Timmy and the Dancing Bear

This is your darkness, this is your lightness, I give you the death of the salesman, he deserved it, it was his only chance, you know the darkness, it is in your jungle, you find it there, every morning after coffee and smores, you are the delight of the universe, eat your pie, fire the employees, enter the office alone and afraid of gunfire, it is the ricochet that will get you, it is the ricochet. "My photo-receptors were nearly overloaded! What did you think you were doing Timmy?" A bow of the head, a glint in the eye, "I'm sorry Daddy," all is forgiven, the robots eat dinner in quiet and Timmy bides his time. He knows the ferris wheel will come around again, the traveling people can't travel all the time, the circus comes back to town. "Only autumn lasts forever," thinks Timmy in the middle of his pork and beans, "and then only because dreams are like leaves." He is considering the dynamism of a walking dog, his head turns in wheels and backward somersaults. The bear dances in the living room after dinner and the robot family sits down to watch. But Timmy wants to leave because the bear knows he is mistaken. "The dragon bleeds fire," the bear says in the middle of his jig. "His breathing is not in any way different from yours." The family laughs, Timmy thinks of his great aunt and the banana sandwiches of yesteryear, wondering when he can escape to that time zone, if there is a loop that will take him back there, over the treaded fists of old newspaper clippings, tumbling end over end like dizzy acrobats, I am trying to reach him through the sizzling air waves, but interfering electric bird calls are filling up the gaps in my brain. Now add a pinstripe to your garden of death, stand up in the classroom and declare that you know the answer, naked but for the trappings of nightmare.

5/27/97

Jim Genzano