FINAL INTERMISSION OF OVER

Join in now with the citizens of Pome Town, and their shoe or shoes, as they sing “The Song of Ending and Saying Story GoodBye.”

Sing we all about ourselves

And who we want to be

Let us see the picture that

We want others to see

Let us hold unreasonable

Images of us

That is fine as long as we

Don’t make such a big fuss

We must walk in those footsteps

Then we’re sure to know

What to do and what to see

And nice places to go

Cyclops used to be a her

Now he is a shoe

If your attention span is short

Such change might be for you

When we get so bored and tired

Of our own same skin

We can change our life like clothes

If we are made of tin

So the lesson of our tale

Comes to you real cheap

If you want flexibility

Don’t be very deep.

THIRY-NINE: WINK THE LAST ONE

And for Cyclops it’s back to surgery war, with a rip and a toot and a suity soot soot. It’s time to get a new face disease, to clear him with ease, to make twos to threes. It’s time to get new plastic identity, but not to be a tree or a flea or a sea. It’s time to go to the Cyclops war show, and to feel the knife that could make him his own wife.

The surgeons of surgery war have a way of reading minds. They cut to the skull and from then on it’s all magazines. The glossy pictures and the drop caps even if you only have time to read the block quotes. That’s how they get their deepest sleepest info, that’s how they know where to cut and slice and dice and redirect.

When you are off at surgery war and have to get back home again, and it is so easy to make it if you are a shoe. If you are a shoe you have a long walk made. If you are a shoe, you can go up and down a grade.

If you are a shoe, you make footsteps by the mile. If you are a shoe, you have a tongue without a smile

And this was the case for Cyclops, for surgery war turned him into a shoe. And his sides were smooth, and his laces were tied.

And her eyes were turned to eyelets and his smiles were turned to laces. She emerged as shoes for walking and his soul was turned to sole.

He didn’t have a face, but he had a face. She didn’t have a whole, but you put your foot into his hole. He didn’t need to fret, for she had an instep. She would not need to kneel for he’ll always have a heel.

He or a she was a was a was a shoe. A shoe is never blue unless that is in fact its color.

And a shoe can walk the surgery war road home, and that is the walk that inside the Cyclops shoe walk, and he made the walk without a talk, she made the trip and gave no lip.

If you are a shoe and you are Cyclops, you will eventually find your way home back to Star Town, which is now, once again and again, Pome Town.

And the people there have fear and hear but then all is clear, for if you have feet it is neat but you still need to put them into something when you go a-walking.

Reading writing rillions, see the shoe that’s shared by millions, see, at least its shared by dozens, for that is how many there are town uns. It can be walked in place by old ones, and by young ones, and by tall ones and by rude ones. It can be walked to play by small ones if you stuff it with some towel uns.

And Cyclops can serve his town with a shoe, he can be a shoe, so you know who’s who. And Bessie can walk in him and Soom too, and Michael the Unwise and Crazy the Nick, and Lessess and Rack and the whole damn crew can try out the shoe and they, they’ll know who, it’s Cyclops the shoe.

And as they walk, they can talk and they can share the talk of walk, and they can chatter about the water or what the trip is like with a Cyclops on their foot. And they can share the outsider air and they can feel it in their hair and if they dare and if they care they can right the world with share.

And Scrunchyface can just dare his eyes with the TV set skies as he thinks on his philosophy from that object to this one. And, in some time, he does develop a new philosophy. “The best of all possible me,” says he for Philosophy, “is sitting here watching TV.”

And Dingy Bahsome? Well, even she settled down with a single show on a single channel, and you can catch her there at the proper time, and her new show is called, “How Many Eyes Does It Take to See Me?”

THIRTY-EIGHT: EIGHTH DREAM OF STAR TOWN

And it could be the fight of the century. It’s giant cardboard cutout with loudspeaker Scrunchyface the Megalorapter versus giant flesh baseball bat Cyclops. It’s the voice of command vibrated from high atop the billboards versus a slightly confused wand of flesh with less than ten eyes now. It is the cardboard metropolis who developed all that you see, from shining parking lot to shining parking lot, versus a sad sack veteran of too many surgery wars.

And cardboard can give you a paper cut, but flesh can give you a knuckle sandwich.

That’s how they faced off, a little shy at first from old friends made new enemies. That little dance of cardboard and flesh when they first make known that intense opposition. One two three and they do that fist on open palm and who knows what a punch could do across this kind of landscrape. And then and there until they’re black and blue from looking and waiting and punch anticipation.

A baseball bat of flesh takes a first wind up of spring, but then doesn’t anything, doesn’t follow thru with swing. A big cardboard fist can’t make a cardboard hand but it doesn’t swing it far, doesn’t even try to land. The baseball bat. The cardboard arm. It was far too flat and it didn’t understand.

Crowd of town gathered around and then they sat down and settled for the evening. The sun and the moon came into the room to share the sense of doom with all the human be-ins.

And some sold tickets and some sold lunch, and some took bets and some had a hunch, and then there was quiet in the gravelly afterswoon, and then it was noisy, but that was from some ice cream truck music.

The people pingponged all their eyes, and tried to feign surprise, and some got up to rise, and watching were the Spies, and they looked thru binoculars. And I have to be clear with you, that there wasn’t much yet to see thru this blindness of words.

They faced off, cardboard cutout and flesh baseball bat. They looked from eye to eye, they took up some of part of the sky. But I cannot tell a lie, they threw no punches as the crowd ate its lunches.

There was a face off in this day out, and the buildings didn’t shake with the struggle, and the parking lots didn’t scrape the knees of the faller and the get back uppers.

The old friends just faced, and then they breathed out. Someone in the audience yawned and somebody else make a shout.

This went on for some time. The carnival surrounding the fight was more struggling than the fight itself. The reporters made headlines like “The Great Face Off,” and somebody made a chuckle.

Here was the great demolition dance, but not too soon and sometime in the afternoon it was over.

Cardboard Scrunchyface the Megalorapter was the first one to cave in, a little self bend on the corrugation line and he caved and he saved himself from punches and he cried on his Spies.

“I didn’t mean anything,” cried out all right Scrunchyface the damp cardboard poke of himself. “I just wanted all those good thing I saw on TV for the place where I live. I just wanted to give.”

“I guess it all got a little out of control, when I started the roll patrol, when I ordered all those mortgage foreclosures.”

And the people of the town boo for a while but then they get tired of booing for what is done is done and even tho they are living in the streets and instead of their houses are vast plains of parking lots and empty condos in towers too expensive for them to buy, they can live and let live and plus there’s now a lot more cardboard to make spare poverty houses out of now that giant cardboard Scrunchyface the Megalorapter is now vanquished.

Scrunchyface collapses into a cardboard couch, or is it a real couch, made out of plastic bubble packaging and he relaxes enough to see that the TV isn‘t trying to be anything other than its own fantasy of itself. It isn’t here, it isn’t now, it isn’t the town of TV, a town of round edges that sometimes comes as sharp as a hard cut, and Scruncyhface can just watch it with his face glowing only in reflection.

And from such viewing comes a new line of back and an old line of meaning, of name, of identity, of calling out, of Philosorapter, the old one that is a new one, which you have to say by practice.

THIRTY-SEVEN: FIFTH DREAM OF SURGERY WAR AND SEVENTH DREAM OF STAR TOWN

Surgery war is the best defense. So say the brilliant and so say the dense. Surgery war is the best attack. So say the white and so say the black. Surgery war is the way to go. So say the high and so say the low. Surgery war is where you must be. So say the stayers and so those who flee.

If surgery war could make you a hammer, if surgery war a baseball bat to hammer quite flat a cardboard rat. If surgery war could make you a bomb to blow up upon your old roommate Ron. If surgery war could turn you to army, it might just be smarmy, but wouldn’t be blarney. If surgery war would make you a strike, whether they do not or like, from a copter or bike.

The surgeons work their war business way and do not say hey, but just work away. They cut and they stab and prevent him from girl and they add so much steel do you swear it for real.

