cereal after sex

---

They even had a Keurig on his crotch

At the funeral

Where someone thought it would be special

To set up a small buffet on the deceased’s body

In the coffin

A glass bowl of pickled beets with a serving spoon

Rested in his dead-blue hands

Potato salad balanced on his face

A platter of cold cuts and olives on his chest

Bread, cheese, and table water crackers on his knees

Dessert at his ankles

It was strawberry Schaum Torte

Which all the people loved

And when it was time to carry him off to the cemetery

Someone suggested that the food stay with him in case he gets hungry on his journey to Heaven

Several people grumbled…

“Stupid!” someone cried out.

Out in the hall a small boy stood and watched all the adults acting like fools. He was eating Barnum’s Animals Crackers. One small hand methodically moved from the Snak-Sak package to his mouth. That’s all he had … One small hand because he only had one arm. The other was lopped off in a farming accident. The mother blamed the father. Now they are divorced. They were both at the funeral. He wanted to kiss his ex-wife. The pickled beets were starting to make his stomach hurt. He sat alone and was sad. The mother snatched the package of circus animals crackers from the boy’s hand. “Robbie! Quit being so stupid. Put those back in your grandfather’s casket so everyone can have some.” Then she slapped his face. “You make me sick!”

And why is it animals crackers instead of just animal crackers?

Twelve years later the boy killed his mother because she had been so cruel to him for such a long time. He had stabbed her with a kitchen knife. Nice. He was in jail and wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral, but if everything had been normal, he would have had a buffet set up on his mother’s body. Now she was going to be hungry on her way to … Probably not Heaven. More like Hell. That’s what she gets for being such an awful person. To hang with Dr. D for eternity. Robbie’s dad met a beautiful woman and got remarried. They visited Robbie in prison on a regular basis. Robbie hated prison until he met a man named Jose and they started being gay. When Robbie’s dad found out about his son doing gay stuff in prison, he stopped visiting. Robbie’s dad’s wife, however, was more open minded and understanding and kept visiting Robbie in prison. She eventually got to know a guard and had an affair. She confessed to Robbie’s dad that she was in love with someone else and she was leaving. Robbie’s dad ended up stabbing his wife with a kitchen knife and he got sent to the same prison where his son was incarcerated. He too met a man and started being gay.

Robbie’s dad eventually died in prison and Robbie was released when he was an old man. Jose had to stay in prison, so they broke up. Robbie decided he was going back to liking women. He walked away from the prison and stopped at a convenience store and bought a package of Barnum’s Animals Crackers. He went outside, sat down at a crusty old picnic table under a wretched tree, and thought about life. He felt bad about his own life and wanted to start all over again. When he realized he would never be able to do that, he got very sad and went to a dark and depressing hotel. He sat on the edge of the bed and stared out the window. He thought about buying a gun and blowing his brains out. Then he decided he wasn’t going to let life kick him in the balls anymore, and that despite any circumstances he was facing, he would work through it. He was going to live no matter how awful it got. He got a job as a fry cook at a diner and rented himself a small apartment. He hooked up with a waitress named Flo who always said, “Kiss my grits.” She had an ex-husband named Mel and they were still friends, but Robbie was suspicious and they always got into fights about it. One day Robbie’s suspicions were justified when he came home early and caught Flo and Mel in bed together. He grabbed a kitchen knife and went at them both. But then something came over him and he stopped trying to stab them. He thought about how awful a mistake it would be and that he’d end up in prison again. And as the two lovers huddled together, a frightened mass they were, Robbie dropped the knife and simply told them, “Get out. Both of you.”

And then he took flight. Like some great bird as a silvery spaceship, gravity all nonsense. He rented a car and drove to a place called Bloomington, Illinois. There he got a hotel room in a sea of hotel rooms on the edge of town. It was at the Starlight Inn. He walked to a nearby Walmart and bought liquor and supplies. When he got back to the room he started to drink and look at the road atlas. He wanted to go far away. He just wanted to explore and check things out. He wanted to be a road rebel, a welly welly droog, a 12^th-century knight in rough-hewn armor, a psychologically unfit cyborg, a giant cyclops, Godzilla… anything but his old, mother murdering self. As the booze kicked in, he stared out the window with melancholy. He was relatively high up, on the 4th floor. He could take the desk chair and smash it through the glass and then jump out. That’s how crazed he sometimes got. He feared he might be slipping into a state of psychosis. But what about this new way… This attitude of taking on whatever the world throws at him. He tried to reverse his mood. He got hungry. Then he noticed the Mexican restaurant across the parking lot and just beyond. He thought that some enchiladas sounded good. Chips and salsa, too. Maybe a tamarind Jarritos Mexican soda to wash it all down with. He tucked the bottle of bourbon into his jacket, put on his shoes, walked over, and got a table for one. He ate and drank and drank and then stumbled to the Walmart to just wander around the chaos, the psycho circus.

As he drunkenly meandered through the aisles he thought about how broken he was. He felt like everyone was looking at him, judging him harshly. He snatched some Pepto Bismol off a shelf, opened the bottle right there, and drank some. He set the bottle down on a shelf and darted away. Now he was a thief as well. But he needed some kind of relief. He made for the store’s exit and blasted out into the late-day sun. He wobbled back to the hotel and threw himself down on the bed. He groaned. He could hear his ex-wife and Flo simultaneously nagging in his head: “That’s what you get, Robbie, for dinking all that bourbon.” Robbie jumped up and went to take a shower. The periwinkle walls at dusk reminded him of mountains. And as he showered, he thought, west. He would go west because the West is the best… as Jim Morrison said.

That night he slept well and, in the morning, he motored west toward those wide-open plains and the mountains and the big, ever-moving western cities. He gripped the steering wheel calmly, and had a window cracked open to let in the wild rush of the road. And he was on his way to conquer life in new and strange places and the way his soul floated would lead him up to the stars stapled to witch-black space.