there there there
it was
#3
the three of three he always anticipated
things come in threes
the first was in a Podunk town off
the highwayAtascadero where he stopped to relieve himself it stood on a side street up a hill from the
junior high
the second mocked him in Los
Alamos again off the highway up from the gas station off an intersection up a shabby road which
lead to an old redbrick school building slovenly leaning in the failing light he couldnt help but
wonder if it was still operational it
reminded him of grade schools back east two-storied though smaller
now this morning the yellow
plasticmoulded turtle appeared yet again begging S L
O W almost hidden behind a squat circular
padlocked metal box circular and box didnt jive but he couldnt help but loved it was the
third of three jived to the sky he only
needed to keep his eyeballs peeled
Threes happen
he could make out the red beanie
atop its head as he approached
curious he recognised that leaving a school zone might be more
important than entering one
S L O
W C
H I L
D R E N written inside a yellow
cautionary street sign
he
didnt care for that message it reminded
him of retarded childrenof his kid brother
he was grateful that leaving a
school zone wasnt minimised
a child is less apt to be wild and woolly
heading to school than turned loose afterwards their time-served behind them
he could barely make out the red
beanie just visibly over the top of the
metal canister Ah solved the circular and box
dilemma
crossing behind the canister he
looked again
he saw the yellow lettering S L
O W
Ah this iteration had dropped the red pennant it
held in its hands that he witnessed earlier the pennant replaced with a bouquet – bookay as he saw written on a flower shop window leaving
Atascadero – a bouquet of colourful plastic flowers kellygreen stems and narrow leaves which prior the only places aside from craft
stores and dimestores that hed seen them in were cemeteries left by mourners who attended graves perhaps visiting only rarely
though to be fair he
could imagine cemetery administrations probably now had hard fast rules about decorating
graves rules meant to minimise them from
having to maintain graves lazy
muthafuckers he remembered as a boy planting fresh
flowers spending afternoons having lunches from picnic baskets visiting dead relatives ahwell
class and style have long left other aspects of modern life so there was
no sense that cemeteries maintain them either
he remembered someone sayhe couldnt remember who that headstones no
longer could be erect rather laid lownestled
in the earth so lawnmower blades could pass over them
S L O W
go slow maybe go slow because children today are too deficienttoo
lacking commonsense that they wouldnt recognise a car could kill them or S L
O W because so few
children walk to and fro school anymore or perhaps drivers are negligent or too wrapped up in their heads to actually see a
child that ran out into the road ahead of them
he had picked
up many dead animals off of streets killed by vehicles
3 of 3
case closed
now onto the next selection that
begged him to notice
a
woman in a second storey window began to disrobe . . .
0800-ish, Monday,
14 10. 19
1245, Sunday,
12 4. 20