Cyclops rides up and down the surgery assembly line, and isn’t it fine to feel them deliver each curve and each line so you conquer by sign. They take you and twist you and hurly burly bush you , and make you a weapon as sharp as a dagger.

Whether a man or maid, they made him. Whether was free or paid, he paid them. They made him and he paid them so the town would not dismayed them, and he left there and he came here and he’s what could make afraid them.

Could a post-op Cyclops, could a plastic surgery Cyclops, could a post surgery war Cyclops make his way back to Star Town, could he find his way on the map of the world tho his body be unfinished, tho his mind be twirled.

Could Cyclops our Cyclops, renewed as a baseball bat of flesh, would you think that he’s a dish, would you look at him and blush.

Could a Cyclops of such tall stature be considered old and mature, would you think about the rapture if you saw him standing there.

With a thud and a crud and a ruddy rud rud, comes the red hammer Cyclops down the streets of the town. He pulls the sunset with him, like his overcoat of night, and he’s ready for the fighting and he’s going to punch some lights.

Scrunchyface the Megalorapter is giant cardboard with seeing eyes and paid-for spies. Willie the Lizard actually crossed some borders and took the car board orders, and he and his Spies were the first to report on the gigantic baseball bat with less than ten eyes, and that’s a surprise.

“A post surgery baseball bat approaches,” said the Lizard and the Willie and the Spies, down on their haunches.

“Cyclops must be trying something. I wonder what it could be,” said Scruncyface the Megalorapter as if he hadn’t seen such things on his TV spy mind, and didn’t know how to act if that one called “Action.”

And Cyclops had his own giant flesh baseball bat song, and he sang it out of key, but it still caught my fancy.

Take me out

To the whipping ball game

Take me out

Where there’s something to maim

Take me out

As I swing thru the air

If I hit something

I think you should care

And he sang it like a baseball bat of flesh with extraordinary resonance and some backpedaling blue notes.

“Look at that! Look at that! It’s a giant baseball bat!” said a few of the townies as Cyclops got to the first ring road.

“Hit a home run, Cyclops,” Lon Lonson said when he saw who the baseball bat was instead.

And from the mouth of Squirts: “Make sure it hurts!”

THIRTY-SIX

There is no wink thirty-six.

THIRTY-FIVE: SIXTH DREAM OF STAR TOWN

When your sunset is your sunrise, you best close to open all your eyes. When your goodnight is the good morning, you might see this as a warning. When your hello is most good-byes, it might be the time to die. It might be the time to die and time to live alive all over again, or time to be a good friend, or time to be a bean fried.

Celebrity She-Cyclops has no end of friends waking her up from her week long morning of drunken surrender. There is Crazy the Nick and Marleen and Bettie and Star-Crossed Turkey King, and even Lon Lonson and Squirts, who aren’t so testy about permits this sorry morning, and I could go on and on and list the names for you, so I will. I’ll do it in proper list form.

Dartboard R. Zaporozhye

Quails A. Gamecock

Retaliatory M. Cleavers

Iceland M. Chubby

Sucker R. Christian

Milton C. Salvos

Minimal K. Composty

Tinkering G. Advocated

Safetying M. Clogs

Malices T. Demeanor

Acton E. Buylwark

Pigeonholed H. Buchanan

Unruly H. Forewoman

Brainage S. Wasteland

Astigmatic J. Uproariously

All of these and more were pressing and touching and looking over and looking on of She-Cyclops on this wake-up morning moment, and they just wanted to say what they just wanted to say in the first place.

Lon Lonson even came up, and he had got his hat in hand. He wanted to make it very close up clear, so even hangover Cyclops could understand.

“It’s Scrunchyface, and you ought to be able to say a thing or two, for he used to be the roommate of you,” said Lon Lonson.

“He’s a sayer that he’s the mayor, but he isn’t the proper mayor, he’s a usurper with his Scrunchyface the Megalorapter thing.”

And the other room town people smiling standing under the steeple say similar things, about all the watching, and the zero tolerance for hopscotching and the surveillance and the unplaisance of the big cardboard face with the speaker in its tweaker.

And speak of the devil but the devil dares to speak. It’s that mega voice in surround sound and it’s got to talk all around town. And it talked so big, and it talked so now. Holy cow, it was Scrunchyface the Megalorapter in the cardboard loudspeaker flesh!

If cardboard could walk, it would walk while it talked. It could walk up to the people pile and then with its gigantic cardboard face, give out the largest and strangest of smile.

“Hi, People of Star Town,” comes the voices times five hundred of Scrunchyface the Megalorapter. And it’s the voice in your pants, or it feels that way, wet.

“Hello, Scruchyface the Megalorapter,” say the shivering shaking stinking quaking and forsaking people of Star Town. But they say it so small you can barely hear it from cardboard tall.

“Scram!” said the cardboard cowboy face of Scrunchyface the Megalorapter, and he gets his way, and the town scatters like crabs.

Hangover Cyclops scrams with the men and ma’ams and jars of jams under the counter in the corner where she encounters Rack and Zack.

“Cyclops, you must go and then you must come back,” said Rack and Zack. “You must go to surgery war and come back as something capable to attack with a whack and a thwack that!” and they point to the cardboard giant.

And Cyclops knew that she had a new mission.

THIRTY-FOUR: FIFTH DREAM OF STAR TOWN

It’s back to Star Town, and keep track of Star Town and Cyclops is a woman like his old love Dingy Bahsome. But Dingy made her escape and Cyclops comes back wearing a cape and she had to cross a whole landscrape before arriving at the parking lots. When she got there, she just wanted to strut her struff, but the other people of the town tell her that they’ve had enough.

“We’ve had enough,” said Rack and Zack.

“We’ve had enough,” said Soom and Gilloom.

And they keep on saying so, down the line and who are they looking at? They’re looking right at Cyclops.

But Cyclops isn’t listening to them, near or soon, or far or aloon, she’s just strutting her stuff, and it’s tough to strut your stuff when it is all so new from Surgery War.

Now Cyclops is down to twenty-four eyes, but that still is plenty of eyes for looking back so she does look back if that solved anything. Just a wink to get them to think.

Cyclops still had a carrot nose, but the rest of her was much more Brancusian, just like Dingy Bahsome was. Cyclops had provided photographs and specifications at Surgery War. She had made plan charts to guide the surgery war surgeons of war. They had done their best under a mess of the tent and moved this from here to there, and took away so many extra eyes, to graft their smoothness and liquid into the skin of bones and other things so there was a bit of eyeline all over the new and improved She-Cyclops.

And what Cyclops let out for now was a whoop, “Now that I am she, it is time to party.”

And her first round of party binge attracts a little media attention, and the next round gets her a little more. She drinks and has sex and that gets her first in a few church bulletins but a little more night clubbing gets her into a company newsletter or two, and then she gets on radio in a slurred voice, and then she makes it to a podcast with a vomit, and then she’s on U-Tube, with that messed up morning after, and then she hits the networks, where it might just be time for rehab.

When She-Cyclops drinks too much booze, the media follows, as if she were news.

The flash of the flashbulbs, and she knows she is a one. The whir of the cameras so she knows she’s having fun. Reporters in their fancy clothes stand by to call the shots. And there she comes out swinging to shew them all what she has gots.

Cyclops is the darling of media with a little more carousing, with a little more aroundings, Cyclops turns the tabloid pages with some hints of illicit motion she will make the transmission.

There are the stories at ten and at eleven. Most reporters tell you she ain’t going to go to heaven. Story on page one and continued on page three. She’ll go as far as you can go in the land of the free.

She-Cyclops has dark glasses upon all of her remaining twenty-four, so nobody knows what’s inside of her doors. She wears the latest style of Lessess and Tessess as she gets in and out of so many messes. She has to look her very best, that is the answer to every test. She has to hide her real feelings that keep the media on her ceilings.

There’s a lot to being a star. Cyclops finds this out, and that gives her tender feelings for the new long lost Dingy Bahsome. It is hard work, as hard as a lead weight strapped to her back, and she carries the load down every snapshot road.

