Stream of consciousness writing...

I've been reading a bit of beat poetry lately ... man, it's out there. Real stream of consciousnesses stuff. So, I thought that I'd have a go.

No men called Bob.

I once met a man who was wearing two left shoes. I asked him if he had two left feet.

‘It is physically impossible to have two left feet,’ he told me. ‘Because, whatever the shape of the other foot, one will always be on the right-hand side.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Then why do you wear two left shoes?’

He sighed. He had been asked this question before and the very regularity of it bored him to tears. ‘I used to have two full pairs of shoes,’ he said. ‘But one day, a man with two right feet stole from me. So now I only have two left shoes.’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I told him. ‘That makes no sense. You just told me that someone cannot have two right feet.’

And he smiled at me in a pitying fashion. ‘No. I said that you cannot have two left feet.’

But I did not feel bad, because I could see that, deep down, he envied my ignorance.

He bid me good day, and walked a mile in his own shoes in order to know himself better.

That evening I went home and dreamed of a better time that did not yet exist.

The next day I decided to dress all in yellow.

A yellow shirt.

A yellow pair pf trousers.

A yellow pair of socks.

And shoes.

And a yellow hat.

I wanted to see if any homeless people mistook me for a banana.

But I had no yellow hat.

Nor shirt.

Nor pants.

Nor socks either.

Instead I wore a red shirt. Blue jeans. Sneakers. I did not wear socks.

Later on that day someone called me Bob. I told him, that was not my name, and he got very upset. ‘Bob,’ he snivelled. ‘You changed your name.’

He started to cry. Huge gobs of tears, like translucent milk cartons, ran down his face. Printed on them were pictures of lost children.

He was still sobbing when I walked away. Calling for the lost children. Missing, Ethan Patz, 37 years old. Blond. Blue eyes. Walks with a limp. Two right feet.

I suspect he didn’t know that I wasn’t dressed as a banana.

Is that what is wrong with the world, I wonder? Are there no longer enough men called Bob.