Violent Grin

I’m here again with my violent grin as the people assemble themselves into self-important groups in front of me. The talk between them reveals brilliant depth and shades of life, that my slowly revolving mind doesn’t care about. It is humming mellow tunes to itself.. The talk rises to the ceiling and comes down again, swinging back and forth, and I look straight ahead, ignoring it’s floating movements... “Next in line?” I say, with a firm lack of interest. The tunes play on and on.

“Yes.. You ready?” And the first tree I am to chop down makes its movement towards me. A thriving wood in front of me. Hum, hum, hum... hum-drum. The sound of hot brewers being dropped to the counter top, the steaming wand going off like a fire extinguisher-- like the roar of a subway as it approaches and recedes down a tunnel. The aggravated back talk and bumping of arms and legs, the sound of coffee being flash-brewed and streamed into the pot. The trash cans being kicked, the milk crates sliding, the sweat accumulating, dripping and stinging. There’s a mass movement going on behind me. Boy, it’s a war! Like an Iron Chef episode! A frenzy of sweating people in ugly baseball caps..

I am grinning violently in the middle of it all.

A touch screen cash register.

An ax in my hands.

“Next in line?”

And the forest moves: “Yes.. You ready?”

With one inflection of my head in just the right direction, I set the mouth off like a cup of gasoline. And in coffee-shop time, it is years later before my slowly revolving mind comes into contact with the words it has just been given. By that time I am already reaching out for the coffee pot, and the transition between intuition and knowledge is seamless.

“Here you go,” I say. A click on the counter top, that’s the cardboard of the cup hitting the surface.

“Thanks.” But they don’t mean it. Customers don’t mean it.

He is a regular and leaves exact change on the counter without me even telling him the amount. “Kay thanks,” I say (I don’t mean it) to a man’s back as it walks and disappears into the forest.

Thank you for the tip. I put all of the 2.05 into the tip cup, never mind the register. Never mind the cameras...

Wait, never mind the cameras?

Ask anybody, the cameras are gods. They are Big Brother realized. They are the employee’s nagging, nagging conscience.

“FUCK YOU!”

But you don’t say that to a god.

What would happen if you said that to a god?

...Maybe I should not have been so blunt about putting that 2.05 in the tip cup. Maybe, maybe.. But the next tree, the next fat ass tree is making its groaning movements towards me, and my wicked smile replaces itself. The roar is rising up around me. My creaky mind can’t keep in too many thoughts at once. So we must return to the forest, pick up the ax..

“Next? ...Hi.”

“How are you?” The lady asks. Fat, short and balding. A periwinkle tent for a shirt.

“I’m good.” THERE’S A FUCKING WAR BEHIND ME, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!! Can’t you see the milk spilling the employees yelling the bad moods flaming and simmering down into depression? Can’t you see the coffee grinds missing the trash can?

But the mouth has been set off already and there I go, sent into the middle of the violence, with my mind still figuring out why we ever started walking in the first place.