Cretins in the Supermarket

Bred by the nearby neighborhood park located in the indentured servant sector of Las Vegas, the cretins of the supermarket follow a tractor beam of confusion and self imposed misery to lose themselves in the aisleways amongst gluttonous supply of basic food needs that their drug filled bodies no longer require in order to function as living organisms, but to call these mindless zombies functional is a stretch. Many decades of abuse have rewired their central nervous system resulting in a total realignment of nueral paths throughout their bodies. Communication channels are nothing more than red alerts in a heightened state of paranioa. As I push my shopping cart around the store, young kid is walking behind me wearing a baseball cap with embroidered Philiphine national flag, mirrored shades and cutoff shorts. It looks like he just came from a week long poker tournament where sleep, meal breaks, and intensive focus had worn this kid down to his basic motor function of walking, but now had found himself lost in the supermarket like a rat on LSD and PCP unable to decipher any sort of spatial parameter, left to wander around the store aimlessly until death or a means of reasonable exit present itself.

The young kid followed behind me until I quickly stopped and turned around in his direction causing the guy to jump right out of his shoes as if approached by a murderous preadator seeking to tear him to shreads, the delusional being assumed a reactionary pose of innate self defense, ready to battle to the finish with arms out stretched, awaiting the first strike like a diseased rat fearing for its life, who was put in a corner with two choices to either fight or die and this primitive animal looked intent for self preservation, all I could do was redirect my cart down another path, while laughing to myself about the incident. Young children in far off corners of the marketplace yell for their mother, just like the kids I remember in grade school who had no parenting, any sort of discipline, left at home by themselves to fight amongst their siblings for microwave pizzas, scraps from the dumpster, and the occasional stolen goods from the local convenience store. Dad was not far behind, he did not seem to care about the kids loud, brash, and unruly behavior, he looked distracted, as if calculating a plan of escape from his current predictament as father to these children, maybe he was dreaming of life a single man, far from the impending responsiblity of raising kids who were so full of energy that they had already lapped their father while search the frozen food section for the elusive mother who by now probably was on her way to the downtown Greyhound station with what ever cash and belongings she had on her at the moment, attitude growing more cheerful with each step as she boarded that bus toward wherever, putting the family in the rear view mirror as she hyperventilates knowing each breath gives her more and more clarity, more confidence to carry forward, burying the past like fresh wooden casket into a grave, doused with kerosene, then set on fire and finally covered in a rain of animal fecal matter.

Time along with economic well being has not erased these memories of my childhood where I lived in such an exact setting with so many displaced misfits of society, today in 2010 over 30 years later the same apparitions walk the same unkept, crumbling, infrustructures of inner city metropolis, babbling amongst themselves, searching for innocent people to prey upon, fixing on drugs in broad daylight unconcerned with how the rest of the world percieves their general actions. Everyone has come to expect everything for nothing and when the promise goes unfulfilled sets off a series of crushing blows of confidence to the psyche inducing a loss of consciousness while invoking virus like symptoms dissolving these people into blood thirsty retribution driven carnivorous beasts who will kill every living human around them without, emotion, senitment, or regret, as the bodies pile up to be fed upon by those who are either too weak, too lazy, or fully addicted to the taste of tainted flesh and the hallucingenic rush it brings. Navigating all these landmines, obstacles, and potential aggressors, I make it back to my van, all the time watching my back as my surroundings quickly close ranks in the hunt to erradicate the planet of thought forever.