Here I am, right at the source. I guess it doesn’t get any fresher than this. Mirrors preserve the continuity of the walls rather than disturb them. The forearm chill of a sweeping faux marble penetrates my trompe l’oueil reverie. Patrons poised pink and peach by fat carpet cracks and buzzed about knowledge they came to town to get. A naïve roar, more solutions than problems, freedom and justice for all, amen. They only get one chance at the stairs, else to topple into an abyss of razor-stabbing peer tongues. Chopped to pieces, often bigger than the whole.

I was created by this squad. A prybar to the tongue, a 2x4 to the back of the head, a C-clamp on a thumbnail or a hand pushed into a bandsaw, reward for seeing a different light illuminating the same drummer. Those were the formative years and they still wonder why, hunched sniffling between trips to the toilet, I take as many chances as I like from the top, where my stairs begin. A daydream swim to a beach where I sift the sand for change to buy another beer and thus, shelter. Come rain, sleet, snow, hail blazing sun or the real world, 75 cents buys you a roof over your head as long as it lasts. Thank you lord, it’s still a dream. A man must have his dreams. I surged close enough to mine to have them knock me down the stairs and lost them even quicker. I’m ahead of the game now, I have one less pressure.

Only so fine, though, as the soap bubble needs outside pressure to survive, do I? My car seems like the best place to pop, all steel and rolled up glass. Clicking and thumping out of the gravel lot, the unbearable weight of no special reason turns me left. Tractor dealers and sleeping restaurants are sweltering in a never stop stream of apricot vapor lamps. Fresh mown hay and the candy-sweet smell of manure wrest another wheezing sneeze, no tissues. A well-fed white hitchhiker shrinks speedily in my mirror. Tall straight and sober, going my way.

I remember when they stared and wondered with confusion and pity, but then it was good. Now I run, guilty and sneezing, in a warped LP circle, stuck in a distorted groove. Music of a different mind, loud and clear. Wearing slightly, always working towards the center.

My radio must be on, yes, so loud to get a sharp-veined red hawk stare from a sweaty traffic light opponent. Sweet manure fades to post nasal drip, city-busy air heavy with humid sound. A sneeze or a cough and a nod to anyone I’ve seen once before, my home here, so far away. Tonight, a picked-over sidewalk sale, in riches, treading change, how can I decide between three things I don’t need? I choose a large inflatable dinosaur, I once lived with someone who had one, kept by the washer-dryer, its pneumatic visage was the only joy on laundry day. A dozen racks of clothes make me suddenly conscious that I am wearing some, and they cling wetly to me everywhere.

Tonight, the finest smog-headache in recent memory, all itchy at the temples and wanting to sneeze, I blow up my new toy friend. A chilly cheap quart makes for lively conversation with her. Feeling the adhesive scrape of blistered paint chips as I shift and wheeze on my park bench seat, the passing exhaust of two busses is dry.