Dogwood

All the show-off cast of the landscape have rushed onto the Spring.
Forsythia, Lilacs and magnolia,
Ornamental pear and the bright blue petites gushing under the neon green ground-cover.

And when they are done bragging,
The dogwood comes.

The one outside the kitchen window is my favorite.
Having been tortured by the grapevines
(nearly pulled to the earth in the vines mad climb)
Like a Bonsai on my hill,
I cut it free and keep it clear now.
Even though it is permanently crippled and bent
It rewards me with its Geisha bow
And silken bloom.

Good Friday

Good Friday

April 2, 2010

Sylvester is growing gracefully deaf

And I progressively weaker.

He sits with me

On the back porch stair,

In first strong sun of the Spring

We have been talking about the Seder.

Soon my friends and I

Will be seated at the table.

I don’t want to get profound, but,

Sylvester told me to talk about Jesus.

Jesus was a good Jew

Who spoke the truth that he knew

And feared no man but his father.

The time will come,

Sylvester said,

When your son will know

That this was the best of times

But he was busy sleeping,

That he was the best of fathers and sons,

His mother was the best cook,

And his brothers shared

All his best intentions.

When Sylvester dies

There will be

a small void

When his tiny life passes.

I have outlived cats before-

But he is different.

Who else will remind me

To talk about Jesus

At the Seder?

The Last Straw

“Go on and take it…

Take a little piece of my heart”

Janis Joplin

“No one knows exactly what goes on in there, in the mind or body of someone else. Organs often take over for one another when one is a little weak and another is a little stronger. One might think one is experiencing a pain in the stomach when it is really the heart muscle rending under the powerful weight of defeat and disappointment. A tired body? A tired soul? Who knows?”

Herbert Roth

The Last Straw

This is the story of the last straw. The one that broke the camel’s back.

I was going to the Royal Castle with a pocket full of change. I had carefully counted it out and knew to the penny how much was there. Exactly enough for a breakfast special and a birch beer. It was early on Saturday morning and I had just collected my paper route. I had paid for my papers for the week. I had already put my savings away in my bedroom—snuck in quietly and put eight dollars into a cigar box under my bed and snuck back out to my bike. I had just enough left over for breakfast. I pedaled over to the Royal Castle.

A couple of blocks away, by the side of the canal Jake Eperson and his brother leaned on their Vespas. They knew it was collection day. Other days of the week they might just steal one of my bundles of papers or pick up my wire cutters while I wasn’t looking. But on collection day they were waiting for me and they were after money. I guess they figured I would have all my collections still in my pocket. I tried to ride right by them but it was no use. They jumped on the motor scooters and caught up to me in a few seconds. I jumped off my bike and put down the kickstand and just waited while they propped their machines up on the center stands. Jake with his sandy colored hair down over his eyes said nothing but reached out and grabbed me by the shirt. His brother got behind me and pushed his hands down into my front pant pocket. He came up with loose change some of which fell into the dirt where we stood. After checking all the other pockets he pushed me into Jake. Jake just shoved me to the ground.

“Fifty cents? That’s it? That’s all you got is fifty stinkin’ cents?” There was another few pennies and a nickel in the dirt. I knew it was fifty-nine cents exactly. That’s what breakfast would have cost. It was pointless trying to explain to them. “You must have collected over thirty dollars today. Where is it?” “None of your business!” I told him. “I already paid for my papers and that’s all I got left.” “No way,” said Eperson, “You gotta have seven or eight dollars left even after you paid for the papers. Where is it?” I just stood there silently, slightly off balance while Jake’s brother tugged on my shirt and pulled me from side to side.

“Next week we’re going to be here again. Next week you bring all your money. Got it?”

I nodded. Jake’s brother shoved me down into the dirt. He held fast to the collar of my shirt so that as I fell the buttons popped off the front. Laying there in the sand in the coral rock and the stickers I watched them swing their legs over their Vespas and jump on the kickstarters. Jake turned to me while he pushed the aqua green machine off the stand and with a smile he tossed the change straight at me. “Go get some breakfast” he said. As they disappeared I got up and searched through the weeds and dirt and found forty-nine cents. I brushed myself off and got on my bike. I struggled to get the big bike with the huge basket and canvas saddle bags out of the sand and back up onto the blacktop and finished the ride to the Royal Castle.