“Now that I have all of your attention, let me just tell you all how…” and she Cyclops looks all around, “how much I am drunk. Hah, hah – get it? How much I am drunk!”

When the media finally goes home to polish their reports and sit on the pot, Cyclops feels all her weary eyes, and only wants to shut them, but then comes the sunrise.

THIRTY-THREE: FOURTH DREAM OF SURGERY WAR

Surgery war is calling with a knife and fork and spoon. Surgery war has more in store and it is coming soon. With a beat of the horn and a blast of the drum you can walk there in weather and also in sun, it is surgery war and there is more, they‘ll fix up your face and put it any old place, they’ll move some of your eyes and give you a carrot nose surprise, and you never quite knows, you can never suppose.

Surgery war is on Surgery Street at the corner of War and Battle, on the 1500 dead block of Brutal Lane, on the sidewalk of wounded and the driveway of crazy. Surgery war is a place to return that will call out your name and they’ll treat you the same. Surgery war has plenty of mud and the boots go thud and the boots go thud. Surgery war has plenty of lights and they’ll teach you to fight and they’ll turn out the lights.

Cyclops knows the fifty million military rulebook of surgery war, those laws and procedures are deep in his soul. He knows the way and the whatever day, and the proper attitude to see that they’ll feed you. He might have some PSD, but he also has so many eyes to see. He might have a war disease, but he’ll fight it with ease, he’ll just kill the disease.

Into the war machine goes the man Cyclops. Into the face of blades and blood goes the one man into no man. Into the fire of surgical lights and under the pain of surgical saw and under the scissors and clamps and tissues he gyrates his hips to give them a clue.

Put on your war face for surgery war, even if your war face is right between your legs. Four mouths can become mouths and nostrils and even more nostrils when it’s surgeon’s skill and the plastic arts. Cut a hole in the back of his rear and use it to build up his outer ear. Cut a patch from out of his thigh to fill the hole from a misused eye. Cut off some toes and make them a nose . Cut off some hair and weave it down there. Cut off a face without a trace and it’s kind of a race to see how fast he womans again.

Cyclops has a surgery war, he has it so big, he had is so small. Cyclops has the war in his body, it makes him feel holy to be so invoked.

The whipping white intern hands bicycle the operating table. They turn him from Gary Cooper into Betty Grable.

Here’s the man who now needs a dress, who must now confess that he could be named Bess. Here’s the guy who got poked in the eye and he’ll tell you so why that he’s no more a guy than a gal named of Sal who he counts as a pal.

THIRTY-TWO: FOURTH DREAM OF STAR TOWN

When you go from surgery war way back to Star Town, to Star Town, to Star Town, when you leave behind surgery war with your walking and the road dips down and it climbs a hill and then you see Bill and give him a wave and then you see Star Town curling wide on the tall horizon.

It is a flat place, it is a massive rising place, our Star Town of parking lots and rising condo towers, and in the center of Star Town is a massive speaker out of the mouth of the biggest picture in the world of Scrunchyface.

“Hi, Scrunchyface,” said new surgery Cyclops, as if a picture was a person with a speaker in its tonsils that you could talk to like that guy Hansels.

“Hello, Cyclops,” said the speaker in the giant picture, and it is the voice of Scrunchyface, but eighty or ninety times louder than normal.

“How are your shoes?” that big voice asked, and Cyclops was walking, so his shoes were too busy, and he didn’t know how to ask them, so he didn’t ask them.

“They’ve done a lot of walking, but I’m still in them,” Cyclops said, and then he immediately decided that this was the wrong thing to say to a voice so large and booming and all about tower town, so he set off walking quickly to the big hotel where his house and living room used to be, but before he could go inside, he heard the voice say,

“By the way, My name is no longer Scrunchyface the Develorapter. I am now Scrunchyface the Megalorapter.”

And not a moment too soon, Cyclops escaped from the boom. He swept into the massive lobby gloom the of the hotel named after his old mate of room

He had been here before, in the shining streaks of gold leaf and the rugs and the elevator destination procedure that you must carry, so he knew the whole routine of taking one elevator up to the fourth floor to find the elevator to take him to the fortieth, the party floor with the cage for Dingy Bahsome.

And on the way he knew to switch to his swimming trousers part way up for the elevator would fill with water and become the swimming pool as it hit floor thirty-nine so that it was completely wet and wonderful by the time it was at forty.

And the party was long over, and the streamers vomited from garbage pails and the big banners were full of wrinkles, and so much glassware was browken and empty, and the ice cubes, whole or crushed, had all melted and left long rivers to the bathroom drains and to the bandstand.

Cyclops marched thru the chaos like the way to war, and soon he found the cage for Dingy Bahsome, but the cage was empty. It was empty as a plempty, it was empty as the air. The teeth marks told him such a story, the teeth marks on the silver bars told him all he had to know. The teeth marks told him, the teeth marks told him that Dingy Bahsome had chewed her way out, she had chewed her way to freedom thru the bars of the cage.

And so was gone the mirror in which he hoped to reflect himself, to see his new surgery self, to see where the war had put three eyes more.

And if DingyBahsome was gone from the cage, was gone from Star Town in this age, that maybe he would have to be the one to once again replace her, to recapture his now lost womanhood, and save the town from too much malaguy, from too much malohmy, from too many mals and guys and maladies and nice tries and me oh mys..

THIRTY-ONE: THIRD DREAM OF SURGERY WAR

First he goes back to surgery war, and then he goes back home.

Surgery war is a gruesome sight, it stays up all night and dares you to fight, and it doesn’t stop at morning.

Going back to surgery war, there’s surgery knives and teeth in store, there’s surgery bombs blown in your face, just having lunch requires a race. Going back to surgery war and do you know what you’ve going for but when your country calls your name you take the hit and take the blame. Going back to surgery war, into the mouth of surgery face and it might not be your vacation place, but there are trees and dangers there. Going back to surgery war and the bloody white tables by the door and the longest knives you have seen in your life and all of your strain, and all of your strife.

Cyclops sets sail and walks his walk and on the way the voices talk and geese in the sky cry out squawk squawk and the tick of the clock and the tick of the clock.

Shudder with the thunder when you meet the Sergeant Major he will flay you with commands – like forwards, backward, take the blade. The medicine tent of the no man’s land front opens its flapping door wide to your arms and noses, the carrots that walk before Cyclops steps and Cyclops multi-eyes.

Boom comes too soon when you enter the room there are flashes and gashes all the way to the moon and if you listen, the tune comes from a feather balloon that waltzes the air with its stair of may care.

Craters are better when they are taller than water. Sugar like dust tastes the air into blood, and here comes the flood, and here comes the flood.

Features are faster, they’re bashed and they’re basher and tasting of tassels, come the wassling damn slashers. Get out your band aids the blood comes in its season, it spurts without reason because you’re gone bleeding.

As red as a rug, as red and as curly, and flex your arms burly, they’re moving from side to side. Look up at the scoreboards to see the final horror, the horror board and the scorerboard and numbers like diamonds.

It’s the third time and the turd time and the lurid time at surgery war. The time you won’t forget there if you bet their chair is set there. This time is the piss time, it’s the wet pants and wet wrist time, it’s the limp time and you fall time, the all in all in all time.

In surgery war, you don’t really have much of a say in your operation. It is war, after all, and it is surgery. There’s not really any efficient means of voting, no good way to give feedback. All the customer satisfaction surveys burned in the last operation. When the scalpel descends and Cyclops falls down down into the thick pastry at the bottom of the operating table, who knew how many eyes will make up and wake up and look up to see, and what they will see out of limbs and hands and faceballs.

Cyclops comes out less like you. Some parts could be fixed with glue. If he’s not satisfied, he can’t sue. All this to be in somebody else’s shoe.

For now it’s back to surgery war, with a rat and a tat and a poly splat splat. For now it’s back to Star Town, for the surgical procedures are sad and over.

