BITTERMAN

It was a dinner engagement

accepted out of a sense of "politeness"

the host an old and very strange man

living now in his room, his tiny realm

downtown in the "Squalor Hotel"

A warm water soup meal was served in stained yellow plastic dishes

and the kitchen windows were framed by terrible pink plastic curtains,

curtains that filtered the late afternoon light and bent it into

distortions of artificial pink-orange

and when the wind blew

the too-warm light flickered across the checkerboard linoleum

on the kitchen floor

And I wondered when, in that strained unpleasant silence,

words would bring relief.

And then the Bitter Man

finished his soup supper and went to the cupboard

he took down a thick leather case

and he showed the poet something

something terrible.

The open case revealed

the old mans collection of poisonous flying insects

large and hideous

lethal Amazonian insects

pinned and preserved in frozen deathform on the hobby board within the case.

And the Bitter Man explained:

"On Saturday mornings I go to the park to frighten the schoolchildren.

I open my box and let them see, let them see what is inside,

and then I say "See.....seee children...Look! Life is not all cartoons

and Christmas. Life is cruel...quite cruel. Behold! Behold my collection.

The only one of its kind! My collection of lethal flying insects....

look and see

see the awful shape

the black form

the form that nature has given to these creatures

creatures created to spread only pain, pain and death."

And suddenly the Bitter Man stopped himself

and he stood there in his kitchen, perhaps having realized he had

said too much, revealed too much.

He looked at me and then spoke carefully and slowly,

"You uhhh...you think me cruel, cruel no doubt. Yes! I see it in

your eyes.... and I don’t...don’t blame you. However, consider this:

children...all children are foolish

they need...preparation. They must learn...must learn about..."life."

And then his voice rose, and I could see his frail body begin to shake.

And he went on;

"And "life"....."life" my young-idiot soup-sipper....

"life" I tell you,

is hard and cruel, evil, black, vile and deceitful.

"Life....." the Bitter Man screamed in a dry rasping roar;

"Life!" the word exploded

a tearing wrench of strained flesh sound

from the throat of the old man.

And he kept on screaming the word; "Life....Life"....

The word was a dry wind

A terrible bomb

and it bounced from the awful plastic curtains

rebounding off the faded grim rose wallpaper

and he went on and on

and I thought that soon the manager, or the police would arrive

any minute

and break the door down.

Then the Bitter Man pointed at me with his long fishskin finger.

"Cruel eh?"

"Cruel? No...no...it is not cruel to show the children one of the

many macabre forms, some of the myriad of infinite shapes that Evil takes.

I show them, I show and they see...see these hideous monstrosities of

the jungle night...the perfect black designs of death....I show them

so that they might be shocked. Shocked for one unforgettable moment....

shocked away from the false warmth of the terrible electronic fantasy

dreams...dreams that fill them...fill them with nothing...only

..only dangerous nonsense...dreams that make them candidates for the

supreme and terrible fate...the fate they must meet when they enter

the "real world"...the world of men and money. They must see that "life"

...a torture chamber of unlimited rooms...for the children, for the ones, who did not, or would not take the time

to see what I have shown

right here....in my collection of the "macabre"

in my "Box of Death".

"And so you see" said the Bitter Man, "you see how ironic it is....

as so often happens here...here on the grim earth...the opposite,

the reverse of "what-seems-to-be" the opposite of what we think...

that is where the truth is. I mean, the truth is ...I..I who love children,

and who love people...I have acquired the reputation, and even the appearance

of a "nasty man"..a man who hates, who enjoys darkness, when in fact,

if you are able..able at all to hear what I have just said, and if you

have heard...you must see...(mustn’t you?) You must see the truth....

the real truth of it....?"

The Bitter Man suddenly sighed deeply and sank, mid sentence, onto

the hard plastic chair by the table. He muttered for a moment to himself,

"I mean, you must see, mustn't you....that I am not a ...

not a bad man?"

And then I looked at the Bitter Man, now silent and exhausted

hunched with his head in his hands in the chair by the kitchen table

and I looked

and I saw the remains of the tomato soup

still ringing the plastic bowls

and I looked at my untouched glass of warm tap water

which now had acquired a tiny dead gnat floating near the surface

and I rose up and walked to the window

and opened the pink plastic curtains

outside the afternoon had grown late

suddenly late

and below in the street it was downtown rush hour

and the cars and buses were moving

For a moment they seemed to be

strange metal shelled insects without feeling

And across the street there was a large illuminated billboard with the

huge body of a tanned and nearly naked female

and I saw the glass of milk she was holding

and I read the words "Milk Builds Strong Bodies"

And i heard the Bitter Man at the table behind me

sobbing to himself

I took a deep breath and felt the sea air mixed with exhaust.

The square and right angles of the buildings were cold and suddenly

forbidding, forbidding and ugly

but I looked at the sky to the west

and I knew

the sun would grow brighter and wider and would seem to expand as it

touched down behind the rim of the blue cold ocean

and although we were too far away to see the water

I knew it was there

and I knew that the clouds out there beyond the beach were moving,

moving with the earth, moving with everything that lives and breathes,

and above the tops of the buildings I could see the clouds

reflecting the light,the light of the sinking sun, the afternoon,

the water

and the light that they held was a beautiful light

It was not like the too-warm light filtered thru the plastic kitchen

curtains

and

and that made me happy

very happy.

Written by:

Larry "Buzz" Blackburn