He stepped up to the microphone. "Hi," he said into it. His voice echoed blankly around the room.
The crowd watched with a shocked and reservedly appalled air about them as Mary nonchalantly reached in and pulled a piece of badly torn and crumpled paper out of his pocket. He spread it out on the podium and looked up again.
"Uh," he said. "I wrote this earlier." He cleared his throat. "I call it 'Mary, Your Enemy.'" He read it.
And making friends with boys-like-you,
He had kick-ass Hair, and skin like Teeth,
And Everyone loved to watch him Lose.
He explained his name was Mary,
And that he'd come from Outer Space.
Just to Waste a little Time,
And to Save the human race.
He said, "I'll stand on every corner,
On Every End of every street...
Because I've come to sell you quarters,
For a thousand bucks a-piece."
"You MAKE no SENSE!" cried the Audience.
"A thousand dollars for twenty-five cents!?
You must think us much Too Dense,
To figure out what we're up Against!"
Mary smiled, "Alright. Okay.
I don't like Money anyway."
But you could tell he wanted Something.
In his eyes, their eyes were Nothing.
"I'll give you all the gift I've grown;
the Guilt of thinking Twice.'
The Angels looked a little cheated,
But the boys... a little nice.
He said, "Every Girl and every boy,
That goes up to hug the Paranoid...
Will either help them get Destroyed,
Or go away with Brand-New Toys!"
The Audience stared and STARED and stared.
And they were Scared.
and they were scared.
"WE DON'T UNDERSTAND! WE DON'T UNDERSTAND!
KILL YOURSELF! AND ALL YOUR FANS!"
"WE DON'T UNDERSTAND! WE DON'T UNDERSTAND!
KILL YOURSELF! AND ALL YOUR FANS!"
Then I made mine forward,
To thicker, Closer parts of crowd.
Because I couldn't stand MYSELF,
I had to TEAR HIM DOWN.
"EVERY GEEK MACHINE!" I yelled,
"IN THEIR SIMPLISTIC FUCK-YOU BLISS!
WILL LOVE YOU AND WILL LEAVE YOU
WHEN YOU TREAT THEM ALL LIKE THIS!"
"And if I ever GOT MYSELF A YOU,
I know EXACTLY what I'd do."
He spoke my way, no smile, no laugh,
Just "I think you do too."
The crowd was getting nervous,
As I watched him fake surprise.
And what I saw was black...
And what I saw were eyes.
I had to HIT him, KICK him,
KNOCK HIM DOWN,
and drag him to The City.
I SMASHED him into Pieces,
Then I told him he was pretty.
He stayed alive on Sugar-Bread,
And sweets I'd buried in the ground.
He asked if he could leave,
But I said 'Love, that's not allowed.'
He said he didn't mind,
And that he'd "lived" in Places Worse.
He said he'd need some crayons...
He said I was a jerk.
I made him Things for Fourteen Years,
We talked of Death and Art,
How to build a Prophecy,
How to tear the world apart.
Twenty-eight ways to make Jesus cry,
I was in love, and so was I...
I learned a few things about Little-White-Lies,
I was in love, and so was I.
Then once upon a Midnight dreary,
He was sad, but I was cheery.
He said he needed stars and fame,
But I just laughed and called him names.
He said "I am Rubber and you are Glue,
And what bounces of me, sticks to You,
And though my Good Times here are through,
I hope all of your Dreams come true.
And I hope you're mauled by Giant Bats,
And thrown into a Sea of Cats,
And angry people Break your knees,
And laugh at all your Tragedies,
Until you cry, until you wail,
Until you get yourself Impaled.
On something bent, on something sharp,
on Something Scary in the Dark."
"So you can live your life unhappy,
You can live your life in fear.
I don't mind. I don't care.
It's on your time. I won't be here.
"Out of all the world's most sad advice
The only I've said more than twice,
Is never laugh,
And never smile,
And here's a bag of suicide."
