Jason Bredle

Anarchy

In a world where kids refer to a bad
pizza as "circle of death" and earth ball
is heralded as the sport which utilizes
the largest ball, you better believe
you’ll see some hotshot teenager
gallivanting around town in shorts
during what local television newscasts
will have christened "Winter Blast" just as you
should expect to see a group of drunken
townspeople riding in the back of a pickup
through the Wal-Mart parking lot
waving a rebel flag as if there were no
tomorrow and Anarchy had just leapt into
that blue Trans Am and hightailed it
to the state capital for some good old-fashioned
drinking and womanizing. Things will
have come to that, amigo, and this time
you can expect to see Anarchy achieve
some freaking results. I mean, in the past
He’s made some bad decisions that’ve post-
poned world domination and the grand
rise of mass turmoil (i.e.,
making out with His high school guidance
counselor Mrs. Tibbins, breaking both
His legs while trying to jump an abandoned
Plymouth on his motorcycle to impress some
girl, being repeatedly fined for fishing
without a license, briefly moving to New
Jersey at 18), but He’s learned
from them and guaranteed not to foul
anything up again. So look out
world because Charles Atlas isn’t going
to be able to step in, take
his shirt off, and flex for a while to make
everything better this time—Anarchy’ll chew
him up like a bucket of gizzards because muscle
mass doesn’t impress Him. He was in downtown
Louisville last Halloween making
preparations, rounding up a posse,
and spent the better part of the following six
months driving them up to a remote location
outside Marengo for His anarchy seminar
and unruliness training program—a program He
began working on in the ninth grade
while bouncing around His room eating
cornflakes in His underpants, watching
soft-core porn on Cinemax,
decorating His jean jacket with cool
Metallica and AC/DC
patches, watching and re-watching Triumph
of the Will, reading books about the Night Stalker
and Charles Manson, and giving Himself tattoos
by way of a makeshift apparatus
created out of a rusty needle, some frayed
wire, two C batteries, and a jar
of green ink (tattoos proclaiming His adoration
for, among other things, anarchy, AC/DC,
Metallica, the devil and all things demonic,
crucifixes, etc.). And eventually His scheme
burst forth from a swimming pool like a confused
millionaire gasping for breath: take
over the world, baby. So now He’s on
his way, crawling out of ye olde
Tailgators rejuvenated and swarming with energy,
ready to crash the tea party at any
moment, overturn some tables, bash
some finger sandwich trays against the wall,
toss some scalding hot tea into the crotches
of the most distinguished individuals, ready
to bust in yowling during Oakley’s four-
hour shower covered in Fijian war
paint, rip the soap from his overlathered
fingers and jam it down his throat. I mean,
you never know when it’ll all go down—
you could be driving down the street in your Honda
minding your own business when all of a sudden
this bearded lunatic leaps onto the hood
of your car and bashes your windshield in
with a two-by-four in a fit of lumberjackial
rage, you could be in your living room
reading up on what kids these days
are calling bad pizza in your teen slang
book when through the window leaps this rip-
roaring madman named Anarchy
who starts smashing all your knickknacks
and mantelpieces with an aluminum bat, you
could be at the Bigfoot on Christmas Eve
when a Ford Escort comes barreling through
the front door and out steps a drunk
woman who begins breaking every wine
bottle in sight and then in pops
Anarchy with a tire iron and a score to settle
with the night manager, you could be at
Ponderosa on the verge of biting into
some taco meat gone wildly bad
when you get distracted by this barbarianesque
wild man overturning the sundae
bar and breaking tables over the heads
of senior citizens, you could be down at the club
working on your electrifying backhand
when in parachutes this werewolf in a jump-
suit who lands on your back and begins gnawing
at your neck, you could be playing Trivial
Pursuit with your ex-girlfriend, trying to come
up with an answer for a question about which
sport uses the biggest ball, when out
of the closet brambles Anarchy and breaks the board
over your head while crying out in this
extraterrestrial-like war chant
we’ll someday hear that moment we’re all
anally probed and zapped through time
and space to serve as slaves for a civilization
of raccoons on some three-sunned
planet in M31, you could be
in Cheyenne, in Santa Clara del Cobre
having not showered in days, in Houston,
on your way to Asheville with someone you love
and it won’t matter, He’ll take her away
regardless, and henceforward you’ll keep
that empty Tropicana bottle and razor
blade on your dresser and I’ll always carry
140 pesos with me wherever I go.