After parking the bike I went into the air conditioned restaurant and sat on one of the spinning stools at the white and silver counter. The cook was flipping minced onions on the grille next to dozens of small square burgers. The sizzling, steaming smoke was sucked up by the hood over the grille but lots of the smell still reached the spinning seat and me. The saliva was running and I licked my lips. I could taste the eggs and grits and bacon. The mugs for the birch beer were frozen with a crust of ice on them so that when he pulled the sweet root beer out of the tap into the glass it was like ice itself. I put my change on the counter.

“What’ll it be?” said the counter man, though he knew I came in every Saturday and ordered the same thing. “Breakfast. Over easy with grits and bacon. And a mug of birch beer, please.” Then I had to add “but I only got forty-nine cents. Could I owe you the dime?”

I could see his mind working like a mill stone. He absently wiped the same spot on the counter with his greasy white rag. Finally he said, “Naw. Can’t do that. Boss’d be really pissed if I started that kinda stuff.” He just stopped wiping and turned back to the grill. I just sat there no longer salivating. I was starting to shake like I had the chills. Uncontrollable shaking. The smell of the cooking meat became sickening to me. My stomach twisted like a knot. I jumped off of the stool and began for the door. Halfway there I turned and looked back at the cook. I’d worked delivering seventy papers starting at three a.m. and then collected the week’s money at seventy houses. I was hungry. I’d been beaten and robbed and threatened. All this and standing there in the Royal Castle the only thing I could think about was the dime—one stinking dime—that this guy wouldn’t trust me for. I started back towards the counter but before I got there I was seized by a gut-wrenching urge to scream—but it didn’t come out as a scream. It came out as vomit. Empty stomach vomit. The kind that is sour and liquid with nothing much in it but stomach juices. It formed a little puddle on the floor while the last few drops trickled out of my mouth on little spindly strings of saliva. My stomach was cramped. My skin was clammy and cold.

“Hey!” the guy behind the counter was yelling at me. The other people in the place looked at me with hate in their eyes. I just turned and walked out the door to my bike.

I pushed it off the sidewalk onto the black parking lot, jumped on and rode away.

Ducati Love

This guy, Joel, died, I am told in a phone call from Faith this afternoon. He had been sick and now she tells me he is dead. I only remember him from one occasion…no two, and if those two short meetings are any indication of his total character, I would have to conclude that he was a really nice guy.

The first time I met him was at a “Brotherhood” meeting that we had in Barry Sanel’s garage. “Barry Shows Us His Toys”, would have been a great title of the theme of the evening, because that is just what he did. The tour included his motorcycles and his riding mower that was covered with a sheetmetal cabin that made it look like a steam locomotive, and the old muscle car he has owned since he was 17. He showed us a slideshow of pictures of his motorcycle racing and Team —the yellow and brown, "Smokin’ Sanel Brothers YOO-HOO Motorbike Racers. He handed out YOO-HOOs and other soft drinks and we sat in his garage and shot the shit.

It was fun.

Joel was there. He was not a member of the brotherhood or, for that matter, the Temple. He came because Jerry (I think) knew he liked motorcycles and invited Joel to come to the ‘party’. Joel seemed to have a good time and I liked him immediately. We talked about riding and our bikes and when He told me about the Ducati he rode, I admitted that I had never ridden a Ducati. Without a bit of hesitation he invited me to go for a ride. We met a week or two later and when I got to his house He showed me his two, red, Ducati motor bikes, one of which he insisted I ride. I left my black F-650 and rode this sleek, fire-engine red, performance bike instead. What a thrill. When I got back from tearing up the back roads of Bear Mountain state park with this scalpel of a motorcycle and I got on my single cylinder Swiss Army Bike I felt as if I were riding on Barry’s riding mower made to look like a choo-choo train. It was all fun for both Joel and I. I admit that I don’t think I ever saw him again. I think of that ride all the time.

So here is to a Nice Guy! In my mind he’s riding a hot bike some great place now. The weather is grand and the roads are clean and curvy. Oh! And I hope it’s a red bike. He liked red.

