A Thousand Monkeys

An infinite number of monkeys...,
Photo by olivander.

He lives alone, in a familiar filth that he wraps around himself like an old blanket for comfort. He dodges sleep throughout the night, until the brain breaks free of its moorings. The room fills with strangers, after-bar deviants, Bukowski bred and mulled in cheap red wine. The sloppy kiss of a butcher girl, the sullen slut, the prostitute drunk on bourbon, stumbling through Jackson Square, skipping on stars, throwing bottle caps at the boys tap dancing in their sneakers for money across the broken cobblestones of the river walk. The late night started to take its toll and he yawned until nearly passing out, and slipped into a ditch of dreamless sleep. He woke up in a cold library at three am, books jeering from their shelves. Seated at the long oak tables of the reference section, a thousand monkeys crouched over typewriters, tapping at the keys. The floor was littered with tomorrow’s books. The room stank. He picked up a few of the pages, scraped away the monkey shit, and began reading. It went something like this . . .