'Eyeballs' Poem by Brian Mayo

Everyone called him ‘Eyeballs."
They called him that because he didn't have any.

The rumor was… after a night of heavy drinking he wandered deep into Central Park and passed-out. He woke to find pigeons gnawing on his peepers like they were circus-peanuts.

Oh sure, the hospital fixed him up and cut out all the leftover bits the birds didn't eat. They also gave him a really nice pair of hand-painted replacement eyes, but a powerful toilet in Muncie, Indiana stole one, and a few months later he lost the other to a ten-year old boy at a bus stop in Rochester after a questionable game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. He had been trying to win the boy's baloney sandwich, the little prick. So, he was walking around with ping pong balls where his eyes should be. I don't know why they didn't call him "Ping Pong Balls." Maybe they tried it and discovered it was too long. Maybe it pissed off the Chinese. Either way, I think they made the right call.

I was sitting next to him at a diner just outside of Minneapolis last winter when he pulled out a fresh six pack. No, not a six-pack of beer; A six-pack of ping pong balls. It was well-known he changed them frequently because they tended to get soggy after a few weeks. However, this time I was surprised to see someone had sold him a pack of orange ones.

I watched him pop out his old ones with a coffee spoon (he used the bridge of his nose as a fulcrum) , and set them next to his half-eaten bowl of fresh-cut fruit. They rolled menacingly in my direction and came to rest against my water glass like they were naturally drawn to moisture. Unconcerned with runaway sporting equipment, he twisted in a fresh set of orbs and suddenly turned to me, wide-eyed, almost scaring me off of my stool. He extended a felt-tip pen in my direction.

"Would you mind dotting my eyes? "