Monday, October 31, 2016
Keeping Track
For some reason, Larkin
inventoried the drinking
glass separately.
Glass, Yellow Plastic, 12 OZ.
He used it for his thyroid pill
this and each morning.
That afternoon, sister Jill and her girlfriend
Marcy dropped in...and great fuss
getting tea to them, and a sleeve
of Lorna Doones!
Unused to company.
Finally, they left.
But the glass had gone missing, and
its inventory sheet, too, usually stored
in the rear of the cutlery drawer.
Marcy being a bit of a wag, he thought
of phoning and dropping hints that he
knew, etc. what the two were up to.
But, this would play into their hands.
Three days passed, and he knew he had
to come up with a better scheme. One
more clever.
The ones he thought of filled him with
delight.
Then he found the glass in the trash
as he was tying the bag to remove
from the...
Oh well, innocent enough, he surmised.
He visualized Marcy’s elbow hitting it
and knocking it into the trash.
She's a pretty frenetic one, and wouldn't
notice.
All logical motives lack mystery,
of course...but one nagging
conundrum remained.
The inventory sheet.
He searched the cutlery drawer and
discovered it had been shoved even
further into the rear and severely
crumpled.
His sister! he ratiocinated. She cut
her Lorna Doone, wiped the knife
and restored same to drawer:
clumsily it appears.
Yes, she cut Lorna Doones!
An odd family, but whose isn't?
At any rate, he luckily avoided the
sticky situation where he’d be
accused of being nuts.
And allied babbling scenarios
even more insane.
Don’t ever again try to be clever.
It’s a minefield! he counseled
himself.
Labels: anal retentive, bachelor, Family, fussy, neurotic
Sunday, October 30, 2016
Those Incremental Steps In Discussion
-Day by day, I get along with women.
-One will change that.
-Day or woman?
-Merging horribly!
Labels: ambiguity, discussion concerning women, friends, women
Saturday, October 29, 2016
Loud Harp
or Inner Travail of the Outspoken
The man who did what he could
died mildly.
In a shocker, the Catholics
gave him a spiffy funeral mass.
A last-minute convert, and his wife
contributed a badminton court to
the priests.
Friend, Denholm O’Toole, or Den-O,
spat that “They’ll chase a cock, this time
feathered.”
He was through with the corrupt Church!
Throw him into the ground when his
time came!
But wife Ginger wouldn't allow it.
Swartzy's wife, Ruth, had offered him their
Temple over the phone before Ginger's strict
ecclesiastical pronouncement. Lightheartedly!
Den-O just coming off a torsion bowel week
at home, nurse Ginger applying Irish Granny
treatments mostly.
Anyway, Ruth undeniably beautiful.
"A thing of beauty is a Jew forever!" he later
shouts to Ginger, earning an extra weekend
of renewed bowel wrench from the Hebrew God.
He's back at work. Fishbelly white. Looking saintly.
Labels: beauty, bowel, Church, Irish, Jewish, priests, rebel, Temple
Friday, October 28, 2016
Romance, Narrowly Defined
They pass each other in
the park daily over the
years.
But this morning, words
seem inevitable as they
meet at the covered bridge
and find its entrance criss-
crossed by yellow tape.
The stench of the soaking wood
proves overpowering, and both
see trees down on the other side.
"I can...see trees down," ventures he.
"The stench! of the soaking wood!"
She's dramatic, even adding, "My family
is mostly bizarre criminals."
They become a couple. No odder than most.
Until a year later when her two uncles
sentenced in separate tax evasion cases.
He makes a crack about baking a file
into a cake, and she goes off!
ALWAYS RIDICULING HER AND HER FAMILY!
Walking out she coos "Do say hello to your
mother and father...and don't leave out
Norman Rockwell!”
“Must...we...fight?”
“And goodbye! to your Goody Two Shoes Sisters!”
As Fate would ease down the cards, they never met in the park until a year later.
The stinking bridge closed, hurricane
damage again, this time fallen trees darkly
jamming the far aperture.
She turned to him in anticipation, looking
in that stark, chalky light like a moll from
a thirties film.
He adored thirties films, especially their
unrelenting noir, and almost began to
say "You look like a..."
She heard that, though he said nothing,
preferring, always, to keep his love to himself.
They never meet again.
Or maybe they do, but who gives a shit?
Labels: breakup, criminal, film noir, hurricane, relationship, thirties
Thursday, October 27, 2016
The Passing Parade
-What's it like to get really old?
-Overwhelming. Things you
squirts take in stride.
-Oh yeah? Then I need more
practice, such as the hole
I work in is moving to Indonesia.
-Givebacks didn't work?