I repent!
I give up my wicked ways.
I will illustrate everything I write
without benefit of wealth.
Just to show I've really changed,
I took this photograph myself!
(all rights reserved,
not to be used without permission.
Copyright
Patented
Cursed
A pox on all who use this
artistic representation
without paying me first
a million scadzillion dollars.)

Steal From Me

(for Joel-who wanted to know where the picture came from.)

Steal from me
The ideas are not mine
They are in my head
And gone
Quickly if I don’t use them,
Wisely,
And fast,
Than they are gone and past.
Or stuck in clay
Through heat
And under paint
In either case
Away.

Steal them from me
There are a million more out there.
Like fruit
In the air
To be picked
Or to fall through time
To other fertile soil.

I have food
And I am not worried
That it will run out
On the road.
I am never lost
It is only at the edge of sleep
Once each day
That I confront my weaknesses
And blink before it becomes light.
Steal from me—
It is alright.

A See-Thru Floor in Manahattan

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The white man

Stands in front of the crowd

His voice it is weak-

He used to be loud.

He used to be nervous-

but now he is proud.

He wasn’t welcome before

But now he’s allowed

Because the times they are a changing.

If he can sing

The same song again

And we can ovate him

With a great big amen

I shouldn’t be bashful

To post an old poem

So here comes a memory

Here comes a thought

From the past

From the heart

From a moody morning

Before the job

Did start.

_________________________________

A See-Thru Floor in Manhattan

White clouds of steam wave from the tops of the buildings

Dark crowds of people stream from Grand Central below.

Without looking up they march to the light and the cross walk

through the maze of puddles and piles of snow.

The sine wave of cycles of boom and recession

have altered the buildings and painted their faces

and girdled their intentions

with marble and glass

and cast iron corners

protecting the brickwork

are scared and twisted

from a million containers of trash

pushed out their ass.

Things fall off of the tops of the buildings

tumble to the sidewalk and kill people below.

Playing the odds on the concrete roulette wheel

the future is getting where you’ve got to go.

The tourists look up while God looks down

He has set gargoyles and fairies

eggs and darts

arrows and railings

lions and stars

in the heads of young men

wearing seersucker suits

and tortoise shell glasses

with ‘T’ square and compass

and HB pencils

sketching thoughtless angles of perspective

narrow, lip-sync, tracing paper reflection

for the most part ingenuous imitation

occasional grand theft

thrown in--

Look up past the third story

of most of these buildings

that is where today ends

and history begins.

In a pasture muck deep

throw in garbage and stones

to dry up the creek

wall in the space where the trees did bend

and the deer trails wound

and the burghers discarded

the slaves’

flesh and bones.

Before the winter angels blow

and the garden is brown

a stone foundation must be laid down

and a corn crib fashioned from

the corpse of the trees.

Mortar and brick

limestone and marble

neon and glass

paint and mirror.

Cover the clapboard with mortar and brick

and the brick with limestone from Indiana

and the limestone with marble from Tennessee

and the marble

with glass and mirror and neon tube

from Italy and Japan

the hard edge of history

dressing itself

before the unblinking eyes

of the man on the street.

The Previous Owner

The previous owner,

Was a seedy punch-face man

Pudgy and pink

And I disliked him

He was belligerent and sly

Looking for a score

An advantage

I watched his pudgy little boy

Look over the edge of the cut and fill,

That held my house like a hand,

And ask me if he could come down.

I invited him to dinner once or twice

He looked up at my three sons

And wanted to join the family.

I disliked the fellow,

The previous owner,

But, if nothing else, he appreciated distance

And privacy.

He stayed back on his little plot of ground

And he left the thick hedgerow of trees

So that I wouldn’t see him

Nor he me.

We needed no fences

For neither of us looked

Nor wanted to see

Or to be seen.

Before the previous owner moved away

He came to our front door

With his wife and son

And invited himself in.

We spent the only half an hour,

Together in a room,

The only half hour in all those years.

He wished me well

While his son waved goodbye

I stood there baffled waving too.

When you moved in

You built a fence—an ugly fence—

Of pipe and wire and paint.

