a cop of cafe

part 2

He now surveyed the vast canvas, the landscape of his imagination would come to fruition here on these four walls. Beyond this encased environment, in the great outdoors, a segmented bird pecked on a creased window pane. When the bird moved, flitting on the bricks, its visage cracked like a sinister grin, and Terry pulled a face then put it in his pocket. He would keep it on a string, ready to pull out when the need arose.

Now Terry stood in a t-shirt blowing a bubble and pondered his next move. In the world of a hunter gatherer, life was like a game of chess. A person, an artist and hunter like himself, needed to think beyond the next move. Terry was flowing past that and his sight permeated the lies that flooded his immediate encircling present. He swirled one hand into the vortex and witnessed a wise old man, dressed in red and white like a buffoon, and faces risen to the smoky curved glass of inebriation. Soon this gave way to an English cottage and the naked embrace of lovers, but they were crying, and Terry shunned them, or any group of partying well wishers or wishers throwing copper down a well, or blazing raven haired beauties in brothels or boardrooms. Now Terry longed for solace, but his groping sight told him to put on clean socks and seek caffeine, which was the spice of endeavor. Terry followed the moves like a roadmap, like science, as in the letter of the law. He dressed and broke the seal of his abode to witness the world beyond the threshold.

Off then, and the sidewalk beckoned. He faced a gauntlet now, and he cravenly progressed, a seeming malcontent in wonderland. Pebbles formed from the concrete, but posies crept from the debris in a series of conundrums that kept Terry guessing step to step. He wandered and pondered the puzzles that went beneath around and over his head. Soon he drifted among an influx of souls, all unknown, but now a passage in the story of Terry-today's voyage through space and time. A dark haired woman with long eyebrows considered him from her porch, children toted water but not from a creek but the supermarket, he saw a group of women and their German ancestry glowed like brilliant lava flows under their hardened faces and forearms.

Finally he neared town, recognizable from the brick walls that began to line the street like narrowing canyons and a heavy traffic light that dangled fruity and yellow like a mechanized bunch of bananas. The bunch glowered with a big red cyclops' eye. Half dressed plastic people strutted behind glass partitions. Terry almost felt he could reach through the veil but for the streaks of silty runoff and specks of pigeon shit that littered his view. Another glass barrier flaunted a frilly laced troglodyte in a party dress. Streamers, pine trees with ornaments, and gold stars festooned every window. Terry wasn't amused and he turned right heading for the town's only bridge, a stone block construction that crossed a moss banked stream bed. Beyond lay the bowels of his town and the wafting fragrance of bread and coffee.

Terry stopped then. A group of photographers were gathering sepia through their lenses, and blocked his progress. He searched his memory for recollection of his next move, when a young sunglassed protector of the peace broke through the conflagration of impediment, scattering the clucking shutter-cocks like sparrows from seed. The cop hugged his thermos and it clinked on his foil badge, holding the cafe's glass door open for a moment, and Terry slipped through to another dimension, a space beyond insight and requirement – a respite for the weary and a welcoming hearth for any despite their predilection for socks, clean or not.