The Amazing Gary, a Houdini-hopeful
that now has settled
for simple magic-tricks that
make the kids smirk
& the parents groan,
has been working w/ me
in the store's warehouse.
The warehouse should be
featured on a city-tour of
unsafe working environments:
You got the miner's cave uptown,
with real charbroiled lungs
on display & dead canary keychains
in the gift-store.
Witness the maimed & mutilated
children in early
Industrial factories.
Get your picture with Tiny-
he's only a head, but he can
still pull levers
with his mouth.
Then there's us-
Not nearly as susceptible
to injury & disfigurement,
but still entertaining.
Behold, as lead paint-chips
fall like snow from the ceiling,
you can hear- if you listen real close-
a rabid raccoon eating
Sugar Daddys, the last flappings
of trapped robins, the busy
traffic of cockroaches, and
that melodic swish is the workers
tossing their urine out the windows,
a la Middle Ages.
So it's in this environment,
usually in the before & after,
that Gary was telling me about
one his hood-friends
he used to run with:
"There was this big-wig, used car salesman
on the east-side that wanted
some fast insurance money, so he
recruited Sal & me
to 'steal' his new Buick.
Do a number on it, he says.
So we snag the car & drive it, smash it,
pound it, into whatever walls & railings
we could find.
For the icing, we shot
three dozen bullets into it &
poured gasoline all over the car &
watched it go up like the 4th of July.
We got paid well & Sal
was happy.
After that, I did some tele-marketing.
Selling gold & silver to saps.
Sal ended-up having a
heart-attack one day
at home.
You see, he was pretty fat.
It just got worse after
I knew him.
Plus, he just drank beer all day
& stuffed his face with junk-food.
So he died in a Lazy-Boy,
unable to get outta
the chair.
When they found his body,
like, four days later, his cat
had eaten his face off.
I guess it was hungry."