THIRD INTERMISSION

Please join in now with the citizens of Star Town, and all of their plush fluffy stuffed animal toys, as they sing “The Song of We Don’t Know.”

We are mass confusion

Just look at the news

We are lost inside our heads

And inside our shoes

We are lost

Like our robots

Woe is me, woe is me

Woe is me, and that makes three

We are elevators

We go up and we go down

If we knew who pressed the floors

We’d have a happy town

We are lost

Like our robots

Woe is me, woe is me

Woe is me, and that makes three

We know how to party

But that won’t pay the bills

And this shaky elevator

Means plenty drink spills

We are lost

Like our robots

Woe is me, woe is me

Woe is me, and that makes three

Intermission B

Somebody left the door open and the writer got out again and the answer is a little crazy in the head and the writer doesn’t really understand and the writer lost that printed plan or doesn’t want to see it. The writer stabbed his frontest toe and doesn’t really want you to know so he will tell rather than show and you know how that makes you frown.

The writer’s giving up the game, he doesn’t have anybody else to name for each new word is just the same as the twenty that came before it. Maybe if he’s lucky he’ll fall asleep and hope the dreams come fast and deep and that sleep mountains stay so steep he cannot sit beside them.

And he’s over the hill and the other way down, and that’s what you call it if you’re washed but not up, and what he needs is a bowl of soup so he’ll write one like that. And here’s the spoon in the same size text. Here is a bowl in the alley of cat, and here’s some more this and here’s some more that, and if you read twice your eyes will grow fast from the eggstra calorears of the verbs.

Stop him before he goes you insane, here’s another trip there’s another brain, and Cyclops can walk to war and back and if that’s what you’re reading you better start now.

TWENTY-NINE: PARTY OF THE WILLIE THE LIZARD AND BOTH OF HIS SPIES PART

Willie the Lizard and both of his Spies were at the party, is that a surprise? Willie and Lizard and both of his Spies were the party surveillance and party procurers, despite all the tries, I tell you no lies.

They found Cyclops on the floor. They found Cyclops by the door. The found him by the punch bowl. They found him for that was their goal.

This time, they were three over to find, the Lizard named Wilie and the Spying kind. They found him in the curtain of all the commotion and they made a motion for him to follow with devotion.

Somewhere at the party was a surprise for all thirty-eight eyes. Somewhere there was something to remark at, with groin face and with questions. They had something to show him, and it was a her and thin.

“We caught her and brought her and now she’s all yours,” said Willie the Lizard and Spies two and thirds.

There’s a cage in the corner of the amazing party universe garden. There’s a cage in a corner in a corner see the cage. There’s a cage with forty bars that you can see with forty eyes, or with thirty eight and an eyepatch so you know those bars aren’t lies.

There’s a cage in a corner and a movie star is in it, there’s a cage with a starlet and her dress strap has slid down. There’s a cage in the corner and the star, inhabiting it, and the star who is inside it has a face completely frown.

In the cage is Dingy Bahsome, Cyclops knows it from the TV, she is swearing and she has that face but now her place is Star Town. Here’s the hotel high up party and the special guest is found here and she’s in her cage and she’s in a rage and her name is Dingy Bahsome.

“Dingy Bahsome,” said the Cyclops with his eyes of thirty-eight.

“Oh, my god, look what the cat dragged,” said the Bahsome, full of hate. And Dingy’s body was a crazy quilt of smooth gold Brancusi birds.

Oh, to be in the presence of Dingy Bahsome, for this was indeed the real present presence of her and not the TV presence of her from channel to channel. There was her body before him, tho she was trapped in a cage, but she moved like an automatic, she moved like a cloth brought to life by movie lighting.

Willie the Lizard was talking about how he and the Spies caught her in a church of clothes store and how they set the leg trap with a fur coat and how those ankle wounds will eventually scab over, but nobody is listening, not Dingy, not Cyclops.

And here she was, the one of a personality person that Cyclops had sought so long, the specter of image that he wanted to hold and to turn himself inside outside to become. To blue blur his body with hers in limbo, to shoot together, and their speaks and weasels and sparks and waves and she was she and he was he but still they stood so far apart, the bars of steel were teeth that breathed every ounce of the air between them, out and in, as steel as the night.

“Oh, Dingy Bahsome, you don’t know what this means,” and he started telling her about his two tours of surgery war, and what she meant to him and his face.

“Two tours?” she asked like said as a matter of fact.

“Two tours? I’m a veteran of forty tours of surgery war,” she said from behind her breasts of melon and her cheeks of apple. “And let me tell you, and you can take it from me, that the best tour of all is tour forty-three.” The moment she said this she caught herself, she stopped and held tight to her mouth as if something was coming out that she could not control.

Maybe the awkward silence made Cyclops awkward, too. I do not know how to say it otherwise. And also were watching: Willie and Spies.

“This is not my real face. I must show you my real face,” said Cyclops, daring his underwear into amazing action.

Some of the other party goers had gathered around the cage and the Spies were leading them in a chant of “Poke out her eyes, poke out her eyes,” the spies, the spies say, “Give her your eyes, give her your eyes,” the spies, the spies and the partying gals and guys said.

Dingy Bahsome is a real honest to goodness in Star Town. The people of the party and the party of the people are ready to eat her up, to eat her up. They are chanting and they are calling and they are great big rubber balling and they are getting up and falling.

Cyclops is a vision one, he holds himself up as if he were air, his tousle may be his head of hair, but here is his wish, spread out in a dish. Here is the real with bars of steel. Somehow in all the commotion and motion and ocean of bodies and chanting of steel he will undo his pants to show his real face for real.

And here is no carrot nose but a real snot nose for a swinger, and two eyes for balls. Here is butthole for mouth meaning but to see it clearly you must be leaning.

Dingy Bahsome saw the usual face in the unusual pants place and she lost her lung, she vomited some crackers and spread. The vomit made her loud enough and so she said enough: “You’re all nothing but a bunch of rhyming fascists!”

Cyclops thought, but did not say aloud or proud or short or tall, “If you are already a star, Dingy Bahsome, and the best of all possible you is in somebody else’s shoes, then who is the best of all possible you?”

And he thought this thought in the party light while Dingy did her gorilla act with the bars of her cage. There was fright and there was rage and it went on all night and in the next dage. But the mind of Cyclops went round and round and he no longer had a Philosorapter to clear his mind ways, and so he thought sideways.

And then he knew it like a hunch, and then he knew it like lunch. For Cyclops, it was once again back to surgery war, for surgery war was his more in store.

TWENTY-EIGHT: PARTY OF THE FIFTH PART

Who is playing the records, making the music, moving the dancers. Who is playing the records at the fortieth floor party today? Who is tending the sound system, turning it up high, speakling the tweeters. Who is operating all the sounds on this day of celebration?

It’s Lu and Sue and the Construction Crew and it is Lessess and Tessess in all of their dresses and Lon Lonson and Squirts have their hands on the construction blurts and they and all the others have a little thing to say about the sounds.

Just listening to one or watching another makes your spirits soar up miles from the floor.

Where is that lovely tune, was it written on the moon, did it burn out of the sun, and why is its dance beat so much fun? Who wrote that same old song, which if you play you can’t be wrong and if you have to listen twice it gets even more than nice.

Dance to the music with your pants and your skirts, you must dance until it hurts, and you dance until the music’s over. Dance in your head and repeat it till you’re dead and you’ll sing it still in bed and believe it but you’re sober.

As there is a song in the room, and they sing it to the moon, and they sing along with the canned, and they sing it like it’s banned:

Do you want to be missed

Do you want to be kissed

Do you want to be

An amazing odyssey

That’s what a star is

So do the star dance

With me.

And then the music rests, and then the music makes an edge, and then the music takes a break, but it didn’t bake a cake. And then there’s a new voice, and it comes on the loudspeaker, but you know it from beside the TV back in the old TV days.

It’s Scrunchyface the Develorapter and he is standing on a tall and he is looking at them all and is the center of attention. He blows into the mike and they all look at him just like they all rode in on him, the bike. He gets all the attention like he bought it, or as if he were music.

