A Supermarket Now

The cable bill hadn’t been paid for a long time, and so there was no cable.  The light bill hadn’t been paid for sometime either, still there was light.  It campaigned through half open windows.  It stood sentry at half beaten doors.  It crept down quick as it made its way through setting halls.  Holding there only for the time before it moved on.  But not time like the thing that ticked along upon a counter.  Not like the thing that ticked along upon another wall.  Those things only measured the wasting of hours.  This extended beyond those that had become years.

A light in the kitchen was switched.  Nothing happened.  Most everything remained as it was before.  A pantry was rummaged through.  Nothing of the immediate was found.  There was nothing there that could be used without the same expectation that had already failed the light-switch.  And so a couch was overturned.  It was in the living room.  Given the limits of space it was practically the same location as had been the kitchen before.  Five quarters popped down as the couch was tossed.  Some more duct tape would later have to be applied.

Some quarters were grabbed by a hand and legs carried all of a body out a half beaten door.  Light entered.  But not because that is what it is paid to do.  Payment for this light was only in certain cancers of the skin, and worries like that never seemed so certain during these colder months.

It wasn’t a long walk to the supermarket.  Not that it would have mattered.  Bellies had to be filled.  Quarters had to be returned to circulation.  From a mint in Denver they came . . . to a couch in an apartment they’d gone . . . and now somewhere else they would be.  And before that a parking lot had to be crossed. That was being done.

Most of the cars in the parking lot were crap.  Some had bumper stickers.  Some did not.  All of them could have used a wash.  All of them could have used some other things.  There was still plenty of air to breathe.  That much was still free.  There wasn’t much ground to cover.  At least not on the outside anymore.  Two suits were standing by the one car that wasn’t crap.  Inside the suits stood men who had almost no reason to walk at all.  Not that many of their reasons were known.  Not many of them were even guessed at.

Doors opened but they had to be pushed.  Seems someone had forgot to pay the automatic slide bill.  Or perhaps they’d neglected it on purpose.  Either way the door fulfilled on it’s meaning to any reasonable measure of its original intent.  It was, after all, only a door.

Some filthy kids stood right beyond the inside.  They did what filthy kids sometimes did.  Popped quarters into the machine, grabbed up prizes worth only a fraction of the coins they’d just given away.  They had no shoes.  They had tank tops and grocery store feet.  There are reasons for all this.  There are mothers and fathers beside.
Along with the swindle these dirt children had no idea what muzak had done to the song above them.  The one written by the butcher’s assistant who’d become a congressman and died while coming down another hill.  Had there been words then a woman who’d shared would have something to say about electronics and baseball scores.  There were no words.  Not even better ones.

Some of these better words could have gone into describing the packaging that made the aisles all full.  But they won’t be.  That is how it is supposed to go.  Pictures of happy people eating pork and drinking soda.  Pictures of happy people on the rag standing next to pictures of happy people suffering the hemorrhoids.  There were no pictures of people on the loaves of bread.  There were no signs proclaiming how many slices were to be had inside what was not cellophane but still was plastic.  It did not matter.  Smiling faces didn’t make the bread taste any better.  They didn’t make the litter any more attractive or the sustenance more valued.  They just wasted space as they sometimes wasted time.
Bread was grabbed and a section left.  Exactly in that order.  Exactly in that sequence.  As he suits and their men stood by the sugar aisle marking marks and noting notes on clipboards of no more description and with Mont Blancs and Watermen.  They were paid to much to shop here . . . probably paid to much to work here too.  They took no notice and thought only of  the meal to come after the next store in their chain.  In the chain.  Someone’s chain . . . at least it was to those who got to pull it.

An electric and rubber conveyer moved the bread along until it was grabbed up by bone and what had come to cover that bone.  It was scanned over a device that judged it’s predetermined worth.  The five coins were then broken up into smaller values.  Some going to one place and some going to another.