-We stopped with wives and children.
-Then why not go to Indonesia? That forty
cents an hour really stretches there.
What do they eat anyway?
-I don't know, but not enough.
-Hey! Better yet, take fifty here in hard
negotiation, and the vaunted Capitalists
will stay!
-Best idea you've ever come up with!
-Become a...
-Happy Pig!
-Skinnier version.
Labels: Capitalism, givebacks, Indonesia, offshoring, Race to Bottom, wages
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Trio
Pickles lost it. Rope and Detzy
went over there and unwedged
him from the recliner.
Detz made coffee you could stand on.
Rope sniffed then. “He smells like piss.”
“We’ll get him so he can clean himself up.”
“What happened here?”
“Jensy left him.”
“But she does that every few months!”
“This time it took. She cleaned the mirror,
and then polished it. Showed him his faults
to a fault.”
“Jesus! How cruel! What’s he mumbling about?”
“I don’t know. Cat got your tongue, Pickles?”
“A cat’ll act mean if you pull its tail!”
“He’s coming back. He’s telling us that she
took the Cadillac.”
“You should go to the UN. Be an interpreter.”
“Yeah, their shit resembles what usually comes
out of our Pickles.”
Labels: breakdown, breakup, Cadillac, friends, language, translatiion
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Whatever
Bella lost it, and had
looked very carefully.
For her.
A year later, Carl and
Embry decided to search
scientifically, Embry
making a map with grids.
They found it after two hours.
Presented it to Bella.
Who no longer desired it.
Labels: lost, personality, scientific search, search, values
Monday, October 24, 2016
Gretchen
fell on boyfriend him.
Allied Fire Insurance it advertised in metal script above
wrought-iron roses.
Anyway, she couldn't think of the word clock in the emergency.
Oh well, yet another of her unconscious puns.
She made them and the rest of us went nuts, dancing
and singing.
This occasion: to Time On My Hands.
Except Budgee. She helped her get the clock off him.
“I’m not clever,” insisted she again. This time
to the busy dancers. “But I make everybody crazy!”
One thing she was, beautiful,
Acknowledged by all, youthful sacrilegious celebration
unnecessary.
Labels: beauty, frenzy, pun, unconscious puns, wit and fun, youth
Sunday, October 23, 2016
Crime In a Conservative Place
to be caught!
Red-handed,
as they say,
when not even
a prior suspect.
The religion
you're stuck with
enables your dead
parents to keen
after you
everywhere.
Pile on.
But they like
the eventual
plea bargain.
Labels: Conservative, crime, parents, religion
Saturday, October 22, 2016
The woman who counted in 3s
3, 6, 9, etc
seeming natural to her.
In adulthood she involved
herself in love triangles,
so a real-life corollary.
So many that she started
counting in 6s, then 9s.
When she reached 12s she
found the triple digits
awkward, then reasoned
that the 1 and 2 of 12
added to three, so she
could start over.
Which she did. Shedding
her third husband...just
a note.
“Anyway,” laughs she, “my
3s a way of handing life
with coherence.
Most have none.”
Labels: magic, math, math and life, method, numerology, organizing
Friday, October 21, 2016
Den Scene
Dad leaned back from his laptop to pantomime catching a fish.
Quietly laughing then to Astella, who resumed looking out the window.
Neither saw Detectives Haller and Jasso.
The former eventually reaching in and closing the laptop.
Put it under his arm.
The latter, a former Crimson Tide Football center,
lifted Dad by the elbow.
Astella noticed now.
But the three left so quickly!
She just stared out the window once more, eventually into the space the squad car had vacated.
Labels: con man, Crimson Tide, cyber crime, detectives, Family, police
Thursday, October 20, 2016
-Joe Blow
hasn't has a raise in thirty years.
-How about the Recovery?
-The Rich came and saw that it was good
and took it!
-What did the parties do?
-Republicans maintained "Naturally!"
God himself, of course, being rich.
-Dems?
-They claimed they would do something
about it as soon as they straightened
out the footnotes.
Labels: Democrat, Income Inequality, recovery, Republican, rich, scholars
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
Rutabagas Are Constant Numbers
-This saying what you please
when you please didn’t
start with Trump.
-Chaos!
-It has always announced
that it’s all a joke anyway,
so? What’s the difference?
-Life is Trash TV where nothing
connects? Nihilism up the bung hole!
-My first wife is the sick benchmark!
-But you escaped her sane!
-Rutabagas Are Constant Numbers
Labels: chaos, Nihilism, reality show, surrealism, Trump, TV
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Prize, Movements
-Not read much Dylan, but did sense genuine poetry
a few times.
-Thus pronounced same then?
