Chuck deVarennes

Jim Sweet Home



He's got no sense of humor, baby boomer strapped to dollars.  James
Lucky hollers if his suspenders snag.  What a drag, every hair out of
place.  He cancels his chase after painted perfumed trophies and sulks in
his black and silver front room.  Damn these cheap suspenders, delayed
surrenders and bragging rights among the boys lost irretrievably.
     Spread sheets' blot brain plagues James, who hasn't really laughed in
three years, and tears swell his eyes.  No emotions rise from beneath a
gleaming surface.  He's mirrored himself to cast desire back into beholders
eyes, and they deceive themselves they've found beauty there.  Trophy Jim.
Tall slim and unresurrected.  Smoothly connected, bright faced mirror, his
hair a square of hundred watts shot by the brutal elastic snap of defective
accessories.  Thin glass shards fall out of the vapor escaping.
     He's got no sense of humor and doesn't have time to spare from his
preoccupation with clothes and hair and the detailed elegance which his
sterile auto shares with him.  Faceless women won't coat his leather seats,
their empty plotting challenge his peace.  He's endless, friendless,
elastic let down bends his eyes to the quiet carpet.  Where he sees a
cockroach.
     There, in his immaculate lair, a filthy bug strolls his rug like he
owned the place.  James froze.  What to choose to erase the face of a
slight brown bug?  Insect stained carpet will not do!  Perfect fibers cry
to him, "Jim!  It's a pure sin to let this bug defile my impressive nap.
Act!  Seize this vermin and throw him in the trash."  He baby booms his
fear at the carpet speaking clearly.  Perhaps his suspenders are just too
tight.
     He reaches for the telephone and screams to find slug slime all over
its smooth plastic back.  "Defiled.  O God, I am defiled, my hands can't
caress my steering wheel in this begrimed state.  I don't have a date,  my
necktie's frayed, and my pants fall down.  Now I won't get laid, and the
boys will laugh until my ears explode from their mockery."
     Bugs and busted elastic.  Slugs and slimy plastic.  Cold Lexus sleeps
in his garage, no tight curves no slick swerves, no auto massage!  He
cautiously pulls off the offending suspenders. Limply in his hand he holds
them staring at more and more cockroaches cheering their carpet bombing.
The slugs move on the VCR and slick the stereo cabinet.  Jim's in a frenzy,
slim and lazy, suspenders hanging limp like his inelastic soul.  He climbs
up on his chair and hangs there, his modulated voice in panic shrieking
rage, snap popping button losing rage.  Now his hair's wild as a child's.
Now the suspenders fall from stiff fingers.  They find him there, stiff in
his chair, slime covered whimpering fetal mass.
     Joint locked, half cocked, full goose delirium filled with thoughts of
cockroaches and screaming carpet fibers.  Chair bound, break down,  bowel
loosed yapping terror.
Sweat scarred shirt sticks to the leather.