brown circular grass carries rusty devices
beside lovely drain soup crescents
and only the Earth visits
until the wet air days of summer
when thick boys quickly bisect the balding quad
with unnoticing eyes and listless grip

I've been listening to a lot of early 90s music lately. Bush, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and the like. Before we know it, all the songs my generation grew up to will be considered "oldies" and played during a wonderful 50-minute-out-of-every-hour-with-no-less-than-10-straight-
minutes-of-80s-and-90s-music-crazy-cool-radio-jam-session.

My real question has to do with the following. Today, certain bands remain on t-shirts as some sort of reincarnation of 1970s rocking cool. Only certain groups survive, such as Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Synyrd. Which of the early 1990s bands will remain?

Bad Religion:

Now here I go.
Hope I don't break down.
I won't take anything, I don't need anything.
Don't want to exist, I can't persist.
Please stop before I do it again,
just talk about nothing, let's talk about nothing,
let's talk about no one, please talk about no one, someone, anyone.

You and me have a disease,
you affect me, you infect me,
I'm afflicted, you're addicted,
you and me, you and me.

You're clear - as a heavy lead curtain want to drill you - like an ocean,
we can work it out, I've been running out, now I'm running out.

I feel infected sometimes.

The hair between Larron's fingers was black and thick. It encouraged his nose to remind him of the cigars he once loved. Customers arriving as soon as shop was open is unusual, especially Mexican customers. The two men gave Larron a feeling of dread. That surprised him, and his stomach confirmed the oddity of his instincts. But buzzcuts were fast.

"I need to get to work and got a long way to drive. Can you please just cut it short?" The man's skin, brown and warm, reminded him of coffee. This man, the older of two, had eaten well recently. His layer of fat was just thick enough to produce a swell of flesh above the tight paper collar Larron now tied around the man's neck.

Strange. He was a guy who cared about his appearance, it was obvious. He could tell from the way the man's goatee was carefully cut. The man had used scissors on it less than a day ago. His hair was combed sharply and patted constantly from the look of things.

"I don't believe I know you gentlemen. Passing through?"

"Si. Yes, we were driving all night and on our way to work when we saw your place."

Larron's Barber Shop was the only such place on North 220 for over sixty miles. Why would two Mexicans stop at his shop at 6 A.M. to get haircuts after driving all night?

"Please, can you shave off my beard, too?"

Larron turned from his suspiscious patron and found a blade. He rinsed the razor slowly, letting the hot water also clean the grease from between his fingers and nails. Larron's mind concluded the story of the man now sitting in his chair. This Mexican has robbed a bank, certainly. Maybe they raped and robbed a woman, in that order. Larron was positive. He judged the sharpness of the razor blade with his hard thumb. He had always wanted to do that thing which might justify him. He had never found that thing in life that everyone is supposed to find. In the movies it's called destiny. In the movies they were always telling you about how to find life, how to really be. Larron had never truly been anything but a fleshy container of watered down ideas. He was smart, but shy. It seemed to him always, and he avoided the thought as often as was possible, that they had forever canceled each other out in him. In the movies the characters are always perfect, even the antagonists. Gregory Peck, Rock Hudson, or even, hell, Mickey Rooney knew less about life in those pictures than these monkeys running from the law.

With that thought, Larron gave way to a new idea—he was just like these Mexicans. There is a big lie in the world, which has a neverending cameo in the movies. The falsehood of universal potential had been discovered, and Larron wrested the notion away from his consciousness. But it was impossible. From the seconds lapsed in this epiphany he had gained wisdom of 49 years worth of indecision and fear. He had been looking for something that wasn't there, an idea designed and delivered to him falsely through the years—that something was coming. The movies never ended without a propect of impending discovery, of something better coming.

"I'm sorry. I had to open a new razor blade." Larron looked at the younger man. His denim shorts squashed the old, brown cushion, and he seemed uneasy. Then Larron realized that he liked the men. They had been deceived, too. What if everyone knew about this? His mind fragmented with questions and answers, fear and relief.

"Do you boys ever go to the picture shows?"

The older man moved his head without thinking, and apologized as Larron's palm corrected the problem. "We go whenever there's nothing better to do. We haven't been in a long while. No good love stories for him." He joked with his friend in the chair.

Larron's brow relaxed suddenly. "Have either of you seen that new show about an English teacher who tries to teach this girl with a thick accent to speak properly? Well, he does it all right and doesn't seem to care about her leaving after. After a spell, he comes to find out that he loves her. She comes back and it looks like everything is going to be happily ever after." He had enjoyed the film when he saw it, but now, as he described the plot, he realized the absurdity. Larron pictured the actors on the set getting their faces painted and stage hands bringing them tea and drinks and asking what more they would like. They probably talked about how silly the movie they were making would turn out to be. Larron felt like everyone had lied to him.

The older man stood up after Larron was finished and told him that he hadn't seen the movie. "We will see if that movie is playing when we get home. It sounds good." The man pulled his bill fold. "What's the damage?"

Larron hadn't heard the man's last sentence. "'Scuse me?"

"How much do I owe you?"

Larron felt a horrible warmth flush his insides. "It's on the house today." He was suddenly very sad.

"Are you sure? You did both a haircut and a shave, I feel like I should pay."

"No, no, just tell your friends to stop on by and we'll call it even." Larron looked into the older man's eyes for the first time.

"Well, I'm much obliged. You have a great day." The metal slabs the two men opened and shut on the old Chevrolet left some terrible moan in his ears. Larron walked to the dusty glass door of his shop and watched the black and silver car kick up a wave of dust from the road. It was 6:15 A.M. Larron looked up at the bell on top of the door and jabbed it with the end of his broom handle. He listened to the ringing fade and wished he had died as a child.