The Firemen, the poem, the Meaning of Things

I awoke today as I do most everyday, taking three deep breaths after planting my rejuvenated feet firmly and authoritatively on my hardwood floors and coolly walking to my refrigerator to have marmalade on a scone and morning tea. I heard sirens of a fire engine coming my direction and stop at my building and wondered if miss Brixton left her gas on again. I heard the feet pounding the stairs--there seemed to be a lot of them (feet, not stairs)--and I was getting a little nervous. They stopped in front of my door--I didn't know what they were doing. I went to my door to watch from the keyhole when suddenly they screamed "ONE, TWO-" and my door exploded towards me like a bomb went off!!! I threw myself to the floor covering my face and one of the firemen yelled, through a gas mask, "Don't worry, sir, we'll get you out of here safe!" Two of them grabbed me under my arms and I cried, "What the devil is the meaning of THIS?!?!" Suddenly one of them gave me an oxygen mask and I felt much calmer. I regained my wits and again cried, "What is the meaning of this?!" Once outside one of them replied, "What do you mean? We got a call--said you were in trouble?"

"A call? A call from where?"

"That's confidential."

"I can't know who called the firemen on me?"

The truck driver yelled out, "It came from this building--apartment 511!"

Flabbergasted, I retorted, "That's MY apartment!"

"Then we came to the right place!" the driver shot back.

"But I never called anyone--I just woke up! When did this 'call' come in?"

"It came in two hours ago--said a fire was starting and you were pinned under your refrigerator."

"Joe, quit giving away goddamn confidential information. You'll fuck up our POSITION!!!"

"That's ABSURD!!! THERE WAS NEVER A FIRE!!! Did you say it took you two hours to respond?"

"Yes, sir."

"How could it take so long--you're 6 blocks away."

"Why? It's not like you had a fire or anything."

"But you didn't know that!"

"You did. That's good enough for us."

Another one piped in like a harlequin in a Chinese POW camp, "Why would you call if there was never a fire."

"I never called."

"It says here we got the call from this address."

"STOP GIVING AWAY CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION!"

"It says that where?"

"Nowhere you can see. Is there a fire or not."

"Yeah, we got a call from here," that mongoloid Joe interrupted again, "from a guy with a strange British accent--kinda sounded like a pussy." He chuckled.

"Joe, I'll have your ass suspended-"

"I never called anyone. I don't even have a working phone!"

"Yeah, what happened to it? Burned up in the fire?" They all started laughing.

"No--I--"

"Yeah, right. Come on, you guys. Let's get outta here." They muttered more profanities as they walked away, no doubt aimed at my meddling. It's so infuriating. I was shamed, I was angered. All I could do was stand there shaking like a mouse in the tundra.

"What about my door?" I called meekly.

"Burn it!"

"Yeah, so we can come back and fuck up the rest of your house, dumbshit." They were all getting into the truck, laughing, as I, innocent as the day I was born, stood degraded and terribly alone. I wanted to tell them I didn't appreciate their knife-like insults, their obscenity. I wanted to call the station, the mayor, anyone who might reprimand these thugs who blow up human decency like a delinquent destroys the frog with a firecracker. I wanted to, but it felt so futile--I felt futile. I walked despondently up to my door-less apartment where Parphit was waiting outside with that dopey grin on his face and ridiculous "Bull Shirt." "Maybe my place get so hot, you thought there was FIRE!!! Haha, you silly man." I walked right by him a laid down on my bed, face down, thinking I might pass out and suffocate myself accidentally. I turned over and looked at my phone. I picked up the receiver and still no semblance of a signal as there hadn't been for days.

----------------------


Later that evening Spurlock came over with his new pet, a gaily colored parrot on his shoulder. That made me feel a little better. "And what is your name," I inquired.

"Awwk, I am free from form, awwk. Labels negate, awwk."

"I call him 'Life'." Spurlock said with that deft coolness that defies all natural chaos.

"Awwk, I am all things, awwk."

"Your poem IS essence. It is what everything is about. Every empire, every struggle, every criminally desperate act of the desperate criminal. It reminds me of every woman I ever made love to. Every one that has broken my heart, every one I've left deserted on an island when I knew they could never come with me. Ah, Lucia..." a solitary tear dropped from his eye and he smiled. "Your poem is life. That's why I him that." He never talked too much of Lucia. That was the one subject that always disrupted his otherwise river-like flow through life.

And I asked him, "What is the meaning of things?"

He replied, "Things define further what we never knew and blur the things we did know into obscurity. Yet they have no sense of otherness. That thing is what it is. It's form follows function, and function follows mind. It is the paradox of manifest thought that obscures true knowledge."

"I am depressed."