Dave Fischer

Dave Fischer is 30, lives in Providence, RI, and has a web site at

www.cca.org. He can also be reached at dave@cca.org.

I Part II

I live in a state of flux.

I loiter.

I pretend to window shop.

I am in the way.

I pretend to window shop at shops that I obviously

have no interest in as a form of satire.

Consumers must walk around me to go about their business.

I sleep in alleyways,

behind dumpsters.

I show my friends what parks are good

to sleep in.

But they get harassed by the cops,

and almost beat up.

Sorry guys.

We tried.

I see them the next morning and we hang out.

Very cool.

Stealing glue from the grocery store

and sneaking into the bathroom at the Hotel Frontenac in old Quebec city,

to spike our friend's hair.

Women aren't supposed to go in the men's room, but we need to

use the hand-dryer, so we just had to do what we had to do!

Lookin' good!

Scarin' the straights!

Lookin' real good!

A few days later we get kicked out of the Museum of Civilization.

Oh well. We take it lightly.

I am the guardian of humanity's future.

The government inserted a chip into my head

in order to keep track of the aliens,

but I dissolved it with positive thoughts

regarding the economy.

The IRS audits me every year,

seeking a percentage of my spare-changing activities.

The copy center where I was producing leaflets

attacked me with a particle that cut my eye.

They deny deny deny call the cops.

Hounded by men,

Beloved of the sky.

My destiny is great,

but hidden amongst garbage

and random social debris.

I often stay in the the big room with

the blue ceiling.

Sometimes at a friend's house,

Sometimes in an abandoned house.

My spirit transcends my persecution.

Bitterness is left to the corporate lords,

Nobility is found now only in the slums.

I got caught stealing marbles from an abandoned house once.

Quite embarassing.

Me and my two friends

sat in our cells for about three hours.

They let us out just before dawn,

with a warning.

We rushed home and cracked open the champaigne.

Nothing celebrates like sudden freedom.

My turtle gets really uptight if she

can't get out of her pool.

She's an aquatic turtle,

But she still likes to spend about two thirds of her time

On dry land.

Maybe it's like a walkabout?

It's amusing to see the kitten chase her around.

My treasurer is a junky,

and my war chancellor has been dead for three days.

If he's still dead on saturday, we'll call the police.

Because of the smell.

He was a good man though.

I met him right after he got out of prison.

He had a big knife,

but an even bigger heart.

He taught us not to be obvious,

Not to attract attention.

To live life as one desires,

Quietly.

He managed to hold down a full time job for a while,

then he died.

It is important to give psychos

the benefit of the doubt.

My birthstone is cement.

My fingers are like the legs of a spider.

I know how things happen,

I know how things went down.

I know about the revolution.

I know how close we've come to sinking into the abyss.

Richard Hell saved my people from such a fate.

He reached out to mankind,

and pulled us back from dispair and disillusion.

Creativity and innovation spoke then,

and poets were beloved.

We have fallen since those days,

but not so far.

Never again shall we fall to quite such depths.

We have become more deeply commercialized,

But at least we still value variety and the unexpected.

Up all night,

Reading Hegel on acid,

swinging from a branch at dawn.

He sat down, and looked things through.

Carefully weighed out the pros and cons,

And decided that this world just wasn't a place

he wanted to live in.

He is missed by his friends,

But I still have the greatest respect for his suicide.

He was a skateboarder.

I used to tow skateboarders from my bicycle,

To get good speed for a quarter pipe.

He contributed to my styrofoam peanut collection

Shortly before he died.

Thanks, man.

They had these digital scales in the science lab where I went to school.

They were bolted to the counter so the drug dealers couldn't steal them,

so the drug dealers weighed out their goods in the science building

after hours.

"I know it hurts, I know the disappointment is a

shock, but just listen to me for a moment. We

didn't know them. We thought they were something

deeper than what they really were. It was our own

fault though, for making such assumptions without

basis. I believe we have learnt a valuable lesson

here. Just because they're junkies doesn't

mean they're good people. We shall try to avoid

this particular mistake in the future."

I like junk food.

I like to buy food from machines.

I pick the items in the vending machine that have

the highest rate of manufacturing defects.

For me finding defective food is like finding a free prize.

A friend of mine got sick and slowly died.

Cancer was the cover story, but he was actually crushed

by our generation's plague.

It's so sad to see someone who's turned their life around,

gotten clean,

gotten straight,

get nailed ten years later by the descendants of a stowaway microbe

on a dirty needle.

Life was hard enough for him.

Did it have to be cut so short?

He was in the armed forces during the Vietnam war.

He survived that era,

worked like a dog for the rest of his life,

and finally got splattered against the windshield

just as a break was coming into sight.

They'll fuck you over man,

They'll fuck you if they can.

You've got to look for the Saints in your life.

Because if you don't see them once in a while,

the system will grind you to dust.

One day you'll meet a homeless guy

in a nice clean suit,

and he'll buy you coffee,

to your surprise.

And everything will be all right.

Dave Fischer