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.”