The word man came; strode up, top hat you know, the word man, he was jaunty as hell with his cane, and threadbare tuxedo:
(holy kneed tuxedo)
Only three fingers on his left hand, he said a typerwriter jam, 125 wpm, and a mad crash of punctuation and outlying letters.
z, q, @, & blood, tendons, and a brand on the back of his hand that says aS!@xxx – it’s faded but the typewriter was on fire? It’s a story that never makes sense but sounds so good, so smooth – God, it’s smooth. You don’t question it until days later like groaning out of a dream, and you say “that’s impossible word man, how did your hand end up back there, and how were you typing so fast and how was the goddamn typewriter on fire? …and it tore off your fingers!?”
It was probably a factory accident, but no one questions the word man, they just drink his words until they’re drunk and stumbling home over newspapers and grocery store mysteries and billboards and the Gideons Bible and neon signs and instruction manuals and old love letters... and the love letters stay in bed all night
and hungover the perfumed paper is nausea inducing, the morning after the love letters always end up in the trash, the typos glare through the space between the curtains, sunshiny and unpleasant, that youth is not endearing at 7am. Have you seen the world at 7am? – there’s only time for newsprint.
and everyone always goes back to the word man, and he writes letters for them, or conducts sentences, he tells stories, and smiles that interrobang smile, and when he’s drunk he speaks in sonnets: wine drunk.
Beer drunk is nothing but limericks.