family audit one

Betty, Lisa, David
hire a family auditor
to go through
paintings
and old documents
in order to ascertain
the exact nature
of our familial relations
and to assess the value
of the family paintings

I wait outside
the old windowless and musty room
with its thin
rectangular slats near the ceiling

I flag down the Chinese-Singaporean auditors
black sedan from the highway
he pulls over abruptly
greets me with a handshake
and busily heads
to the doorway
ahead of me

to his surprise
we need an assessment of
of the neat piles of
unframed paintings
in addition
to an audition of the legal status
of our familial bondage

back at the Ilikai hotel
Lisa, the newborn, David, Betty
and Lisa's latest man
face a serious problem
the newborn may belong
to another man
and Lisa pathologically
avoids the issue

the issue hides
in the back of everyone’s'
mind though

in our ciphers

everyone but Lisa's man
has near-telepathic abilities though
so the issue is already raised
in silence
and covert winces
silent mouthed warnings
and sharp glances

meanwhile JJ and I sit on a concrete staircase
leading to the overpass
by the highway
near Newton Circus
where I used to drink and smoke
with SHARP skinhead friends
over 10 years ago

we both are in suspense
over the verdict of the audit
but we both are convinced
of our own estimations
JJ, of course,
just going along with my view

convinced and bored
I set off for home
on a local bus
but the bus turns into a scooter
and then it turns into
a rollerblade cube
made of a cartoon
Chinese-Singaporean woman’s face
who smiles and giggles at me
as I scoot on her in between newly
painted and temporary white lines
on the tar
of a parking lot in East Hampton, NY
through various construction
projects
until we reach a dirty
nighttime street
in Victorian England
where my cartoon-scooter-face
breaks into
pieces of worms
caught in the flow
of a nearby drain
only a few slither back onto the sidewalk
which I prod with a walking stick
attracting worm-pieces magnetically

to my rod

but too many pieces flow away
leaving too few pieces to reform
into that cute giggling
cartoon-cube Singaporean-Chinese woman
I rode recently
so I give up
and return to the Ilikai Hotel
to see what my family is up to

as if I have no other choice

as I arrive on our floor
I notice the hallway lights are out
and that our apartment
is at the end of a dark-ride hallway
where a table bedecked with a vase of dried roses droop
and a window nearby
with curtains drawn
flicker under dim light

 overhead
a storm exploding outside
lightning fills the window
darkness envelopes the space near the doorway
and the carpet is pierced
by pins with shiny black ball heads
scattered about
I swallow the fear
yet laugh as if
this is the haunted mansion
at Disneyland
and my family
animatronic characters
waiting for my trigger
lightning flashes on a silhouette
of two old women in chairs
staring at me
as I knock

they let me in to their
near-demonic atmosphere
of repressed emotion
about to burst

out of the hot humid air
Lisa's man already made the discovery
for the newborn turned on his side
to reveal a black mole
upon it's face
there in the corner of the room
and I notice more black pins
stuck in the carpet

yet even with such
an obvious revelation
nothing is out in the open
they all migrate
to the Jacuzzi on the lanai
Lisa and her man and the newborn
now grown a bit older
(as time accelerates like a blackout)
between them
good humored and innocent
looking proudly at his Dad
as a growling wolf
crawls up upon the edge
its hair bristling along the spine
fangs showing
as it slowly sits down between
the boy and his
fake Dad

tensely

and still it all seems
like a replica of reality
a preprogrammed
scene replacing the people
who the robots represent
their actual lives
gone
or at least their
real selves
good as dead

and I'm a disembodied being

who observes

fortunately our bizarre situation
is interrupted by a phone call
from the auditor
who’s work is complete

excitedly we all return
to hear the verdict
to discover new rituals
how we should redecorate

but I already sense
as he begins to speak
that his conclusions
are nothing of what I thought they should be
and before he can even complete his thought
I well up with anger
and leave them all
for good
fed up with
the blindness
and stupidity
of everyone I've ever known
with perhaps a few exceptions

and I leave
for the streets
for the wide open
done with it all