-Can you make actual pronouncements
when alone?
-Why not?
-Yeah, I suppose. Most are for yourself anyway.
-Manifestos, though, require additional drunks.
Labels: Bob Dylan, literary, Nobel, poetry
Monday, October 17, 2016
The Paradox of Internal Space
-This awful Presidential has left
me shaken!
-How so?
-All this seedy sex history that’s more
like rape than a slapstick version of
Romeo and Juliet!
-Well...put it entirely out of your mind.
-No more room in there to put things out of.
Labels: Clinton, debate, farce, presidential, rape, sex, Sexual Assault, sexual farce, Trump
Sunday, October 16, 2016
Couple of Convenience
-Smeds cleaned the apartment!
Took whole week.
-How’s it look?
-Worse.
-Clutter?
-He won’t throw anything away.
-Needs a lady.
-Funny you should say that! Lucy True
being thrown out. Her place went condo
and she can’t afford...
-Life can be cruel. Let’s turn the page.
-Let’s not?
-You can’t mean Smeds and Lucy?
-Why not? She’s one ruthless cleaner.
No sentimentality!
-His trophy for perfect attendance, Sixth Grade?
-First to go! Why you laughing?
-Smeds and Lucy!
-Hey she just moves in. Anything else is their business.
-But practically, he HAS to avert her bringing bums home.
-They’ll work it out. Who cares about all that shit?
-Maybe they’ll fall in love?
-In WHAT?
Labels: cleaning apartment, clutter, housekeeping, Romance, sentimentality
Saturday, October 15, 2016
A Diagnosing Neighborhood
-Trump’s a fuckin sex addict!
-I used to be one of those.
-What happened?
-Jennifer.
-She handles it?
-Every chance she gets!
Labels: friends, neighborhood, sex, sex addiction, Trump
Friday, October 14, 2016
Time, or Subject to Change
Detective Mel Rogarty typed
in HSSS on his Smith Corona
Manual.
“He said, she said.”
Pulled out the paper and stamped
CLOSED, inked in the date.
...
Detective Rhonda Fleving entered HSSS
into the Consider Reopen Program.
Last year, nineteen of one hundred
seventy went through to conviction.
Labels: He said, investigation, police work, rape, reopening cases, Sexual Assault, She said
Thursday, October 13, 2016
The Right Media
frequently congratulates itself
on its brilliance.
Especially the contention that
Fascism will come from the Left.
Not the bet presently.
Labels: American Fascism, Fascism, Left, Right, Right Fascism, Right Media
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
The Man Who Researched
And not a new thing for him, what with
computers. For he had journals full of
notes in small handwriting also.
Most of his self-referential probing
took on a medical bent. His finding
out about the diseases he had or
imagined he had.
All very neatly filed in his den.
No harm, no foul.
Until...
What is the worst or best such a private
being could do?
He got married.
No interest in females apparent before.
So there you have it.
What he had, then, was his research library
in a dirt sub basement of the house
they moved to.
There he developed a cough...but he's
not really on his way out.
And his wife not the ogre who assigned him
there either. For they soon had a contractor
in to rebuild his den, even adding
lovely paneling.
There he could do his internet research
and print out the results. And its own
climate system cured his cough.
That part of the house belonged to him,
the more old-fashioned parts, his wife.
That such a disparate couple got along
amazed the neighbors.
In his medical sector, he was soon moderating
complaining quarrels between cranks.
Some on Skype.
Oh yes, his occupation. Allied. He wrote copy
for physicians' brochures.
Another great change!--if you regard marriage
as the first: Joined a group from the office
buying Philadelphia Eagles Season Tickets.
Did you know, for example, that during World
War Two, the teams from Pittsburgh and Philly
combined into the Steagles?
Steelers+Eagles.
He, of course, found this out, as well as
a million other facts. He dedicated a special
i-Pad to the subject and draped a corner
of the den with green banners and blankets.
She encouraged him to invite the fellows
to watch TV there for the away games.
And dressed in green football jersey and
micro shorts herself.
Her example prompted the men to invite
girlfriends and wives.
Soon, 37 Ogden Circle a noisy place
of certain Sundays.
But, did our researcher neglect his
original subject of disease?
In becoming genial and laughing host?
Who could believe it? Yes! Yes!
Labels: football, marriage, medical, medical research, obsession, Philadelphia Eagles
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Nocturnal
At first it started as parody.
He imitated the apes he has
seen in films and zoos.
His nightly walk became downward-
extended swinging arms, the scratching
of the armpits, thumping of the chest.
Then, one misty night, he encountered
another "ape."
She pretty much mirrored him, and after
some dominance traits, they laughed
and introduced themselves in human
terms. She Helene, he Cliff.
