(from unpublished manuscript: The Crayon Box Manifesto)
Periwinkle
Time: Post-Apocalyptic
Place: Earth!
in the 1950’s
grade school film strips preached
the duck and cover method for survival
a ‘just the tip’ solution
for surviving
a nuclear bomb
but civilization as they’d known it
didn’t end in mushroom clouds
or radioactive maternity recovery
there was no atomic detonation
the end of civilization as they’d known it
began in the 1980’s with the introduction
of hair spray to pop metal bands
and was consummated forty-some years later
while some wise-ass scientists where fooling
around with a bunch of green pipe cleaners
talking about the ‘old times’
before their youth had died
stories about parking lot keg parties
with their dicks dangling beneath jean jackets
dazing at the vomit on the hood of of their best friend’s
Delta 88
pretending like hell
that it was Tawny Kitaen
with these recent thoughts of hair metal
lodged between all those deadly equations
in their heads
the scientists returned to work
Humanity once again demanded a weapon
so powerful that its very power would act as a deterrent
for its own use
Humanity demanded a weapon that would
once and for all save itself from itself
and it is because of this duel hard-on
for its own survival and/or extinction
that this dedicated group of geniuses
who grew up in the 1980’s
figured out a way to weaponize
the music of Winger!
when detonated, the Winger Bomb
was capable of producing a high kick explosion
of destructive energy capable of leveling entire cities
causing things to explode that nobody
had ever realized where there to explode
before
in the air
you would think that Civilization would have learned
a few things and upon discovering the Winger Bomb
wiped all knowledge of its existence from the face
of its own heavily eye-lined planet
but no, like a poorly advised reunion tour
its implementation was damn near inevitable
and at some point in the future
the day did come
when the Winger Bomb was unleashed
upon an unsuspecting
Adele worshipping
world
those who where not finger-tapped into
cassette tape shaped piles of dust and oblivion
by the initial explosion
spent the following months bleeding from their eardrums
while mumbling the lyrics to Headed For A Heartbreak
fighting off packs of mutated farm animals
and trading colorful scarfs and bandannas
for rare bits of sugarless gum
two of these survives set up a camp
on top of the grave of the great American
Science Fiction writer: Philip K Dick
it felt safe there
the roaming bands of cannibals
tended to avoid the old cemeteries
and the trees hadn’t died here
and once in a while
in the middle of the night
you could almost hear the sounds
of a train
and it was on a night such as this
with the Darjeeling calling
beneath a sky perpetually turned
the color of periwinkle
surrounded by wild squirrels which had evolved
into colorfully tailed rodents made out of
guitar strings
and spandex
they fell asleep, his arms wrapped around her
protected by the legend of Ubik
and miracles of grape juice
She’s Only Seventeen couldn’t hurt them here
though lord knows
it fucking tried
Multiverse Johnson 