Prose Poem: The Evil Spirit of Upton Snodsbury, Worcestershire.

 

I read about a man who spent his entire adult

 life parking in new parking spots.

His goal, the newspaper said, was to park in

every parking space in his hometown of 

Upton Snodsbury, Worcestershire.

The minute I finished reading about this man,

I was attacked by a horla -- 

a ghastly spirit of obsession 

that compelled me to seek out innocent

people and murder their time with inanities.

My first victim was an elderly gentlemen

who was sitting on a park bench enjoying

the warm spring sunshine.

I sat down next to him.

"Nice day, ain't it?" I said to him.

"Mmmm . . . yes" he replied distantly,

obviously wishing to savor the warmth

 by himself.

"Did you know" I began,

"that the Sun is about 93 million gallons

fuller than the Earth?"

The old gentleman stared at me.

"Fuller with what?" he asked.

"Of course" I continued insanely,

"the Marblehead Ferry will not

resume service until late May.

And the Chicago Bears are scheduled

for rotary cuff surgery by the Gallup Poll.

Will you hold this string for me?"

I gave the bewildered old man one end

of a piece of string, and then walked away

from him, unspooling the string until I 

was out of his sight, and then tied it off

around a sapling.

I then slunk off, chuckling to myself like a 

madman. 

Next I volunteered at a homeless

shelter,

where I inveigled residents to collect

cigarette butts for a statue of Albert Schweitzer.

They completely stopped their job searches

and apartment hunting 

to waste their time on my bootless task for nearly

two months, before the shelter's director kicked 

them all out and banned me from the premises. 

Then I pedaled my velocipede to 

Washington D.C.,

where I worked as a lobbyist

for the Thomas R. Marshall 

Commemoration Fund.

I button-holed Senators to

give them exhaustive lectures on

why the Washington Monument

should be renamed for Thomas R. Marshall,

the 28th Vice President of the 

United States.

I passed out bubblegum cigars

like crazy -- 

which the fools sat around chewing 

for hours on end.

The evil spirit finally left me to

inhabit a stop sign at Wisconsin Avenue

and M Street.

Now, like Napoleon,

I am banished to Ellis Island --

where I make amends by scattering

sunchoke seeds to the gulls to carry

to Europe -- there to replenish the barren

fields of France and Germany.