“Hello friends, and welcome to the party,” and Scrunchyface said it and it makes you want to clap.

“I like to see you party, I like to see you party hearty, and I think there is a real good reason to party as much today as possible.

“This town has been Pome Town and we know it’s been a nice town but it hasn’t been an all town like the towns on the TV. I saw them and I wanted, I just wanted that for my town, I wanted Star town for my Pome Town, and that is the town I give to you this day.

“Pome Town has a new name, and you shall call it Star Town, for you’re all the stars of Star Town and that’s why we dance and sing. Star Town is a great place, it’s a real stay up late place, it’s a find your one true fate place, it’s a never a deadweight space, it is never a stagnate place, it’s a used to be third rate place. Today it is a consummate place, an elevate place, an escalate place. It is a laureate space, a ululate place, a conflabulate space, an elaborate place, an exhilarate space, an invigorate place, a predominate place, a rejuvenate place, a sophisticate space, a supersaturate splace and, one might even say - a thirty-eight place.”

Cyclops wondered if this “thirty-eight” of which Scrunchyface the Develorapter spoke had something to do with his thirty-eight eyes, but he still didn’t know where his living room went.

TWENTY-SEVEN: PARTY OF THE FOURTH PART

Is there TV at the party, is there party at the TV or are the stars out tonight in the ceiling of the sky. Is there TV in the air, in the sky, in the lying, or is it all the static of TV face, and there is no denying. TV is as TV does and the sky goes by with its clouds of lights and where do you go when you want to see a show and it’s party bodies all to and fro.

Fight your way thru the plastic glasses, fight your way thru the standing feet and the folding chairs and the little things to eat if you are Cyclops and you have thirty-eight eyes plus two more watching darkness unless you open up your fly.

Look around now for the TV steak and the oh for heaven’s sake, and the leaves and the rakes. Look around you for nightmare, for Stella and for Bella and their scissors of hair, and they live in the corner where they’re talking to the ears and the eyes of Michael the Unwise and Rachel the Easy.

It’s a party but they’ve got their books so don’t be giving them dirty looks but Stella and Bella think they can do something with the hair of Rachel and the hair of Michael that is only sometimes there.

If it’s a party there must be style and there is styling in this party. Go there to get your hair, and if your nails are long, just listen to this song.

And as the hair is cut and falling and so are the eyes and there is crying with the cutting and Cyclops is crying too.

“I drank too much and now I am sad, and my living room is gone, and I forgot to sing my song, and my TV is no place, and I have a second face, and of Dingy Bahsome’s awesome show I cannot find a trace.”

And nobody in the barber’s chairs knows what he’s saying or even cares, and nobody with a scissors in her hand can listen so carefully as to understand.

“Maybe we can make you look better,” said Stella.

“Let’s cut your manhair so your eyes don’t get wetter,” said Bella.

But Cyclops is already cut down to size, he’s got thirty-eight eyes and two more in his pants. He’s at the party but he’s had too much to drink, too much to drink and not enough to dance.

“Maybe we can read you a story,” said Michael.

“Maybe a story will make you less sorry,” said Rachel.

But Cyclops doesn’t need to hear a story, he needs to see a story, he needs to see the glory, he needs to hear the roary roary of the stars and of the one star, and he needs a TV if he wants this to see, to see Dingy Bahsome, for to see her would be awesome.

“I want my hair and I want my TV. It’s all so easy when you are me,” and Cyclops is crying so much he could drink all his tears instead of fifteen beers.

“Well cry yourself mad,” said Bella.

“And just stay so sad,” said Stella.

“And don’t listen to us,” said Michael.

“You ornery cuss,” said Rachel.

And the voice came on the loudspeaker and round and bouncing as a basketball sneaker: “Prepare for the speech, for soon will come the speech by Scrunchyface the Develorapter.”

TWENTY-SIX: PARTY OF THE THIRD PART

Bettie and Paige and the Star-Crossed Turkey King left the post office days ago to attend to the party. They stood around the punch bowl in that punch bowl kind of gloom as they chatted very pleasantly with Galloom and Soom.

Gather round the punch bowl, underneath the spot light, gather round the punch bowl and drink until your pants are tight. Gather round the crackers, and the grapes and cheese, then when you eat quite a bit you don’t even have to say please. Gather round the table, where the name tags are, they are so you know yourself and know who the others are. Gather round the sign in sheet, and the pen on string. If you don’t put down your name, you won’t get anything.

Bettie, Paige, Turkey King, and Gilloom and Soom, occupy that corner of the world-expanding room. Cyclops asks them if they please, asks them if they know, have they seen the TV set, the one playing his favorite show.

They talk about the last night, the lineup was alright, and then they start to argue and their words combine to fight.

There is a punch bowl and there is a cash bar and there are good and bad things to be said about last night’s TV programs. Cyclops follows the conversation like watching a roller coaster. He would say a thing or two also, but he’s not much of a boaster.

Soom and Gilloom drink their drinks like perfume. They sip like they spray and they carry a tray. They smell good too, and they drink thinks with the kind of odor that makes you exploder.

Bettie and Paige want to file the crackers like letters and packers. They tell the Star-Crossed Turkey King to stamp their glasses before they glug them.

Soom and Gilloom see that Cyclops has gloom. They clink and they think he has nothing to drink. “Let’s pour you some party, let’s pour you a drink,” and they do, with the big scooper spoon in the punch bowl.

Cyclops grabs the cup with his extra hand and it is cold and he sees the bits of fruits floating like war carnage. He has distant thoughts, but still he takes a sip. It makes him warm, it rests him calm, and he has to have another, and another and another.

He has a few drinks to do, a few too many and a few too few. And then when you ask him, he has to say “Who?” And you would too, and so would you.

Drink until the TV is forget, drink until the room is quaint as living room, drink until the paint is dry, until the plants are sky and the floor is a war. There is an old song when you drink the punch bowl exactly that long.

I went to war

And then I changed my who

I went to living room

I fear it is so true

But you can only sing loud if you are not really that proud. And you can old sing so blue if there isn’t another voice to challenge you. And there is a voice to challenge Cyclops and his singing woo-hoo. The big voice comes from the roof of the view, won’t cost you a sou and sounds like I.O.U. It doesn’t say please, and it doesn’t thank you, it just breaks in the sound like verbal kung fu.

The voice came from the speakers, and not a moment too late or soon, “The special guest speaker is now approaching this very room.”

TWENTY-FIVE: PARTY OF THE SECOND PART

Both Bruce Jenner and Jack of the Weeds were racing around the party and dressed in tweeds. When they took a breather by the big refreshment stand, they met up with Dora and her demolition band. They were talking races, and tearing down the world, and when they turned they were surprised to see the thirty-eight eyes of Cyclops, boy or girl.

“Look where you’ve planted yourself,” said Jack of the Weeds.

“What race did you just run?” said our Bruce Jenner, at his usual speeds.

“What’s going down?” said Demolition Dora as the world around her seemed to melt.

“I’m looking for my living room,” said Cyclops, and that’s what he felt.

Somewhere was a living room, but elsewhere there was party. Somewhere was the sofa chair, but here it’s party hearty. Somewhere was a floor lamp, but it’s not on the dance floor. Somewhere is the coffee table, but now it is no more.

It’s like they only wanted the snacks and they didn’t care about living rooms and TV’s gone, but there was some singing on the songs and some very nice little bits of food on crackers and cheeses and all.

“Try this here snack, it’s good for the colon,” said Bruce Jenner.

“Dip in this dip, it’s straight from Poland,” said Dora, as if she knew something about the geography of recipe.

And Cyclops is a little hungry. It was a long walk home from surgery war, and there were no fast food restaurants on that road, no stands or low-hanging fruit trees, or bees to lead you to their honey. And Cyclops had no money anyway, so his hunger got the best of him, it got in the way.

He tries one snack and then another. The dipping gets a little out of control, and I think he bites a little out of his carrot nose.

