An orgy of light filled the air of J’s studio apartment. His cat had chewed through the blinds and the Sun was fulfilling its obligatory duty as an eternal alarm clock and device of vexation. J scratched his stomach really hard. When he removed his hands there were red lines showing him where his nails had been. J felt excited and forgot to be angry at his cat. He scratched out words on his stomach. The word Fuck was brightly emblazoned on his bare chest. J laughed. His cat, Jonathan, meowed. “Calm down Jonathan,” J said “or I will eat your cat food all by myself and then you will really be screwed.” J was serious, it was in his nature to always be serious. J walked to the mini-fridge sitting by the tv and grabbed a Hot Pocket for breakfast. He began to sing “who you gonna eat…Hot Pockets!” He realized he had somehow mixed up the song from the Hot Pockets commercial with one from the children’s show about Pound puppies. It is important to make such distinctions when one creates new songs J thought to himself with a very solemn look on his face.
“Meow-wow” said Jonathan.
“It’s not ready yet” said J.
“Meow-wow” said Jonathan in a much more insistent tone than before.
“Yeah, you are right buddy,” said J “ Hot Pockets are a pretty shitty breakfast.”
J had a knack for misinterpreting Jonathan’s pleas, and Jonathan had a cheerful disposition that allowed such transgressions to fade into distant memory almost instantaneously. J watched as the numbers on the microwave ticked down to zero. He found the chiming of the machine to be very unnerving. Once he had been draining the water from a pot of ramen noodles and the chime had startled him and caused him to miss the sink. A waterfall of boiling water washed across his lower stomach and the area below. This was an unpleasant memory for J. So here he waited with his finger hovering over the stop/clear button on the microwave ready to pounce at the first hint of the chime. J had his quirks but this in no way diminished his seriousness. J ate the hot pocket quickly. His tongue was the victim of a glob of melted processed cheese getting its revenge on mankind on behalf of cows everywhere. J knew this in an oblique sense but didn’t know exactly how he could make it clear to anyone besides himself. It is better to know ones own self than for others to know you J thought as he put on his jacket and combed through his beard with his grease-stained fingers. J grabbed his keys and left his apartment. Jonathan sat in the window with an empty stomach and a cheerful face watching as J rounded the corner and left his world
J looked at the time clock when he punched in to work and saw that he was six minutes late. J asked the nearest employee he could find if Bertha had been looking for him. “Shit J, I don’t know man. Did you bring me that cd?” The man’s name was Karl. J knew this because he was wearing a nametag that said Carl on which he had scratched out the c and scribbled in a k with a permanent marker. “Yeah I got it” J said handing Karl a hot pink mix cd with the words DEATH METAL MEGAMIX written on it. Karl grinned really wide and took the disc from J’s hand. It slipped right out. I wonder when Bertha will bitch at me for being six minutes late J thought to himself as he slipped on a pair of powder-free latex gloves. “You are six minutes late” Bertha said in a monotonous voice as she put her manly hand on J’s shoulder and pointed towards the time clock. So much for wondering J thought and wrestled his shoulder from Bertha’s grasp and shuffled off to the area where he would put on his scrubs. J felt like he should be a very important member of society wearing his powder-free latex gloves and scrubs. J walked over to the burrito bar and stood very still hoping none of the students would see him. J was a cafeteria worker and today he had to make burritos, lots of burritos. Several girls came over to the burrito bar. All of them were talking on cell phones, very new top of the line cell phones. J was not impressed by this but he was very tired. The first girl looked for a minute at the ingredients and then began the familiar process.
“Can I get a chipotle wrap” she asked.
Chipotle is just a fancy word for red shit wrap J thought but he replied “Yes, and what do you want on it?”
“Hmmmm…Hold on a minute Jess,” she said into her bright pink cell phone “What is that one right there?” she asked pointing at the beef strips.
“Beef strips” J said.
“Oh ok, I’ll have some of that then, the steak strips,” and her eyes scanned down the line “and some black beans, lettuce, tomato, red peppers, no green pepper please, some of the white and the yellow cheese, olives, onions and that’s it.” She said breathily.
J began to scoop all of the ingredients onto the tortilla and the girl looked on waiting for J to forget something. When he finished putting the mess on the plate he looked at her with his usual look accompanied by a pause in which he expected the customer to ask for something else or to tell him where he messed up. She looked slightly annoyed and grabbed the plate from J. This process repeated itself over and over until he came in. He was a very big man with very coarse hair on his arms and a very noticeable bald spot on his head. J did not know the students name but he mentally noted that it must include the word ogre. J began to steam a wrap for the ogre and wiped a line of sweat from his brow with his shirtfront. The burrito bar had somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 or so different items that could be put in a wrap. The ogre wanted all of them and he made it clear that he did not want the normal scoop but double that amount of all of them. J was always amused to see that these students, these future leaders of America, failed to acknowledge that the wrap was one constant size and that the doubling of items would ultimately result in nothing less than a cluster-fuck of torn tortilla and salsa all over the plate. The ogre had his specifications and he was set in his ways. One of the managers walked by and saw the monster J was creating. “Whoa it looks like somebody has an appetite today he said with a big smile.” This was a joke to the manager--that is how managers tell jokes. J had an idea. “Hey boss I am having trouble with the wraps again do you think you could show me how to do it?” he said. The manager turned red in the face and his pupils dilated. “Yes J I sure can” he said as he reached for a pair of gloves. He stammered a few incomprehensible words and set to work on the wrap. It tore instantly. “Whatever, I’ll just take it like that” the ogre said smirking at the manager. “Oh no no, J can make you another one real quick, I apologize for that” he said turning more purple than red. J made another one. It tore instantly again. The manager said fuck but it was muffled and J laughed on the inside. The ogre went away pleased with a busted burrito and a sense of superiority over the two men who just made it for him. J made many more burritos and eventually clocked out.
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6 comments:
if you search 'triceratops poetry' or 'triceratops poems' in google we show up pretty high in the results.
this is largely because i wrote ranting posts that used the words triceratops, poetry, and poems a lot.
fucking sweet.
ryan do you have any rugby this week?
if not i say we all get together sometime. dinner or something. the apples game. luxurious beer.
that is what i say
hot pockets. DEATH METAL MEGAMIX. "chipotle."
yes.
i do but i am open to suggestions for a get together.
how about thursday or friday? or saturday? or sunday? or tomorrow morning at 7:15 am, at Ashley's apartment? im open to any of those nights really, as I have no friends or plans. So. ummm.
thursday or friday or maybe saturday could work for me.
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