The Spelunker
He waddles into the room.
They all watch his camel’s
walk in their desert.
Heads swing like pendulums
as he wends his way their way.
He spelunkles their cave,
lower jaw fixed in a
smiling pout.
Ill-fitting teeth make a bat-clacking
cha-cha as he moves.
Brillo-tufted chin jerkily
moves in synch with them.
A toupee rests on his head
like a beret on a bowling ball,
gray hair matted,
weighted-stiff with muck
sponged from the air
around him.
This day he changed his
shirt,
a sere cloth of
indistinguishable design.
Pearly-white skin peeps
through a four-inch rent
where he clutches his
pouch but fails to cover a droopy breast.
He unearths a seat, hidden
beneath a pile of jackets,
people on either side
leaning Towers of Pisa.
He mines his pouch
as their lemon-sucking
faces glower,
and removes a sleeve of
Saltine crackers.
gnaws at one daintily, pinky
in the air.
Crumbs soon litter the
table.
He mumbles garbled
non-sequiturs
at the world around him.
Teeth and tongue conspire to
splinter it with his presence,
then sighs as the Towers
work to ignore him.
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