Kids are going to public schools to learn about NEGATIVE EGO INVERSION and Tennessee love-affairs with greasy teachers and dirty cops. They show up at health class, and it’s mainly a discussion of eating scorpion eggs and raising cane rat to feed the tribe. No more time for books or math, only pale castings of tire iron getaways and the forest regions where parent’s are dumping their dead babies now. You’d be SURPRISED by what happens 50 feet from the principal’s office, or maybe you wouldn’t be shocked.
They have a new vocational training program at the local schools …
Skages, the deed-baron, has a course in farming for the kids. He talks about raising mites and mosquito larvae and extracting venom from wasps and hornets and yellowjackets … He lines up the kids in the trenches, and MR GRIBBS comes by to check their underwear for doormat soup. Kids with bruises and shaking, kids seeing dead eyed manger rats chasing them back home, down the hill, to the burrow under the docks. “You kids don’t understand, you can extract REAL CASH from these things”, and Skages smokes a cigarette and laughs at his cadre of misfits, as each young soldier pulls poison from the thorax of the pinned insects.
Yagle-spikes are being set up on the perimeter of the local school. Triple-strand concertina wire, claymores, crew served area weapons, all set in place to keep those hell-spawn in the fenceline. Dick-whorlers rustle the runaways from their black/white cruisers, in their polyester uniforms, whacking the young ones with bats, batons, sticks. The parents are busy doing the BLUES, which they buy from the POH-POH, as the local councilwoman stands up for “JUSTICE” and the mayor talks of dead animals being dumped in the sewers.
“Clever mother fucker!”, screamed the bus driver to little Tommy – that damned kid had placed homemade dragon’s teeth on the road, cuz his parents let him stay up late watching TV. The bus flipped over, throwing those little pedals about the yellow box, as Mrs. Gombley is skewered by a pine branch, and her stool is spilt all upon the bus floor. Some of the kids survive the wreck, but they drag the bodies off into the woods and begin preparing them for STREET TACO MEMORIES. The cops show up 6 hours later to tag the bodies, identify the wreck as a “mishap”, and to arrest the local woman who filmed the event and uploaded the whole thing to TIK TOK.
“The softball team is heading to state, go out to the tennis courts and wish them goodbye”, so the DORG-CREW, led by Steevis McDoob, storm the courts … they spent the morning drinking drain cleaner and hand sanitizer … they are looking for them TOOG-REALM dancers, who feel special, feel loved, and so must be destroyed. Most of the GLEE CLUB is stuck at the skate park doing tranq and PCP, while the CHUD are cooking street-buffalo in the caves near Migg’s Town.
A cactus hero from New Mexico stopped at the school to give a “motivational” speech. He talked about “cash energy” and “slave benefits” … he made the kids scream “SCORPION POWER”, and then he spent 20 minutes talking about his new style scorpion juice energy drink for kids … and prostitutes. Most of his helpers come from CAESAR’S PALACE, or Ship Rock, and carry with them curses from the elders of the dust storm.
Yellow and red, dried out rinds of life. As the leaves turn to sand and the ground shakes, the future quakes and stakes out time near the funnel river. The skies are covered in crisscrossing sketches of death and nasty marmalade burdens. None of the kinder folk feel safe, as adults march on WALMART demanding more cricket flour. And now there’s talk of an OLD STYLE PANDA EXPRESS opening up in town, and maybe taking over the cafeteria at the school – so that the kids can have healthy panda meat just like their ancestors.
I can still see the flipped over bus …
Catching fire, screams heard over the rustle of a dying timberland.
The parents too busy to know …
The officials too drunk to care …
The road painted crimson and white …
And the school day is over.
The long emptiness awaits.