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Said the truck in front of me.

Rock-O Meats. Rock O’Meats. Rock o’ meats.

Rock-a-bye meat baby.

Letters. The lines and curves form a meaning. My brain forms a meaning.

There is no inherent meaning.

The day I realized that each person has a different perception was the day I stopped writing. Why bother, if your words are only doomed to be misunderstood?

A butcher’s attempt at branding causes me to envision a muscle-bound Irishman, maybe punching at carcasses in a meat locker somewhere, hence the nickname.

“Rock’s the name!” my imaginary pugilist gargles in a brogue. “Rock O’Meats! Top o’ the mornin’ to ya!”

Pow-pow. Ol’ Rock jabs at the sad sack of flesh that used to be a cow, and you hear the tinkle of ice crystals falling on the concrete floor.

“Pow-pow, cow.”

Rock thinks about how some words rhyme. He thinks about how poetry that rhymes is intrinsically inferior to poetry that does not, because your choice of words for the ends of each line is far more limited when it has to fit a pattern.

He thinks: “Why am I here? Among all this meat? Because somebody imagined me into it? I don’t seem to recall ever having had free will.”

I imagine him suddenly performing a balletic prance across the frozen storeroom and exclaiming in surprise, “Mercy me!”, just because I can.

Everybody is the God of somebody.

–C.L. Chapman