S.P.U.D.

By Tenzin McGrupp

We used to play this game called S.P.U.D. and I would throw this ball really high into the air and sometimes the ball would never come down and when that happens it would always be the same situation. The feverish anarchists would cry for their complacent mothers, while the religious right would mutter the WASPy names of their spoiled children, when in doubt, call for your suburban family. The voice of reason said very little to me and to my useless mind, as it just sat there in steps and inside all the lunch boxes of the greatest small little garages, where burnt pink and jealous green cars would park side by side in parallel lines, their passengers decked out in the latest Eastern Euro-trash fashions of all sorts and sizes from places we never heard of like Grinsk and Sholjpe and that other obscure place called Helgrinistan. Sometime during the last night of our monthly security meetings, I lost sight of my mission. The gatherings were held by the dried up river, which used to belong to the green people, where they danced in the archaic moonlight until the sun rose. At that point they realized that yes, they too were the only ones who would walk inside the last orbital path of the mighty comet, whose destination lay forth to colliding with our unsettling planet, Earth, where we all just sit, dumbfounded as we stare at the last ship off the solid rock. Alas the bananas and the Olive trees stand still in the fierce winds of the hurricanes. The angry parents tow their children and drag their dogs with chain links, and the tires on their cars are very soiled with dirt and dust from mid-western tourists, who wash their mall bought shoes against their wallets. I sit and I wonder why oh why do all these people sit for hours on end, watching the TV box, and stare and do nothing. There is so much slack around that it kills me. Where is that inner motivation? Our burbs are filled with no drive, nothing to satisfy the insatiable cries of the nice politicians whom live in those glass and golden homes in places like Vail and Simi Valley, as they sip Vodka Martinis and proclaim, "Hey we must get together for the next trip to Hamptons, oh indeed!"

Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.