Teetering on her baby legs
A newborn with a Solo cup
bombastic red with a few
undulating ribs
Held firmly in her hand
Is this her first or her third?
Somnambulant yet eager
And just a little out of place
In a foreign territory
On newly contested lands
She stumbles through a raucous crowd
Or was it just white noise?
She’s lost her companions
Somewhere
Although they could very well be close at hand

In the distance she can make out
Laughing faces
Bodies moving to and fro
Spilling forward, little messes
Throwing back cheap libation

She passes through a room and out the door
Into the out-of-doors
Someone following her unbeknownst
Watching her cautious, curious steps
And when she turns and sees the blur standing
She greets it
“Hail Fellow!”

Bouncing from variable to variable
Frequency to frequency
Confident and in command
Of a seemingly controlled chaos
He approaches smiling and holds out his hand
Anonymous

Having drawn her attention from the stars
That she could not find above
Leaning against the garage’s eastern wall
She takes it awkwardly
Tentative she smiles back reassured
Wobbling she returns standing alongside him
Or was she in front?
Purposeful and en route
Emboldened by his presence
And how the way was parted before her
Just by his being there.
By being so close.
She felt vaguely special
it showed in her half-smile
Cloaked in bangs
She held her head just a little bit higher

The co-conspiratorial glances
Met by boys eyes
And shes
Went unseen by the girl with the
Solo cup
One of tens upon tens upon tens
A coven would have known
It’s better not to

However.

She was shown a seat to rest
And her cup refilled
She takes a sip and smiles again
She takes another and then a gulp
That spills
He takes the cup away
And places it on the low table
Suggests she go to the restroom upstairs and get herself
Sorted

Embarrassed she is relieved for direction
Someone knows what’s going on
And his caring
Taking the time
His kind eyes
She’s usually alone
She waddles up the stairs to find
a toilet and a mirror
God she thinks
I look a mess
She tries to fix it
The hair
The eyes
The lips
The dress
The stomach
The *******
The thighs

She shrugs her shoulders at her reflection
Exhales and steps out again
To find him standing there
waiting for more.

She wants another cup.
She’s missing her cup.
I’ll get you the cup he says
In just a second.
Come.

When I wake on the steps of humanity,
I see the peril, the plotting, the running and the hasty implementation of torture.
For your children, we shall give them a crate and bowl and force them to live amongst their own feces to mold them into the industrious working class we so desire,
anything looking like upward mobility from the ditches we cry in.
For your animals,
we shall embalm them richly on your wall for you,
to gaze on with fond memory the corpse of an animal you never knew wholly,
merely the discipline you enacted on it to conform to your standard.
Never knowing the child without the work,
unable as a society to accept the being as what it is beyond all the standards and labels and cross-references of psychological history used to define your character and your place in this plane of existence.
At no time capable of committing to validating the true nature of the beast in every single conscious being on Pangea,
because, listen, listen closely,
in this jazzy age of deep beats and lack of swooning amounts of emotion,
you need validation to exist.
Confirm, tune in, download your inner interface to the great program,
and you shall forever be condemned to role of worker, or corporate  building block, you lucky duck.
Feed the system as it so graciously has fed you access to knowledge,
filtered and just the right temperature for complacency bred by millenial laziness and hopelessness.
Or drop out, and matter to none.
What is it going to be?