You took down enough of the trees

So that I had to see

Your chicken coop-like playhouse

Your broken power pole

Secured with yellow

Polypropylene rope

Tied to a tree

That belonged to me

Your perpetual

Driveway development

Moved ever closer towards

The property line

And when you realized that I could not help but see

You built an even uglier fence

And painted it

So that it would stand out

In my face

Leaning like the electric pole

On your piles and scars on the hillside,

Like a cleft palate

Or a harelip.

The previous owner

Might have known me

And me, he…

But you, my friend?

That could never be.

Flat Bagels

(Did someone say "Flat Bagels"? The other day someone mentioned them and I remembered the taste and the smell of them baking. I also remembered that I had written something about them-I found it and here it is.)

I thought I had figured out how long it takes for poppy seeds to make their way through my alimentary canal. Thirty-six hours. I ate a flat bagel as I walked through Grand Central and sat on the four o’clock train on Friday afternoon. It did occur to me that there were a lot of seeds on that thing but it wasn’t until this morning that I got the report. A visual inspection of my bowel movement confirmed uncountable numbers of tiny, black, pits and so I said “Ahh Haa!” Thirty-six hours plus or minus. I happened to mention it to Liz. “I know how long it takes poppy seeds to make their way through me…” She didn’t even look up from the Sunday paper. “How do you know?” “I checked. I ate a flat bagel Friday afternoon and the seeds have evidenced themselves just now. Thirty six hours!” I poured a second coffee for myself and got her cup and made one for her as well. “What about the cookies you ate last night? Poppy seed Humentashen!” I detected a hint of superiority in her voice (damn the carb counters of the world) but her grasp of the obvious flaw in my theory could not be denied.

I love flat bagels. It is one of my great weaknesses. One could attribute it to how tired I am when I am heading for the afternoon train. One could say that I deserve it as a small reward for the sacrifice I make all day. I do not delude myself at all. It is just a tactile weakness not better or worse than a heroin addiction or a craving for chocolate, or cocaine or whiskey. I crave the salty mix of seeds and spice and the crunchy, chewy feeling in my mouth. No matter that I promise myself that I will not buy one (they are overpriced), that I do not need the calories (I am not overweight but my physique is not properly balanced), that I must save my self for Liz’s home-cooked dinner (I am not a sexual cheat -my indiscretions are purely dietary), I buy one anyway.

I have been known to stand out front of the bakery for fifteen minutes and debate all the points but in the end I almost always end up in line. “Flat bagel, please. Yes, everything. Wait, I think I have correct change.” I even go so far as to promise myself that I will not take a bite until I have found a seat on the train, gotten my ticket pinned to my lapel and taken out my reading materiel or Sony Walkman and earphones. Would you believe that I cannot even keep that simple promise to myself. I cannot stop myself—as I stride through the huge terminal I cannot help reaching into the bag and ripping off a small bit of the crust. Then another and another. I become ashamed of myself. By the time I finally find my seat the bagel is nearly half gone and I have forgotten my pledge to myself, my embarrassment, my initial resolve to not buy it in the first place. By the time I am done I always wish I had bought a bottle of water and my mouth is full of bits of seeds.

The latest round of diet fads has not helped my sense of guilt. All carbohydrates are bad, I am told. Dinner has been distilled down to meat with a side dish of salad or a vegetable (some vegetables are considered unacceptable on these “low-carb” diets as well though I cannot figure out why. Carrots used to be good for me but no more.) Lunch consists of a sandwich without the bread—there is really nothing on the lunch menu that appeals to me at all. Unless I were to eat the same thing I know we will be having for dinner but then dinner would be a boring disappointment. Breakfast? Eggs. They used to be bad for me, didn’t they? Now they are good. Of course if you want them to be really good they must be yolk-less, food-colored, egg “substitutes”, the ones that come in a milk carton. You whip some of those up and make an omelet with onions and peppers and top the whole thing off with a fistful of low-fat cheese. This is eaten without toast (you may have a slice of “whole wheat, sliced thin, diet bread” but once you taste it you will never be tempted to include it in your breakfast again. It is not worthy.) To truly make this breakfast grand you will want to include a couple of slices of turkey bacon and a cup of coffee with skim milk and sugar substitute. I tried this breakfast. I reverted to raisin bran (with extra raisins) and banana sliced over it. I used to consider this a good, guilt-free breakfast—now I am fraught with over-eaters remorse as I pour the one percent milk over the cereal. But this guilt is nothing compared to the self-flagellation I wish I could inflict about three times a week when I succumb to a flat-bagel urge.