“Good, huh?” said Jack of the Weeds, who is gnawing on seeds.

“I think you like those wafers,” said one of the demolition damsels.

“Mrf, mrf, mrf,” said Cyclops, his face full of food. He gets so hungry he wants to stuff some in his asshole, the mouth of his new groin face, but he wonders if that is appropriate in mixed company, and he is in mixed company because it is a party and there is a mix and there is company and bumpety and somebody and more.

And then, just when his mouth is as full as his ears, or full up to, the scratching and the screeching and the sound goes bonkers. It is that voice of PA God, it is the sound of the system, the sound of the palm tree leaves up in the air and standing tall as your hair.

Through the loudspeaker of sky way up yonder comes a voice: “There’s not much longer before the speaker comes on.”

TWENTY-FOUR: PARTY OF THE FIRST PART

When the elevator hits the forty floor, it turns into the swimming pool. The water swirls and sweeps and weeps and creeps from the floor, from the elevator floor, before the opening of the door, of the elevator door. Cyclops reaches to hold his nose, but the one on his face is a carrot nose, so he goes to his groin to hold his real nostrils and some might wonder why he’s got his hand like that in his swimming trousers.

When the elevator hit the party loud, it hit the fortieth floor. It was full of water, the swimming pool, but that was just a tiny corner. Look at all the exotic plants, the finger trees that towered heavenward, the elbow bushes by the bushel and the knee hedges trimmed into faces.

Also in the former elevator swimming pool were Crazy the Nick and his first Mate Marleen, but they didn’t have a boat for their bodies made them float, and they had a few of their arms, but their guns they were not firing, they just said they were here for the party but when Cyclops said “house,” they just hadn’t a clue.

“I like to swim up here and all, but I just want my TV small, I want to see in and be in my living room so I can watch the TV soon,” and he didn’t say it but they probably knew, but the reason for his seeing, for his wanting to seeing, was to follow the career of one Dingy Bahsome, for oh, they were so separated, and oh, for so so long.

And Crazy the Nick just wanted his sea legs, he didn’t want to see legs, he just wanted to float. And Marleen was floating, was floating by all evening, was thinking about the hot lights and the spotlights and the wet.

And also in the pool and in trunks and in swimming were Lon Lonson and Squirts, but they were in a shallow part of the deep pool, they were in the elewader.

“Hello, Cyclops, did you get that permit?” said Lon Lonson up to his knees in wading water, and he was willing to wade and he was willing to wait but he wanted to way, he was the Mayor after all.

“I’m just trying to find my living room,” said Cyclops of the carrot nose, and he just dove under to miss the interrogation.

He swam that he am, he swimmed and was him, he hid his new face because it was in the wrong place, but lap after lap and no couch for a sit or a nap. No living room at all did he see, from swimming sea to shining swimming sea.

“I see you are a him,” said Marleen, but she was only stating the obvious. “Don’t you like the rising water of the elevator pool?”

But Cyclops was just a living room fool.

He found the stack of towels, and he wiped his head and feet. He looked up at the party, but he couldn’t find a seat. He couldn’t find the TV tray, the carpet on the floor, the party looked like so much fun, but he was such a bore.

Then there was a scratch and a catch of sound. Then the small holes on the ceilings and walls made a speak as of steel. Cyclops looked up and he then looked around. His head eyes and ears were still following the sound.

Through the loudspeaker comes a voice: “The speaker of honor will speak before long.”

TWENTY-THREE: THE UPS AND DOWNS OF HOTEL SCRUNCHYFACE

Bellboys and ringtones in the lobby carry your clarinet to bed. Deskclerks and soda jerks stand tall as wall in the lobby to assign you a number and guest cred. Elevator curfew in the lobby - they take the floors and they open to you doors. See all the people in the lobby. Some have their hair and some are shaved of heads.

“Message for Cyclops,” said a bellboy, and Cyclops raised his hand like a schoolboy. A slip of paper slides into his Cyclops hand. He must read it to understand.

In his hand of lobby is a note. The note is rocking in the lobby boat. It is all tied up in paper like a clue in a scissors caper. Cyclops see his/her name on it, like a memory of a house, and when the paper opens up, he drinks its words like a cup.

“Cyclops,” says the paper, says the note, says the flapping in the elevator breeze, “the party is on the 40^th floor, and if you are late, you are never late.”

Cyclops doesn’t know whether to keep or throw. He wonders if he should crumple or save note for archives. He just puts it in his pocket, where the laundry can eventually do the dirty work.

There are numbers to take you high, there are numbers to take you low, and that is how the elevator works. I think you know. There are buttons to press for arrow up and buttons for arrow down, and the ascension and declension can take your mouth from a grin to a frown. Your stomach stays in one place as your feet learn elevation, and if the light comes on for you, you reach your destination.

Cyclops had fingers that surgery war kept on his hands and his fingers reached for the buttons. He could see there was a button for thirty-seven and another for forty-one but of forty there was nuttins. He could go up to thirty-nine, he could go so much further, but getting to forty was hard to take, it was kind of a burther.

He gets into one ella and out of another, but none that he gets in has a button for floor number forty, not a single one of the two or three that he can try by waiting.

The bellboys and ring-girls have some good advice, so you must reward them with a coin. “Not every elevator may be capable of taking you where you’re goin.” That’s what they tell Cyclops, whether he asks them or not, and it’s really something that he already knows from recent experience.

If you are a Cyclops, you must travel the elevators up and down. You must get off one and get on another and find the one that is that has the button for the floor that he is looking and searching for.

Get off at third floor, get off at fifth, tenth is no good or twenty-two and sixteenth isn’t thith. It is only travel thru travel and error and trial of shut and open doors that the floor with the elevator he needs it is there on number four. That was the floor, number four. That was the floor with the elevator door, a new elevator, golder than the rest, and colder once inside it.

Floor number four takes the elevator door has the elevator floor with the four and the zero. Get in the room, push the button and go zoom, for the button you were huntin is the one that turned maroon.

Cyclops found that one elevator. It has the button for forty to push. He is the only one, the rider insider. It takes him up, the elevator does that, it takes him up, a tall pull slider. He goes up there followed by his stomach, and if it’s not too much to ask it follows shortly after.

But where is his house, in this land of up and down? Where is his living room and the glowing TV that he can hunt the channels and track the light and up put the fight to find the great star and wonder, Dingy Bahsome?

TWENTY-TWO: HOTEL SCRUNCHYFACE

There once was a small little hovel house on Montague Street in Pome Town. There once was a small little hovel house where Cyclops and Scrunchyface called it home.

There once was a house and there once was a street, but if there’s a street there are signs and there are sidewalks, and then there are signs, and then there were streets, and small hovel homes there were few as there were none.

There once was a small little – no, there wasn’t. There now is a tall scraping hotel where there was. Cyclops sees it as stare as his thirty-eight eyes. He sees it and he sees the clouds. Cyclops sees it in all directmas of up and down. He sees the windows he sees the walls he sees them rising he sees the talls. He sees the towers and wowers and zowers, he sees the talls and all the rows, he sees the no’s and the many windows, and he could never see over it, even standing on too many toes.

There is in fact a tall hotel on Montague Street, and it has a sign on the door, on the awning far over and above the door is a sign written in letters, written in words and names and sounds and rounds, and the awning said, “Hotel Scrunchyface,” and this meant that Cyclops certainly must investigate, he must look, must listen and drink and intestine-ate.

He used the spy methods, he drank into shadows. He used the spy-way and walked all the byway. He tried like a spy and he lied like a spy, and if you might walk by, he might ask you why.

And who would walk by but Rack and Zack who are back for attack from the second wink track. And they are the Orange Drink Brain Trust of the Amalgamated Fifty-Seven Counties, but they don’t have time to brain too much, in fact and in ract they are driving in the dust.

“Rack and Zack,” said Cyclops to stop them.

“Cyclops and Cyclops,” said Zack and Rack in tandem.