Both motivated, it seems, by the tameness
of their daylight lives forcing them
into the wildness of this one.
They were shy, for apes, and the mating
took several encounters.
But then Helene confided that she had
a few daylight lovers, human. Cliff burned
with human jealousy.
But thumped his chest till she warned
he could injure himself.
She became pregnant, and the DNA tests
showed a wily accountant.
Soon she had no reason to come to the
park where they met, but still ranged
elsewhere in her neighborhood, with the
amazed accountant in tow.
Cliff went back to Solo Ape, a role he
was born for.
Labels: acting, ape, civilization, DNA, role playing, sex, zoo
Monday, October 10, 2016
Low Politics In the Old Neighborhood
-Trump is as full of shit as a Christmas Turkey!
-We don’t care because he’s OUR turkey! And not some...!
-Utter the toxic word. Twill cleanse. WOMAN!
-If that’s what it IS.
-Grab her pussy to find out?
-She's too old. Pass.
-All through for now? Banking all the Hate Fires?
-Not quite. When the Devil can’t come himself,
he sends a woman.
-Not so, this time.
-Well, then, better the one you DON’T know.
-Like your Orange Rambling God, you are one
totally sick bastard.
-We thank you.
Labels: Clinton, debate, devil, grab by pussy, misogyny, new low, Orange Trump, presidential debate, pussy, sex, sick Trump, Trump, Woman, woman hatred
Sunday, October 09, 2016
The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Rate
-Our prof wants us to draw a
picture of a mind. So I chose Sudsy.
-Beer, greasy potato chips, and
humongous-breasted women?
-That's about it.
-At the further end of Einstein,
one imagines.
-Not so now! His “elements” have
gone abstract on me.
-Don't give them any power!
YOU'RE making them abstract
so you can stand them. Abandoning
reality! From boredom? Disgust? Fear?
-Reality smells like farts.
-Oh? Will it be multimedia then?
-Funny you should say that. Might add
Let It Be by Beatles?
-Reflecting, thus, the overmastering Sudsy
philosophy?
-No one will recognize him from the
drawing, so that could help.
-He has a mother who loves him, you know!
-Somebody else can draw that.
...
(Matthew, furiously dark, diverted.)
Labels: abstraction, art, art school, Beatles, drawing, grossness, mind, Mother
Wednesday, October 05, 2016
Preferences
No rules.
Go there and open up!
Then, Starbucks.”
Labels: anarchy, assassination, Death Squad, future, political assassination, revenge society, Starbucks
Tuesday, October 04, 2016
Lu tenses
awaiting chaste kisses.
Hey, none of us has a clue re
her unchaste ones. Old
ladies announcing, though,
that Still water runs deep.
We find later that it routs
many a bare wreck also.
Dim down there
but used to it
after a bit
like here, you
make things out.
Labels: character mystery, chaste, hangout gang, Still Water Runs Deep, unchaste, view under water
Monday, October 03, 2016
In the Red Basement
Mox was chipper when the shitstorm hit.
Just getting out of his car.
Why didn't he climb back in?
The company remotely locked all cars
until quitting time!
He suffered the blinding hundred yards to the entrance.
Head appeared! And ordered him stripped and hosed off in the red basement.
The men proved fine, laughing, but the women grimly turned their streams onto his genitals.
Head stopped that. "Object is get the stink off, not to hear shrieks."
Then the women requested he be put in a dress.
Head laughed, and ordered up a fluffy white robe.
Which Mox worked in all day long, attaining
celebrity status.
The women grumbled that the place was losing its fun.
Labels: abuse, and women at work, company, female-male abuse, industrial, men, shit storm, working conditions
Sunday, October 02, 2016
One Note
She, the smallest cheerleader.
Each male partner wanted her standing
on his shoulders, and not some cow!
Of course the cows weighed about 110.
It’s a particular world.
She graduated and married and had kids
And you know what? Stayed petite and sweet.
Oh she had to have SOME vile moments?
None.
Premature stroke at fifty landed her in Bide-a-Bit.
No surprise that the nurses call her Sweetie Pie.
Make fun of her if you wish, but you probably should seek her blessing.
Labels: cheerleader, innocence, saintly, sweetness
Saturday, October 01, 2016
Shared Adventure
-Then we ran into the sewers to escape!
-A movie!
-The rats there started squealing, finally setting
up into a single ear-splitting SHRIEK.
-Jeez! Afraid? Or trying to intimidate?
-Both.
-They’re that complex?
-Fellow mammals!
Labels: adventure, behavior, escape, fear, intimidation, mammal, primal fear, rats, sewer
