This Means War

from Perfect Sleeping Weather by Larry Fulford

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Scrawled into notebooks from the familiar comforts of temporary homes and the passenger seats of mechanically unsound vehicles adrift on the highways and back roads of America, Perfect Sleeping Weather is fifteen years of thoughts, observations, facts, and fictions hammered into a collection of poetry that, according to one reader, "sounds like a sigh."

In this, his first book, writer/drummer/comedian Larry Fulford reflects on the usual -- life, death, love and leaving -- while still managing to name-check Van Halen. Twice.

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lyrics

Pinstriped bathroom walls.
He doesn’t want to go back out there.
His red, troubled face doesn’t have to move
its mouth to ask the mirror,
“Who are the brains behind this operation?”

The overwhelming scent of urinal cakes,
like bubblegum, surrounds him in his gamble.
Olivia Newton-John sings through the ceiling.

He’s been in here a long time,
hopelessly devoted to finding
an alternate exit.

“I could say it was something I ate,”
he reasons, between rummaging his mind for assistance.
He really doesn’t want to go back out there.

“I can pretend nothing happened.
I didn’t see or hear a thing.
Everything is exactly as it should be.
As it was yesterday.”

The door swings open and he frantically
turns on the faucet and starts
washing his hands,
watching the man move behind him
with the mirror he was previously
staring at himself in.

The man goes to a stall.
Paranoid turns the water off.

“Great. Well. Here goes nothin.’”

Upon leaving, he notices
the floor is the same:
fax machines dialing,
pinstriped suits walking,
some on phones,
some of their eyes glance over
and find his eyes and keep talking.
Cameras are watching.

He cautiously but impatiently
returns to his office
and closes the door with
a sigh that flicks
beads of sweat from his upper lip.

He’s eleven floors from the ground
but that doesn’t keep him from wondering
if he should climb out.
The huge tinted window forces him
to stare at himself again.

The clock ticks. And. Ticks. And. Ticks. And. Ticks. And. Ticks.
And. Ticks.

The door swings open.
He spins to see a grinning colleague
who’s already talking
but it’s all like Charlie Brown’s teacher —

“Mah mah. Mah mah mah mah” —

until he asks, “Hey, man, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

(You can bet your ass he heard that)

“Nothing’s wrong.

Everything’s exactly as it should be.

As it was yesterday.”