My stomach dropped as my organs fell,
And the hard floor cracked my spine.
I gasped him one last question,
Did he always talk in Rhyme?
"No," he said, a Calm Girl,
As I smoldered on the Floor
"I fucking hate poets."
When Mary finished the crowd sat there in stunned silence. It considered the poem and searched itself for a reaction. It took about a minute and a half to decide exactly how offended it should actually be. After all, it did rhyme quite nicely.
An unhappy discontent grumbling sound stirred its way around the room as Mary watched expectantly from the stage. This was exactly the reaction he was hoping for. The poets, the literary and intellectual elite, began throwing ashtrays at his head.
One hit Mary solidly in the middle of his forehead before he could start running away. He fell to the ground, bleeding and moaning to himself as angry poets, livid with poetry and bloated self-images, clambered over tables and amplifiers and grabbed at Mary's feet. He kicked them. A lot. He swung his cane wildly and kicked, jumped to his feet and sprang through a curtained exit to the right. He ran over some crates, coat-racks and poets, several people doing a lot of fashionable drugs and some managerial staff, then he was out the back door and into the parking lot.
He struggled furiously with his hat, trying to stretch it down over his head.
"No!" said the hat. "I'm not saving you! Not this time. No way. Finish the mission and maybe we can talk."
Mary could hear the poets coming. He slammed the door shut and looked around frantically.
"You JERK!" he yelled as he jumped over a railing. Deep into the parking lot he ran as the mob of poets burst through the door and streamed out of the building behind him. He slid down on his knees, scraping them badly, and crawled desperately around looking for a blue Toyota Camry, license plate number "VTW 368." He found it over near the road, pulled his cane out of his hat and carved the words "YOUR MOTHER LOVES YOU" into it with its sharp end.
"Your motor loves you?" said the hat.
"It says mother! Now shut up and let me in!"
Mary stood up and braced himself, the poets saw him but he was already feeling saved. He felt the hat tugging teasingly on his head.
"Oh I don't know," it said warily. "I think maybe you should... Hmm. What should you do? I think maybe an apology--"
Just then, Mary was hit by a really big car. His body slammed against the windshield, rolled off the hood and fell onto a parked car. The approaching mob of poets continued to scream hateful things at him which Mary thought in the back of his mind would have been more effective if they rhymed. He tried to regain his balance and run down the street but before he could get his legs working he was suddenly hit by another really big car. He reeled forward and his hat flew in a separate direction than his body, he tumbled over a bridge, dropped nearly fifty feet, and landed on his back on somebody's roof.
"Ouch," said Mary as dust cleared. "Ouch, ouch, ouch."
The poets threw sticks and rocks over the side of the bridge. They were all missing Mary and he felt a contented smug feeling wash over him. He would have given them a coy little wave if the roof hadn't collapsed just then.
Mary then found himself in the middle of an understandably shocked family's kitchen table. So he gave them the coy little wave and realized it probably would have been more effective if he hadn't been lying on their turkey.
"Hi," he said slowly. "I'll just be, uh --"
He leapt off the table, ran upstairs, found a bathroom and locked himself in it. He barricaded the door shut, avoided the mirror, kicked out the tiny window and jumped through it, which, he would reflect upon later as a somewhat of a "bad idea."
It wasn't so much the fact that he landed in a neighbor's pool and was immediately attacked by a large dog named Matt that liked a refreshing swim in the evenings. It also wasn't so much the fact that as he climbed out of the pool the dog tore at his legs leaving gashes that would take months to fully heal. But after he had crawled out of the backyard and slowly up the hot gravel driveway, gasping for breath and bleeding and wishing he was alive so he could wish he was dead; he reached the end of the road and passed out. As he lay face down on the scalding hot pavement and blood poured from his head and face and hands, a little girl patiently rode her little orange tricycle over his head, ringing her little tricycle bell the entire way.