“Who is this hotel, and why does it have a certain name. Where is my house where I once used to drowse. Where is the room where I used to stay hoom.”

And Cyclops points to them, to Rack and Zack, he points them to the name and the sign, the name on the sign, and it sure is a sign, and there sure is a name, and the name is up there, but it’s not on the air.

They read the name they read the name they read the name but who is to blame. “Who is to blame?” they crack, Rack and Zack, and Cyclops, our Cylops, feels under attack.

Not even a brain trust of two trust a man with carrot stew. Not even a stack named with Zack want a snowman’s nose back.

They shrug their shoulders like carrying boulders and they would say more, but they are on the way to the store.

“We cannot tell a lie. There are things we must buy, and your carrot reminds us why” and so they toodle-oo, and so Rack and Zack do.

If there is nobody on the outside, Cyclops thinks with his thirty-eight eyes, then I must maybe go inside. And that’s no surprise.

TWENTY-ONE: THE SECOND ROAD HOME FROM SURGERY WAR

The second road home from surgery war will strike you as odd and land you of nod. The second road home from surgery war will cut you like scissors and flat you like flithers. The second road home from surgery war will bury your head and take you half dead. The second road home from surgery war will record that meaning, but is also demeaning. The second road home from surgery war is twice as is long, but has its own song.

The second road home from surgery war

The second road home will take you how

The second road home will get you there

And surgery war is far away

The second road home will take your feet

Your tummy will rumble, no spuds to eat

The second road home will get you a place

It runs by and around all outer space

When Cyclops walks the second road home from surgery way, he has to consult his second war road home map. And after some mapping, he takes a nap. And when it is over, he calls it a wrap. And if he won’t tell you, you’ll call him a sap. And if it’s a dead end, you’ll say you are trapped.

And his eyes still flash from the light and explosions of surgery war, of surgery war, of surgery war, the second time thru. And he has been thru it, the ether and explosions and the sticks and the stones and the operating phones and he did see the scalpel and had to wear flannel and felt like an animal. He saw the big scissors, the threat and the thread, and if he survived it, he wouldn’t be dead.

And he wouldn’t be a woman either, for the surgery war surgeons did their best to reduce his chest and in between his knees they leaned down and sneezed.

They had to make him back a man, they had to do it if they can, they had to make his hips look right and that’s why there’s battle, and that’s why you fight.

The surgeons had to fight him back, they had to fight and right and might him back. They had to make him a someone, a nineman, a new man, they had to make him so, if only they can.

And if you saw him only on his face, you would see that his nose was nosewhere and his eyes were down to thirty-eight.

They didn’t have his swinger so they found it on his face. They surgically switched his nose down to a different nostril place, they moved it on a flatbed truck, they moved it on some wheels, they did their surgeon’s steals, and made it swing for reals.

They moved his nose from north to south and so there was a hole right over his mouth. They put a carrot there, for one of the surgeons had one in his lunch, and it looks like orange pointy nose, if you can take the hunch.

And two eyes of forty could be moved very smartly, and if you move two you just have to find nice pirate eye patches to hide the holes where the eyes used to roll, and that still leaves a Cyclops with thirty-eight eyes moving and seeing in all directions, and that is a lot of corrections, and that is still a lot of indiscretions.

His nose was now his swinger, and two eyes became his balls, and you can say he is a man in fact, a man down in the leg hip place, but some would say with some excitement that there was a face down on his groin.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever had a proper face, with two eyes and one nose and a fissure for noise,” thought Cyclops. “But I guess I have to keep it concealed in my trousers.”

And so he had a head face and in addition he had a groin face, and so he walked the road home from surgery war, and oh, if there were more we might have heard about it by now.

SECOND INTERMISSION

Please join now with the good people of Pome Town, and all their people, in singing a verse of “The Song of What is Something Going On, other than Lower Prices.”

There is something going on

We know it in our guts

But despite it going on

We’re sitting on our butts

We just like to do our jobs

And then we get our check

We don’t care if what we do

Is sending us to heck

We just like to live our lives

In the standard way

That’s what we did all last week

And what we’ll do today

If we want to know the truth

We’ll turn on the TV

There we’ll hear the life to lead

And see places to be

If our lives do not equal

The ones we see on screen

We will have to compensate

To change how we are seen

Mostly we stay satisfied

Going to the store

That keeps us from suicide

And all-consuming bore

Seeing all the things to buy

Will put down that gun

Who could pass up such savings

And all of this fun

Intermission B

The writer is out again and he’s turning back the clocks and he’s burning down the docks and he’s busting all the blocks. He’s changing all the locks and he’s ticking all the tocks and he’s spreading deadly pox but his singing just don’t rocks.

He’s shooting down some flocks and he’s spraying things with flox and he’s called the nurses docs and he’s cooking some with woks.

Here’s some more that he’s scribbled and scrabble and babelled and bibled and mingled and mangled and tingled and tangled and betty sue grabled together.

And you mighty just think that it isn’t enough that it’s all so much guff that it’s far too and rough that with one look it goes puff that it is not the write stuff that he’s calling your bluff and you’ll leave in a huff. If that is so you just might want to know that all things end and so but there’s half way to go.

NINETEEN: WILLIE THE LIZARD AND BOTH OF HIS SPIES AGAIN

Willie the Lizard and both of his Spies are wearing disguise. They’re that kind of guys. Cyclops can see them and spot them and get them because she has eyes, she has forty eyes.

The Spies and the Lizard, they know things by watching. They know things by looking, and not by a wizard, the Spies and the Lizard. They do observation, they see around corners, they watch and they wait there, but they do not hate there. They look at the buildings, the hair and destruction, and draw some conclusions, the size of contusions.

“Do you know the flow and the go and the what and the from and the who and how true and the that and the fat and the leave it under your hat that is going on around town, around our Pome Town?” Cyclops asked them, Spies and Lizard, as if they could answer, as if they were blizzard.

“She-Cyclops, we know that you were a he but now you are she, but about town we won’t guess, I have to confess,” said Lizard the Willie (not his real name), in pain and completely.

“We know you, and we know your switcheroo, but about the wrecking and the drecking and the building and the kuilding, we don’t have a clue,” said both of his Spies (not their real names either), in and out of their disguise.

“We can say what we heard, and it might be absurd, but we don’t have the word,” said Willie the Lizord.

“But we might make a start by telling you of your heart,” said the Spies, those two guys.

“Don’t I make a delightful lady,” said She-Cyclops, showing off her skirts and her squirts and her lurts of hair and there.

“Um, hm,” said the Lizard and the Spies, and they are not so convinced, tho they no words they mince.

“You are so right,” said Cyclops, She-Cyclops, who isn’t so pleased. Cyclops has nice hair and a dress and perfume, but she is no Louise.

“What do you think?” said Willie, and as so many spies know, this is a good way to get to the heart of the heart of the matter of the matter. It’s the old question trick, and it very often works.

“I think,” said Cyclops, “that now that I am a woman, I no longer have anything in common with myself.”

“I could not have said it better,” said Willie the Lizard, and then he does say it better, with some mustache and leather.

“I guess this means surgery war,” said Cyclops, She-Cyclops, concerned and confused. She smells and she looks but she also feels used.

“I think you are thinking so right for the fight,” said both of the Spies, and they think they have it right.

Cyclops, She-Cyclops bids them now good-bye, for it is back to the road, low and high, low and high. It is back to the road to the surgery war, and the sun sets and rises, and with it come more crises.

EIGHTEEN: LU AND SUE

Lu and Sue run the construction crew. They don’t look, they don’t watch, they don’t wait, but they do. Oh, the many so many parking lots and buildings they grew. They start with the ground and they build to the sky and you can watch it with your eye or you can watch it with all forty.

They’ll build a wood shed or a tower of lead, or a factory of bread, or whatever you said. Somedays and Smatterdays they’ll build anything that would be filled by humans or drilled for the living or killed for the hills, alive and kicking.

They’ll line the street with new garages, one for Jull and done for Roges. They’ll build them out of wood and stone; outside and inside a wall you’ll feel alone.