Many people, lately, have become soldiers in the low-carb army. They knot in tiny clusters around the buffet table at parties and critique the selection of food. It is not unusual that there is absolutely nothing for them to eat. It is becoming more usual for there to be a platter of acceptable vegetables and low-fat cheeses for them to munch while they observe the gluttons amongst us eating the miniature quiche and batter-fried shrimp. “It’s amazing…it’s always the fat ones who eat that stuff” they will whisper to one another just loud enough to be heard over the crunching of celery. They will sip their wine while the unobservant will swig a beer. They will not touch the baked potato or the breadsticks or the wedding cake. They will tell each other they can’t wait to get home to a big bowl full of diet Jell-O and artificial whipped cream. On a decadent night watching TV they might eat exactly twenty pistachio nuts. I will make the rounds of the party looking—as I always do at these functions—for signs of intelligent and interesting conversations. “I lost twenty-two pounds and I’m never hungry…” “Have you tried the eggplant casserole? No breading!…” “No thanks, those kind of nuts are very high in carbs.” People used to talk about their cars and their stock portfolios. Remember when there was debate over your choice of Mac or PC? No more. It’s all about diets now. Low carb diets. And here I am addicted to flat bagels.

Morning Mirror

In the morning mirror

the flesh of an old man

climbed my bones

and hung on me

like an old coat

draped over the rung

of a ladder.

I touched a place

below my heart-

a spot I crossed

and swore to die-

a place I touched

when I talked to the flag-

with the old man's hands

that climbed my bones,

ribs like a ladder

leaning on my chest.

In the dark

I am a young man

I am a small man

tough and supple

compact and slim.

When I close may eyes

I am a gripping fist

and a jaw and a hip

and brown in the sun

unstretched

standing slack

without pain

untouchable and clean.

but in the morning mirror

I clearly see

the door

the darkness

the sun struggling

with the dark

to make one more day.

I Know That Guy

I Know That Guy

I knew that guy. I mean I didn’t really know him I just knew what he was all about from a momentary glimpse of him –him looking at me through the side window of his car and me looking back at him through mine. I knew him all right. And he knew I knew. We were standing between two mirrors. Me looking at him looking at me at him at me.

I was in the passenger side seat of my wife’s car. The windows were rolled up. It was hot and the A/C was on. Sick and tried of traveling. Tired of sitting in the passengers side seat of this piss ant little Japanese piece of shit on the New Jersey turnpike. Mile after mile of dodge’m cars and nothing scenery and numb conversation but mostly silence and boredom. In my own car, driving it might not have been so bad but in a tinny Jap car with the grinding road noise coming up through the floor and the tinny stereo speakers making music (when we turned it on) sound like crap it was bad. Bad.

My youngest boy was in the back seat breathing on the moon—snoring—exhausted from two hours on his skateboard in one of the worlds great skating parks. Not that you would know that it was all so great from looking at it. Built under an overpass near the stadium in extreme South Philly. Beer bottles and trash all over the place and graffiti on every non-breathing surface. But I can understand why that is just part of the deal—what makes it so great. The trash is a statement. My wife told me “ give me a couple of hours. If I lived near here and brought him here a lot I would form a committee to clean this place up. Hell," she said, " I could clean it up myself!" And she could too! But she missed the whole point. Clean has nothing to do with it. Clean is what she wants not what they want. In fact if she cleaned it up they would prolly stop coming to the goddamned place. Definitely, if you cleaned up the spray paint off the walls, you might as well put a hostess at a chain link gate and hand out Mickey Mouse ears at the door. The kids wouldn’t come any more. I felt like an asshole even being there with him. Especially with the god damned video camera in my hand. Now what ever possessed me to take that thing out of the car? Oh yeah! I did it so the kid could have some pictures of himself to show his buddies of him at this place. Like a legend –this place is—or something.

