9210. THANK GOD FOR MAYHEM

9210. THANK GOD FOR MAYHEM ('ABOARD! Bright Marshmallow!')

So from you far I went to strange oh lively city of lights and glimmer with rivers sidewalks and alleys and great Manhattan schist each running full with folk and the scurrying eddies of fiction and feeling as the less than distant river's light was reflected and shown again on its watery top as if some urban past is passing by me slowly one drip after another as NOW once again the hour the liners depart is here : and I look down the east/west street to see a broad bright marshmallow passing and only then later - there/here - amidst a gas station rumble four cop cars arrive screaming and lit and scurrying forth cop bodies emerge holding frantic flashlights and guns and clubs and only one lonely soul hurt on the ground writhes in some pain a real urban pain a sub-lunar pain while they hold him down searching his car's ripped innards and padding and clothing askew as gawkers watch talking and pointing as one swift justice of words amidst jeers for what's happened AND although NO ONE quite knows they're all sure they've seen and alongside such carnage of intention and deed the dire waitress seeds each diner plate with gravies and sauces galore as she watches from the Tunnel Diner window at what's been transpiring and says 'thank God for MAYHEM!' exclaiming aloud what her mind must see - her way I suppose of gaining from the crowd and in that mind she hears : 'let it keep coming and let them eat!' : for those who enter stay and slow like slumber the cops depart and the excitement fades and the darkening fall of the parking lot pavement black advances again and all anyone is left with are the ten-pm lights shining back onto that pavement with few cars as witness and mute and I'm thinking back to the daylight ships passing 'a broad bright marshmallow' and I'm turning it back to 'ABOARD! Bright Marshmallow!' instead and what turns for turning is passing and gone and I look back at the waitress carving ham at her counter and realize she's as angry as I am and listening only begrudgingly to Frank the cook who scours the grease off the griddle while talking of 'later' whatever that is and I try to think of them as a couple and wonder if they are or perhaps their lives together as lonely as this intersect only here but matter not it does so I move on - noticing all the misspelled words on the menu-board 'greaves' for 'gravies' and 'chudder' for 'chowder' and broken epitaphs and menu words all spoiled and rotten and stupid on a broadly errant wall and in the back - along the alcove to the men's room - someone desperately has written on the wall (I swear) 'Repent YE for the KINGDOM of God is at hand!' and someone else has written 'Jesus is coming - will YOU swallow?' and I want to laugh but don't instead noting the phone number alongside it '201 whatever you want NO joke - loves anything' and sauntering on I put that one away and leave past a fat family happy with food and the eyes of one youngster agape and watching and think what has changed ? has everything changed or nothing changed and I decide nothing has changed and that everything I see is what I would have seen anyway and the only change is the constant of movement and growth and gravity ('like endless pylons and seeded housing groaning with growth and taking up their energies solemnly and alive') and then I think then why bother with anything for it is all on its own course anyway and all we can do is watch and needle the world for its being NOTHING MORE than that and echoes conspire to resound echoes like 'THANK GOD FOR MAYHEM' for that is what keeps us going....