She woke up the next morning to find him crying in the kitchen because he said he had the anniversary blues. So she got into her car and turned on the radio in the hope of salvation but it was only looping bad rock. But still she ran down the street through the American rain and her feet slapped the ground without heeding. And the rain just continued all day and all night and the power lines went down with the weight of those anniversary blues.
He woke up the next morning in a two-man cell to find that his cellmate was singing the anniversary blues. So he just curled up again on the hard prison bench and pretended the man’s voice was the eternal ray of heaven. But the prisoner kept singing in the hope of salvation about stray cats and heroin and poor women wearing second hand scarves. And the walls of the cell bore witness to the song and its power to ward off those cold bouts of anniversary blues.
The singer woke up the next morning only to find that his cellmate had died of the anniversary blues. So he decided to stop singing for fear of catching the virus that sent men disappearing like an item of week-old copy. But the prison guards got lonely and began tapping their fingers at night and even polishing their badges. And the windows of the prison began to fog up with the heat of their breath as they whispered those cold anniversary blues.
The prison guard woke up the next morning with a rash and a hard case of derelicted anniversary blues. So he got out his shotgun and went down to the mall to preach the suddenly real and awful good tidings. But the shopkeepers started running and the children were screaming and tripping over and losing their marbles. And the streets were soon empty like the cities post-holocaust and the government blamed it on the anniversary blues.
The shopkeeper woke up the next morning with an answer to the problem of the anniversary blues. So he put a sign out the front of his shop in celebration of the discounts on offer as a result of the apocalypse. But the mother of the child who’d run away in a panic came back into town to buy some new dresses. And the shoes fitted perfectly and the child was so excited she started dancing to the radio that was playing the anniversary blues.
The mother woke up the next morning to discover not even a trace of the old anniversary blues. So she put on her cap and her shoes and her coat and walked out into a grey morning without caring. But the cars in the streets drove themselves round and round like a tramp with a new pair of pants. And the cars were so clean that little beads of pure water like tears caught traces of sunlight in the air like the hint of the anniversary blues.
The tramp woke up as usual that Saturday to the sound of a man whistling the anniversary blues. So he watched as the man staggered past his park bench like he’d been finally hit by the force of unavoidable death. But the two of them sat in the mist in the park and said nothing and took off their heads. And the leaves of the trees started falling in time to the beat of those hard indescribable everlasting imaginary warm-blooded anniversary blues.