So he was in the back seat snoozing away and she is at the wheel and I might as well have had my hand in my pants pulling my pud for all the fun I was having. Just getting from here to there is all I was doing when the beat up old piece of shit liver colored sedan pulls up on the right of us. The traffic was crawling now—we’d hit the traffic trying to get back form the Jersey shore—and this beat piece of crap pulls up next to us. In the front seat are two kids—prolly about twenty years old each. One—the passenger—has a black baseball cap on backwards and his head is bobbing up and down to some music I can’t hear or maybe isn’t even there. Who knows? The driver needs a shave and has a long black greasy ponytail and a filthy white tee shirt. He’s driving hunched over and got his bottom lip pushed out and eyes straight ahead focused on the road like he’s doing a hundred and twenty miles an hour. He’s not rocking at all so I wonder if there really is any music. I was going to roll down the window just to see if the music was real but something told me not to bother. It didn’t matter anyway. Nothing in that car mattered. Just then I caught a look at the occupant of the rear seat. Hadda be their old man.

He hunched forward so the bill of the passenger’s baseball cap was right under his nose. When he turned his head to look out of the driver’s side window at me he had a look that spoke a hundred pages to me. We coulda sat down next to each other in a bar and told each other’s story without any problem. Easy as pie.

I figure his car was broken down some where. Was prolly broken down for a while and he had wiggled like a worm on hot asphalt for a couple of weeks trying to get it fixed. NO luck. He walked to the bus stop to get to work. The kids were in the back bed room sleeping. Some times they were there when he got home. They would be fresh from a shower and ready to go out for the evening. One of them was in junior college and had been for three and a half years. All set to get his two-year degree in a couple of months if he got one more physical Ed class. The other one worked at the K-mart as a stock boy. Never gave two shits about school and was perfectly happy to go in to the air-conditioned K-mart for his shift as long as the two hundred and forty four dollars a week kept coming and his mom kept on doing his laundry. He knew the old man was going to get on his case every couple of weeks or so and he would for sure get kicked out one of these days but o.k. till then, right?

Last night the old man was sleeping on the couch when they came home. They had a few burgers out on the kitchen table thawing and they were debating on whether they should fry up a bunch of potatoes to have with the salad left over from their mom and dad’s dinner. He came into the kitchen rubbing the sleep from his eyes and was standing there watching them plunder a bag of chips when his wife came down the stairs. She got into the middle of everything started to season the burgers and took the gallon of milk out of the refrigerator to pour into two huge glasses.

I gotta get a ride to the auto parts store tomorrow, he said out loud after thinking about saying it for a full five minutes. He had trouble believing these two man-child things living with him couldn’t read his mind and offer to do things for the household. Been a problem for a long time. Just couldn’t figure out that with all the “up-bringing” he and his wife had given them that they couldn’t just somehow do things…like making their beds and taking out the trash. It bothered him so that sometimes he got really depressed. Really depressed. And when he got depressed it made him mad and when he got mad he would open up like a howitzer and scream and say things that were on his mind—not necessarily logical, but on his mind none the less –and in the end everyone would be starring at him not knowing how to deal with this madman ( the truest description of him at this point was “mad man”) and everyone would be embarrassed ( especially him…).

So, there is this beat up sedan with these three guys siting in there and the one in the back is looking at me and I’m looking at him and I‘m thinking—I know that guy! Sure as I am bored to death out here on the New Jersey Turnpike and headed for my home, I know that guy. Sure as I am headed for my home where my oldest son is prolly still asleep or cooking himself a meal of steak and baked potatoes I know that guy. And he is looking back and forth from me to the back of his son’s head with the baseball cap and he’s wondering what ever happened to the baby he held in his arms. And he’s wondering what ever happened—what’s gonna happen to the boy who he taught to drive and told about condoms while the boy blushed and squirmed…What’s gonna happen to him? And he looked so old in the back seat of that crappy car. This used to be my car, he thought. I bought it new and babied it with oil changes and washed it and waxed it and took the whole family out for picnics in it and parked it out at the end of the parking lot at the shopping center cause I didn’t want to have it get all dinged up. Now it’s rusting and falling apart. No one ever replaces anything on it now that I gave it to them to use. There is no handle on the passenger side door. You gotta open up the window and reach outside to open that door. Who’s checking the oil? I don’t know. And here I am begging a ride to the Pep Boys so I can get a couple of parts to repair my own car and I feel like a beggar getting a ride in the car that used to be mine…

