The city, so electric in the day,
At night has tucked its denizens away;
Out by the highway, shining in the rough,
Frank’s Diner, always open, sells foodstuffs.
This night, especially, the place seems doomed:
No customers make purchase in this tomb,
The lights are dimmed, the place seems closed (or worse)
Save for one patron ‘mong the universe.
Our customer does not sit normally,
But treads atop the counter informally;
Astride the world, the barefoot hero stalks:
A tiny green-skinned gecko that can talk.
His coffee, man-sized, far too huge for him,
Sits idle as he banters through his grin:
“Check my assumptions, madame, if you please;
I’m unfamiliar, beg your expertise,
For I, a lowly animal, don’t know
How diners work, how things are meant to go.
So you assert you’re open all day long,
And every day throughout the year, lifelong?”
His partner in this conversation leans
Against the counter ere this chat she cleaned:
The rag for her vocation in her hand
Betrays her sidework in this no man’s land.
Exhausted, humorless, she makes reply:
“That’s what the 24-7 would imply.”
This gecko, unrepentant in the face
Of th’ waitress’s gruff answer, gruffer face,
And, jovial, he carries on with this:
“That’s kind of like how you can never miss
A licensed Geico agent anytime
You call them on their quite convenient line.”
Such godly truths speak out this timid skink,
Enough to make the nonbeliever shrink;
Like fire to man Prometheus hath brought,
The Geico hotline hath the gecko wrought.
The waitress, cunning, seasoned past her years,
Endeavors stoically, and sheds no tears,
And breaks not eye contact with her sole charge;
But utters, “Hmm,” like th’ news had been writ large
And obvious and known and not the word
Of new deliverance, salvation heard.
“Yeah, go online, or call them. Any time.”
The gecko shrugs, his prophecy sublime.
“Imagine that,” the waitress parries then,
Unmoving, inconceivably, again.
Brave gecko, in the dark, his message sent,
Acknowl’dging not th’ reality he’s rent
Asunder with his bombshell, sallies forth,
His appetite his true magnetic north,
Into new topics of this tete-a-tete,
“Now, how could I, a gecko, ever get
24-7 access to supply
My tummy with that lemon meringue pie?”
Lasciviously as he’s named th’ dessert,
And squinted, rubbed his hands; some pie pervert,
His waitress has her every right to cringe
Or turn her nose up at his want to binge.
Instead, she gathers her a stillness then;
An energy within her has been penned
And rises, unapparent, in her chest;
Beats fast her heart within her sober vest
Until no more can th’ rancor be contained
And with the menace ably she maintains,
With years of hardship barking from her past;
All dignity, authority, at last,
A primal scream she looses to the sky:
With righteous force, she hollers loudly, “Pie!”
An instant, infinitely quicky, from the back
A busser prairie dogs his head, yells back,
“A pie is coming,” shivers out the lad,
Obsequious and desperate, shaking bad,
Familiar with the wrath ‘f his overseer;
To fail her is to outright disappear.
Her order underway, the waitress rests,
Returning her attention to her guest
And her composure to its previous way,
Lets weigh on her the labors of the day.
“That’s how, baby,” she answers to the newt,
A look of resignation to him shoots,
And moves not on to clean, nor write the bill;
Forever leaning, staring, deathly still.
Here’s the original commercial. Patricia Belcher! She’s so great. The gecko is okay, too, I guess.
Thanks for reading my stuff! You didn’t need to, but you did, and now here we are.
Till next time.
This is Phil.