They build towers of glass and they put them up fast. They erect houses of steel and they make them for real. They build them in the park or the day all dark. They build in the street with their hands and their feet.

The towers come roaring from midday to morning. The buildings come hither from far and from thither. The buildings are towers and it’s very surprising. It’s just what you do if you are Lu or you are Sue.

Cyclops, she-Cyclops, has to get out of the way. A building might be rising from that spot and on this day. The latest development might be big as an elephant. And what do you do if all you want to be is in somebody’s shoe.

“Make way for Cyclops,” said the hard hats on the soft construction buddies. And then come the wolf whistles, form the construction worker women and young women and old women and middle women on the down line. They are eating their lunches with faces in scrunches. If you ask them how you look and smell, they‘ll just say, “Mighty fine.”

Cyclops might just ask them, so they might just have to answer.

“Woo woo woo, Cyclops. How do you do?” said Lu.

“Lu Lu Lu said Cyclops, and I say it too,” said Sue.

“What here is going, is going is going on here?” said Cyclops. “Do I have to ask a question or do I have to sing a song?”

“Sing us a song, you can’t go wrong if you sing us a song,” sing out all the gals of the whole construction crew cotillion. They want a new song to go with the rivets and the concrete and the beat of the pile driver and the two stories and the fiver.

Cyclops has a little song, has a new one, and she sings it in the construction site of webs and needles.

Let us go to Cyclops morning

Like the fogs of Innisfree

Where each boy and girl exactly

Knows inside the one to be

Let us go to Cyclops morning

Where the sun runs out of gas

Boys and girls exchange their darlings

Then they kick them in the ass

The construction crew isn’t quite sure what to do. Do they cheer or do they beer or do they headlights in the deer. Do they sing along, or do they say that sometimes a song can go wrong. But they don’t tell Cyclops why they are doing what they are doing.

“Not even a song gets me an answer?” said Cyclops like a lancer.

“How can we tell you?” said Lu.

“If we never knew,” said Sue.

And the construction crew made of many and few has to get back to work for they haven’t time to shirk. More parking lots and buildings must rise out of the ruins of Pome Town. More big boxes for shopping and foxes. More flat walls to answer all shopping calls. More new streets to get run over by the new hordes of traffic.

And if Cyclops knows nothing, she knows that she must pose a question to the best one, to Willie the Lizard.

SEVENTEEN: SOOM AND GILLOOM

Soom and Gilloom own the Room of Perfume. As you can tell, they will sell you a smell. Soom and Gilloom spray to banish all gloom. Their odors in jarlets will soon cast a spell.

Theirs the perfume filled with store. Theirs the odors and much more. Theirs the fragrances to use, to seduce, vamp and confuse.

Spray some on your handy back hand, take a sniff to understand, if you aren’t female enough, they’ve got bottles filled with the stuff.

Soom and Gilloom will spray the whole room. If you don’t like, you had best move and soon. Soom and Gilloom will sell you to consume. If you don’t like it, you will like it soon.

“Cylcops, try a little mist.”

“Cyclops, you will be surely kissed.”

“Cyclops try a whiff – if you don’t, it’s forever if.”

Cyclops gets the advice from Soom and Gilloom, and the advice is so nice, so pleasant and nice, to try out the smells in some jars shaped like bells. She gets it in her ears, the words about here, place and time and smell and crime, the words about odors that move men like motors.

“Will these perfumes make me feel more like the woman that I am? Will I be more woman than a woman named Sam? Will I be more woman or will I be flim flam? Will I be more woman or must I say goddamn?” Cyclops asks it and she gets back nods. The heads are telling her so much yes, and she tries a little spray on the front of her dress. She tries a little spritz in her fancy hair-do, she tries a little bit from that bottle, and why wouldn’t she do, and why wouldn’t you.

It is wet but then it’s dry. You can smell it some all day. It is mist but then the air. Just the odor makes you care.

Soom and Gilloom are as loud as the tomb. What they might tell you could lead to your doom. Soom and Gilloom hardly ever assume. If you are finished, they’ll sweep you like broom.

Their odors can be hard to see. Their odors can be memory. Their odors can make the garage turn into a castle thru smell mirage.

Their odors give you slender legs, their odors produce better eggs, their smells can clothe you in the spring, their smells imagine everything.

“Did you find the fragrance that will suit you best?” said Soom.

“Did you feel the impact, or must you make a test?” said Gilloom.

“Is your nose delighted?” said Soom in day and knighted.

“Will you get the man you want?” said Gilloom, her stomach taut.

Cyclops was spraying like a springer, but then she had to put the bottle down. She had to take it down and put it down and put it on the table. She had to put it on the counter, the bottle and the spray and the smell that lasts all day.

Was the smelling for a manning, or was it for something down the other path of pathing. Was it for a guy, or was it just for the apple of her eye. Was it for some tom dick or tom’s son, or was it for the special star Dingy Bahsome.

“Do you have anything a girl would like?” thought Cyclops to ask, but Soom and Gilloom just think she’s a dyke.

“Can’t help you there,” said Soom or Gilloom.

“Guess I’m too square,” said Gilloom or Soom.

And they don’t really understand the Cyclops and her quest, and the Cyclops doesn’t even know what’s best, what’s best for her, what is the cure, which way to go or high or low.

SIXTEEN: DEMOLITION DORA AND THE RUBBLE ROUSING CLEAN UP GALS

Demolition Dora and the Rubble Rousing Clean Up Gals get a building in their hair and they take it down to air. They take hammers and screwdrivers and a saw to batter walls, they charge at windows. roofs and dentils, they eliminate all halls. They use wrecking balls, suggestions, and a little derring do, until the building that was standing there will make you ask them, “Who?”

They smash the ceilings and the floors, they crash down stories one and two, they dig a tower to a hole, that’s what they do, the whole damn fewmale crew.

Watch out which they’re tearing down, it might be fun to watch the work. Watch out what they’re tearing down, there might be rubble you can sieve, watch out what they’re tearing down, it could just be a sight to see, watch out what they’re tearing down, it might just be the place you live.

The sound is harsh, the sound is tall, the sound of a crash, the sound of a fall, the sound of a town that is going to the hole, the sound of the you that feels the shoe in your sole.

Cyclops has forty eyes but only two ears, and that’s a good thing, for it is easy with two hands to cover up two ears but if the sight of the site were so much worse, she couldn’t stop seeing her fears. She covers her ears, but still she has to look at the veins and the explains and the open sores and the gores of this smash and that one as the old town of Pome Town is brutalized into the face of a wrecking ball.

“What is this, and what goes on?” said Cyclops with her single mouth.

“We are doing our job, we are tearing it down, we are tearing it down, and I like your nice gown,” said Demolition Dora in her work clothes which are a bit dusty from all the tearing and swearing and blaring and scaring.

And the Rubble Rousing Clean Up Gals, who could stand a little cleaning themselves, said, “Nice gown and nice hair, and you well them so wear.”

Cyclops is a little flattered, and she would turn red if she could turn blue if she could so see so with forty eyes taking up so much face real estate, and all that hair leading from her head to the air.

“I think you and I think so and I thank you for the complement, I thank you for your words so meant, I thank you for the dusty day, but what are you doing anyway?” and this says the She-Cyclops in just a little more feminine of a manner than she had her last thing of saying said. It just the power to implement the complement of the hardhat crew.

“We are doing our job,” said Demolition Dora with that swagger of somebody ripping out steel and pulverizing concrete. “It’s a messy job, and it isn’t neat, but somebody has to do it, and that is where we feet.”

Cyclops sees the Pome Town falling. She sees the old places go away under the heavy ball of the wrecking tall. She remembers a thing, and then it is dust. She looks at that once-place and now it looks rust.

“Where am I anyway, and who is this place?” said Cyclops, she-Cyclops, with forty eyes on her face.

Dust smells like dust, and lust tastes like lust. Maybe if she concentrated more on her sense of smell, thinks Cyclops, and she must if she must.