I know that guy. I might not be just like him but I’m enough like him that I know why he looked at me the way he did. We are in the same club. I used to think I couldn’t ever be like that. That my boys were different—Ha! That’s just the way it is my friend. I mean it’s not like they poke your eyes out and steal your girl but it’s damned close! That’s just the way it is!

I had to look away from that beat-up car. At just the same time he looked away from me. Up in the sky there was a DC-3 at about five thousand feet. How do I know it was a DC-3? I don't know. I just did. Last night I watched a big sleek jet coming in for a landing at Philadelphia international airport. I have no idea what kind of a jet it was. Just big and long and sleek like a greyhound dog with wings. But I know that was a DC-3 up there over the New Jersey Turnpike. Just like I know that guy in that beat up old car. I just know.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

I dedicate the following poems to all the people who think I am morbid, depressed, misaligned, transfixed by (the inevitability of) death, hopelessly negative and violent. I am not.

The “Happy Poem” is dedicated to my friend “Dan” (not real name. He knows who he is) and the “Faye Wray” poem is dedicated to everyone else in the world because we all think we are alone, we were all conceived in a vacuum, and exist through some fluke of biology. This is especially true of all the anti-porn folks out there (you know who you are too!) who refuse to believe their conception was not aided by Playboy, Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang and bootleg copies of Popeye’s and Olive Oyl’s ribald adventures (or some other imaginative sexual aid).

By the way…“In the cartoons, she (Olive Oyl) helps take care of a baby named Swee'Pea; it is not made clear if Swee'Pea is Olive Oyl's own son or an adopted foundling. In the comics, Swee'Pea is a foundling under Popeye's care. Later sources (mostly in the cartoon series) say that Swee'Pea is Olive Oyl's cousin or nephew that she has to take care of from time to time. “* Yeah! Right! We all know that Popeye is poppin’ a lot more than cans of spinach!

*Wikipedia Reference

A happy poem.

Indoor plumbing

Fuel efficient cars

A virus free computer

Life on Mars

A friend who sends me

Humorous e-mails

A youth spent exploring

Numerous females

A good night’s sleep

A good day’s work

A nap, a snack, a jack

(When it’s flat)

Good whiskey good food

Good shows on the tube

Time for bed

And you’re both

In the mood

A warm bed and

All the equipment is humming

Morning after coffee

And indoor plumbing.

Fay Ray’s Nipples

Grand Dad went to the matinee
To watch King Kong fondle Fay Ray
In his leathery hand the beauty lay
Wearing nothing but a satin negligee
My Daddy was born nine months to the day
After that fateful matinee
All because of Fay Ray’s nipples
Daddy was born in Phil-a-del-phi-aaa
All because of Fay Ray’s nipples

Flesh begets flesh
In the usual way
Daddy’s only here because of Fay Ray.

Daddy had an album
Of photos from the war
Snapshots taken of Okinawan whores
Dressed in sarongs like Dorothy Lamour
For a nickel they’d drop the dress on the floor
And happily pose in front of the camera
With fruit on their head
Like Carmen Miranda
I was born nine months to the day
After Daddy got back to the USA
Because of little native women
Dressed like Dorothy Lamour
Dressed in sarongs like Dorothy Lamour

Flesh begets flesh
In the usual way
I am only here because of Fay Ray.

Women are more than baby machines
More than naked pictures in magazines
I’m no prude
Don’t get me wrong
If you don’t want kids
Don’t watch King Kong
Flesh begets flesh
In the usual way
We’re all here because of Fay Ray.

Saving the World (part 2)

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Happy New Years? S*#t.

