BOOKSTORE EMPLOYEE BRANDISHES MALLET BEHIND COUNTER
REVEALS IDENTITY OF ROBOT PATRON FALLS IN LOVE

Perhaps it would not be so obvious at first
The corporeal gait of the surrogate human
Ferrying a pagoda of summertime tomes
Between the retail labyrinth of bargain
And Bestsellers strutting with the same
March of middle class uppity
As he fumbles his purchase on the cash wrapt
Oprah’s seal stamped on each of them
Like the Magna Carta of artistic security
Or maybe he treated you
The way patrons often treat menial bookstore
Slaves as if they are manacled to the
Ray guns that scan the merchandise
Nothing more than blinking ATM machines
To barter currency for hazed over sentences
(And how dare you invite them to join
Some sort of a members benefit club!!!)
Even though it is required of you to ask them
When you know they will scowl at you in decline
Even though job security often involves
Placing certain expressing organs and glands
Of our body into Tupperware
While invisible steel hooks
Tug the side of our lips into a smile
Inquiring to the robot patrons if there is anything
We could help them find before annihilating them
Cudgeling them with the investigative mallet you
Told me about when first we met
The tip of the warrior baton
Lanced in his side like a flag
The slot white of his eyes whirling back
Into his skull reminiscent of a casino jackpot
Tendrils of steam streaking from earlobes
In a jet stream of gray smoke
As his ersatz anatomy continues to leak
Coating the manicured carpet with the
Springy coils and greasy gaskets of his intestines
As one final yellow shock snaps
Out near his neck and you know he is gone.

In first grade Cedric Dockery told me
There was a robot inside of him
Miss Heinz didn’t realize I was dyslexic so
We had to stay inside the classroom during recess
Re-working over simple addition
My head unable to discern the numerical scrotum
Between six and nine
Between a lowercase p and a lowercase b
Balloons on a stick
Hovering above the inky cornfields of sentences
Twisted as they entered the innocuous field of
My six year old vision.
Wishing then that I could have been
Tapped over the head with the
Tip of a mallet wand
In an effort to help me perceive what the first added
Elementary sum of what reality was supposed to resemble
Or how a wielding patron annihilating mallet
Would have come in useful
During my own bookstore days ten years ago
The born again middle-aged Christian
Calling me a marketer of the devil
Because we sold playboys and magic the gathering cards
And how he planned on publicly telling
Fellow patrons in the store
That he plans on boycotting us.
How I wish I could have had a mallet
To pry open my lips, informing
Him that most gas stations also sold playboys
And magic the gathering cards and I don’t think
He plans on boycotting them—
Plus we also sold bibles!!!
Or the time I stole a copy of the Kama Sutra
For the woman I thought I wanted to marry
Hoping that it would serve as an accelerator
Switch the limp pistons and gears of our bodies
Feeling as if our flesh itself was coated
In a film of aggregated rust
Hoping that maybe one slight
Movement of combined muscles into flesh
Would reignite something that had long
Since been diminished,
Something that could not be
Put back together again in time
Like a car motor or a snapped serpentine belt
How I wish I had the insight of a smashed
Mallet across my skull then
The carousel of hurt correlating with the
Sockets of loneliness
Under the lid of my chest.

But I couldn’t find a mallet
The vertical weapon of slaughter
Curled in the grip of your palm
Wisps of steam still incinerating
From the guts of the robot carcass
Whose skin you just obliterated
Wondering what would happen
If you hit me over the head
With a mallet
wondering if my heart would
Topple out from my lips
As if you had just placed two
Quarters into the slits of my eyes
Twisting my nose a certain direction
Watching as everything
Inside of my body
Breaks free in front of your eyes.