of anything than a liver of

Life  -  all its rotten foibles, failed stories, miserable

attempts at fames and glories. I just want to say 'Sorry'

and be along my way  -  maybe back to that field, where

that fucking, fake clown was taking his Mary Jane down.