I am not in a good mood. I am never in a good mood when the weather is below 10 degrees and the wind is howling up to 40mph. When the monthly cable bill is approximately what my first mortgage was. When my medical insurance monthly bill is what a family of four in Laos lives on for a year and a half. When I know that people continue to f$*k and have ten children and wallow in dirt and squalor because they think that is what G-d wants them to do. I just don’t understand why everyone doesn’t do things just the way I want them done, because I know just what the world needs to do!

Details-points of illustration.

People with big cars and SUV’s should have them taken away. They should be given English Fords (1960 specifications with added catalytic convertor to slow them down just a bit) and bicycles (even if we need to set up new production facilities to make enough of them. Every existing Explorer could be turned into six English Fords with enough metal and rubber left over to make six bicycles). Tractor trailers should have governors on them that will only allow them to reach speeds of 40 mph and new laws should be written to allow them on the road only between the hours of 9pm and 5am. Penalty for driving a tractor trailer at the wrong time of day would be death. Oh, and also, they should stay in the right lane so the English Fords can easily pass them. Pick-up trucks should be sold only to construction companies. You should be able to borrow a truck to deliver your purchases from Lowes and Home Depot. Aside from that there would be no pick-ups on the road. Illegally driving a pick-up truck, of course, would be punishable by death. Likewise, tailgating, driving with your high beams on or tinting your windows would be punishable by death.

Life insurance, health insurance and home owner’s insurance would be banned. First I recommend we round up all the insurance executives, agents, actuaries, and risk analysts and shoot them so that there will be no temptation for them to try to re-establish the false sense of security and permanence they have led the population to believe exists in the world. When you die you die. When your house is built on the beach and the waves and wind wash it away it is not good to ‘spread the risk/pain’ to those who have built on rock, inland, safely. Tough s*#t! It’s gone! You had your pretty view while it existed, now clean up your mess and move on—on your own dime! Same goes for mud slides, forest fires and tornados. Suck it up!

As for automobile insurance, English Fords don’t move very fast so there is a possibility that you will survive a crash. But…they did not have seat belts so you could put some in for yourself. That’s your insurance. If you get in an accident and kill or maim someone you should try to get away from the scene as soon as you can. If you are not too badly hurt you should run to the church or synagogue of your choice and thank G-d. If you are lucky enough to be hurt but still conscious you could pull out your gun and take a shot at the guy trying to get away. That is also part of the new insurance plan. No more false claims of whiplash or messy pointing of fingers and courts battles to try to collect huge sums of cash for injuries. Get it over with then and there. The cops should only be at the scene to direct the tow trucks and put kitty litter on the oil slick. The cops, of course would be unarmed!!! They should not interfere with the true justice taking place at the accident scene and should stay in their car (English Ford) until the final shot has been fired.

As long as I am straightening out the insurance industry, we should have a few words about the doctors, dentists and other health care professionals. They have been too long shackled by the burgeoning insurance industry and government oversight (FDA, CDC, etc) Most doctor’s offices have become, not places of healing, but paper mills manned by clerks who process bills and do the bidding of the insurance industry. No more! When you pull up to a doctor’s office from now on (in your English Ford) you better have gobs of cash in your pants. If you find someone you trust to drain that boil you will fork over some real money before you leave. That, or make a proper deal to deliver chickens, okra or services acceptable to both parties (you and the doctor) to seal the deal. He/she will write you a prescription which you will pay for with similar specie at the drugstore and you will be healed. He/she will do a good job or else (I think we all know what the ‘or else’ is by now!) With all due respect, doctors go through a lot of training and deserve to live a little high on the hog. Where your health is concerned you should expect to pay plenty to preserve it. I don’t think insurance company CEO’s studied all that hard in the frat house or give a lot of comfort and relief to the sick and dying so fuck ‘em! I think it only fitting and proper that we retrain prospective insurance company executives to be tractor trailer repair persons and doctors should have new English Fords every two years so they can start making house calls again!

Well I am tired now but I hope I have begun to straighten out this whole mess. The World, I mean. If you would like to help me (and I suggest that you do, because when they start handing out the English Fords you want to be in the right line, right?) just give things a little thought and drop me a line. I’ll tell you if you’re on the right track or not. Let’s hope you are.