ONE: CYCLOPS AND SCRUNCHYFACE

Cyclops liked his hair to curl. Cyclops dressed up like a girl. When he wore a high heel shoe he knew what he was going to do.

Cyclops had an erection of nose and a single eye like a belly to see the tears, to see the seals. Cyclops used his big belly eye to watch television. Television was a box or a bin or a thing in the corner that glowed like a groan and filled with its pictures.

Cyclops watched the television, which he casually called the T and V. He watched it with that one big eye. Mostly, he used his eye to watch the shimmery shape of Dingy Bahsome, famous starlet. She of the had to be, she of the “You better buy it for me.” She of the shopping and laughing and not really singing, and almost really not one at all, not one bit, not a twitch, not a twiggy.

Cyclops had one eye, and I realize that this goes without saying, and yet I have said it, for that is the way of Pome Town, where saying is seeing and seeing is rhyming and rhyming is home town and home town is wanting and wanting is having and having is holy, and holy is wholly and wholly is holly and golly is greedy and needy is notty and notted is rotten and written in ink, and that’s what I think.

Cyclops wandered from channel to channel like a monk walking dessert. He looked from this station to that one, always in search of the shimmering shapering of the girl of his remote day dreaming, of his dreaming of the channel and the waiting for Dingy Bahsome. She was like that. She moved from channel to channel, as if she could not decide on a home, as if she were a breeze bikini. Cyclops had to follow her with his one big eye. His one big belly eye had to watch her like a shadow on vacation, like a sticky bit of smoke.

Cyclops shared the couch, and a big couch that it was. On one side sat Cyclops, on the other side sat Scrunchyface the Philosorapter. Scrunchyface was not bothered by the channel changes, by the migration from screen to screen to follow the fewmale footsteps. He sat there as in study, as in studying the landscape, as in learning of the lay of the day of the screens, of the blurs and the clears and the faces and their squares.

When Cyclops wasn’t television, then he was gone to walking. This was Cyclops on the stillness streets of the town that was his town, of the town that was your town, of the town that was Pome Town. He was walking the streets and singing the streetlight songs, you may know them. He was walking and singing and sometimes Scrunchyface watched him from the window by the curtain like a neighbor, like a spy.

When Cyclops sang he sang this song. Here it is:

The lights are bright in Pome Town

That’s for we pay our electric bills

And you can walk most day and night

And have a bite, get in a fight

The streets are black in Pome Town

That’s for we pave them with our skids

And you can see thru our windows

In Pome Town, everybody knows

We have no secrets, we are us

We tell our inside hearts to each

And if we do not know a few

Our spies will tell us what is new

And when he wasn’t walking Pome Town, when he wasn’t walking streets or sidewalks or songs or verses, he was sat inside with the set of TV. He was watching of the channels, he was looking for the one true one. He was searching with his looking, he was blinking with his thinking, he was watching for the Dingy, for the Dingy who is Bahsome.

When Cyclops told Scrunchyface the Philosorapter that he loved so much to see Dingy Bahsome, “That I love too much to see her because I really want to be her,” and he told this tale to Scrunchyface, and Scrunchyface heard it louder than all the commercials put together.

“There’s a reason for this, Cyclops,” said Scrunchyface when he was talking. “There is a reason and it is in my philosophy,” said the Philosorapter, for that was his way of saying. “I have told you before, and I will say it before again, that there is a best of all possible you in somebody else’s shoes.”

Cyclops knew this for he had heard it, and Scrunchyface so often delivered. He said it and he heard it, tho the one he was not the other he in that first part of this sentence right here.