Breathe Deep

(album: I Hope You're Sitting Down / Jack's Tulips - 1994)

The clerk smiled as she saw the same nut pick up a personal size grocery basket and head down aisle two
She smiled because periodically this guy would return with a basket full of glade lock and hold room freshener and deodorizer
It's a deodorizer that works on the same principle as a bug bomb
Simply push down on the button and it fills the room with a scented fog
The man would buy only about five or six cans at a time
He'd been coming in for about five weeks now
Sometimes he would come in twice a week
He seemed like a normal guy
He was kind of balding in his mid thirties wearing a black leather jacket
And he was always so damn dusty something soft about his features
It looked like it was makeup but it was just dust
He paid with a twenty and said thank you and left

When the man returned home he took the glade from the worthless little plastic sack
He placed one on the rug, one on the end table, one on the window sill, one under the TV, and one on the air conditioner
This might seem unusual except for the fact that his entire apartment was just filled with them
Every room on every surface
He figured he had about sixty of them in all each one's nozzle poised at the ready
He sighed and opened a beer
He started to push down the lock and hold buttons on the canisters
Slowly filling the room, working his way from the dining room into the den
Each room filling with a multi-scented fog
Desert bloom, evergreen, misty rose, fresh lemon, regular and unscented, pot pourri, wild oak, petunia, ocean mist
Musk, hazel wood, Irish nights, sandalwood, rain forest, country kitchen, natural prevention, orange blossom, Indian summer, and holiday candle
Calmly he sat on the couch, spilt his beer, and closed his eyes
Calmly he sat on the couch, spilt his beer, and closed his eyes