getinthecarhelen

(from unpublished manuscript: The Crayon Box Manifesto)

Periwinkle

Time: Post-Apocalyptic
Place: Earth!

in the 1950’s

grade school film strips preached

         the duck and cover method for survival

         a ‘just the tip’ solution

         for surviving

         a nuclear bomb
but civilization as they’d known it

didn’t end in mushroom clouds

or radioactive maternity recovery

         there was no atomic detonation
the end of civilization as they’d known it

began in the 1980’s with the introduction

of hair spray to pop metal bands
and was consummated forty-some years later

while some wise-ass scientists where fooling

around with a bunch of green pipe cleaners
talking about the ‘old times’

               before their youth had died

                     stories about parking lot keg parties

                     with their dicks dangling beneath jean jackets

                     dazing at the vomit on the hood of of their best friend’s

                     Delta 88

                             pretending like hell

                             that it was Tawny Kitaen

with these recent thoughts of hair metal

lodged between all those deadly equations

           in their heads

the scientists returned to work
Humanity once again demanded a weapon

so powerful that its very power would act as a deterrent

           for its own use

Humanity demanded a weapon that would

once and for all save itself from itself
and it is because of this duel hard-on

           for its own survival and/or extinction

that this dedicated group of geniuses

           who grew up in the 1980’s

figured out a way to weaponize

           the music of Winger!
when detonated, the Winger Bomb

was capable of producing a high kick explosion

of destructive energy capable of leveling entire cities

       causing things to explode that nobody

       had ever realized where there to explode

                         before

             in the air
you would think that Civilization would have learned

a few things and upon discovering the Winger Bomb

wiped all knowledge of its existence from the face

                          of its own heavily eye-lined planet
but no, like a poorly advised reunion tour

its implementation was damn near inevitable
and at some point in the future

the day did come

when the Winger Bomb was unleashed

               upon an unsuspecting

               Adele worshipping

               world
those who where not finger-tapped into

cassette tape shaped piles of dust and oblivion

by the initial explosion

spent the following months bleeding from their eardrums
while mumbling the lyrics to Headed For A Heartbreak

                         fighting off packs of mutated farm animals

                         and trading colorful scarfs and bandannas

                                 for rare bits of sugarless gum
two of these survives set up a camp

on top of the grave of the great American

Science Fiction writer: Philip K Dick
it felt safe there

             the roaming bands of cannibals

             tended to avoid the old cemeteries

   
  and the trees hadn’t died here

                  and once in a while

                     in the middle of the night

                   you could almost hear the sounds

                         of a train
and it was on a night such as this

           with the Darjeeling calling

beneath a sky perpetually turned

                     the color of periwinkle
surrounded by wild squirrels which had evolved

into colorfully tailed rodents made out of

                     guitar strings

                     and spandex
they fell asleep, his arms wrapped around her

             protected by the legend of Ubik

             and miracles of grape juice

She’s Only Seventeen couldn’t hurt them here

though lord knows

it fucking tried

Tags: Apocalypse, civilization, Get in the car Helen, guitar strings, hair metal, high kick, poetry, Rob Geisen, Ubik, war, Winger