Thursday, November 08, 2018
Old Frenchy
-Looks pretty, no?
-But it’s crap!
-Crap can’t look nice?
-To depraved tastes, yes.
“Form’s survival conceals the disappearance of content.”
-Marguerite Yourcenar
Labels: content, depravity, form, French, history, Roman Empire, taste
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Berlin ‘38 in Color
A buoyancy of small cars!
Too, the women afloat, liquid
under flowing dresses.
The light itself, silken.
Until two men martialed black-
beyond-black,
goose-step past high.
Low Comedy. Menace.
These, all, though,
images merely.
Unless one allows
their assembling
beauty
or terror.
The mind,
palpable,
unscreens.
Labels: beauty, film, form, German, Military, terror
Thursday, July 30, 2015
The Fill-In
I breezed through the form, but what the hell!
You could put anything down!
Check Chinese and nobody cared.
Married, Single, Divorced? All three. In glee!
As always, a combination of chaos and
precision:
Since they proved crazily fussy about 14B. A large
blank you had to fill in border to border. With what?
God knows.
The question varied. Mine, this time: How far is up?
Not intended to necessarily elicit a scientific
answer, but tap your psyche in some way. I wrote
of a trip to the shore with my elderly parents.
Wrong! The woman waved her wand and it
blinked red. So...again.
No soap either with How many make anything else?
I detailing the articles in my right pocket.
The woman eventually gathered her personals
and closed up. I was still her charge, so she
led me to her crisp little apartment in the same
building.
Only a short passageway, but it took some time
because of a ranging limp that grazed both walls.
In that cozy domain, over Stouffer's Microwave Lasagne,
I first noted how terrifyinging ugly she was.
But before you say anything, I'd give King Kong a run
for his money.
She eventually produced pajamas that’d fit him!
I swam in them. And out.
England expects each man to do his duty!
I’m always okay with that. You pick the way
to show your patriotism. Still a free country.
Labels: bureaucracy, chaos and, fill in form, form, free country, government, modern society, patriotism, precision in government, sex
Monday, July 27, 2015
Filling In
Word circulated
to write in 14E with "14E"–and not a single letter from
the list of options representing concepts, choices...
or whatever.
At any rate, this worked for everyone until a person
was called in at random, and never returned to his family.
A lump sum was, and the family seemed satisfied.
But, thereafter, anyone who 14E'd originally
was marked Q in every paper or cyber file.
The Q's living on borrowed time went the rumor.
Pretty much all the Qs gathered in the Adirondancks
and armed themselves.
They decided to preemptively attack a motor vehicles
office on Staten Island.
Fourteen deaths resulted and the numerologists went bananas.
The government called for meetings.
Never held, so everything forgotten.
“We lurch from vague crisis to vague crisis,” concluded
Senator Oliver, aka Senator Expense Account.
Labels: bureaucracy, Expense Account, form, forms, government, numerology, revolution, senate
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Sign, Initial
-You're sure, then? B and not A?
-Sure. Yes. B.
-Then, you sign here, and I initial
your signature as being from someone
I know.
-Done!
-Not quite. "The Statement of Intents and
Purposes." Mine. You must read it and
then...
-I already tried. It's incomprehensible.
-Lawyer-Language.
-I'll sign.
-No, just initial.
-Are we almost done?
-Yes! Believe it or not, though, I must ask you
once more as to B.
-I feel like saying "and may God have mercy
on my soul!"
-I too. We must be old-fashioned types.
Besides...it would be phrased: If there
is a God, would you like that apparent entity
to have mercy on your soul?
Both laugh.
-We mustn't laugh. Too serious.
-It's a bitter laugh. Fits all situations.
Labels: CYA, disclaimer, fill out form, form, God, Lawyer Language, mercy
