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.