One Step from Madness
by Glenn Armstrong
Sit in your car in the parking lot and listen to the rain. Recall the time you forgot to turn your wheels to the curb and got a ticket. Get a blood level. Post blood draw pancakes are your reward. Muffin top slop guts spill over your belt buckle. Pick up the junk mail and spread the good news to the garbage can. Relive the day you got a text from your ex detailing all your faults. The text ran long enough to serve as evidence in Hell’s court of public opinion. Watch tank treads crawl across your TV screen. Think about the hotel breakfast bar incident when the oaf in front took all the sausages. Taste the night you lit the wrong end of a filtered cigarette at a pool party. Then you drank out of an open beer can containing butts. You glimpse flashing blue lights in your rearview mirror. Somehow you just cannot find that unobstructed freeway leading to Nirvana.
Glenn Armstrong has been a journalist, art model, and monk. While attending Bates College he studied with Grace Paley. He lives in San Diego.
