Tuesday, February 13, 2018
The Woman Out of Phase
Simple enough. Noon=Midnight.
She keeps her habit of phoning her
late night friends, but they’re
working.
And, of course, no one will go to
lunch with her.
Then, one even stranger day, she
goes to bed at 11 AM, wakes an
hour later. Refreshed! Ravenous!
The phone rings. It’s Carl, back from
a two-week sales trip to Oregon.
He wants to treat her to
The Sunday Monster!
A fancy, if excessive, breakfast
brunch at the local Sheraton.
When she comes up for air enough
to listen, he claims “Hey! I was BORN
out of phase!”
Labels: habit, phase, time, variation
Sunday, April 30, 2017
She Noted
Carlos never spoke
just after. Lull.
When he did so,
was instructional.
Labels: habit, instruct, note, style
Monday, April 18, 2016
Two at Tea or Beer
-What could be easier?
..
-That woman broke my heart!
-One in a line.
…
-She’s fishy over there, and so is he!
-I’ll put clothespin on my nose!--
collecting for Little League.
…
-We’re fucked!
-HE'LL be Bishop.
..
-Here’s to old times! Uh, have you lost your wife?
-Another found her.
…
-Marriage a habit with you? Serially?
-Square Dance Call: Change partners and screw.
Labels: Bishop, Church, forgiveness, habit, marriage, relationship, religion, square dance, women
Thursday, April 07, 2016
Question With Answer Built In
-Why you sitting in the dark?
-Aggie left.
-She always leaves.
-Final time!
--It’s always the final time.
-It IS?
-I’ll make coffee.
-No decaf. I want to live!
Labels: breakup, coffee, decaf, habit, old shoe, predictability, Romance, sitting in dark
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Saving Math
-I've got the one bad habit.
-Not to say atrocious!
-I've taken measures to break it.
-Such as...?
-Well...half measures anyway.
-Then, the half get halved.
-Thus, quarter measures. Still okay.
-Whereupon...!
-Okay okay! Maybe I'm all the way
down to one sixty-fourth!
-Keep going and you'll get even worse.
-No. The math favors me, no matter what.
It's good for my character that I keep improving,
however small.
-By this time, indistinguishable from horror!
-Uh uh. According to Archimedes–-I think--I'll
never really get bad again.
-Those Greeks knew their shit. Not!
-(Sings) Life can be so sweet
On the sunny side of the street.
Labels: Archimedes, bad habit, Greeks, habit, math, self-improvement, sunny side of street
Friday, July 24, 2015
The Meticulous Wall
Handymen
I wasn't a Linger-Some when Mark
built his wall. Not even here then.
But very shortly after I moved in, it was
informally named for me. Since I sat there
every morning it didn't rain with croissant
and coffee, cigarette and Times.
God’s in His sky and all’s right with the world!
Mark’s quarrel with the board had nothing to do
with the wall or me.
But he was transferred to Hop Scotch, a mental
facility in the chain.
Took the wall.
Well, not really, but you'd think it.
It was gone from the entrance of the
rose garden. So cleanly, no trace existed.
I first thought I had wandered to the wrong
part of the garden that chill, gray-wisp morn.
Well, sad for me, and a disappointment for
everybody.
It liked their eye.
Anyway, so meticulous. Removing each
rock, each pebble, each wedge, etc.
Mark’s something else!
“And in the moonlight!” Clara Barkin held,
though nobody knew just when. But then
she whispered “We're still looking at things
in a typically old-fashioned way.
What if he just disappeared the wall?”
She was at a party once and he passed
a tablecloth over her, and she found
herself home drinking tea, with
Clancy the cat nuzzling for crumbs
of Pepperidge Farms Milano Cookies.
“Well a magician is not a wizard.”
“This one is!”
“Well, whichever way he took back the wall,
I'd like it restored here!”
So, both of us worked on the politics of
the thing, persuading Rickey Speller to
take Mark's place at Hop Scotch, and having
him assume Rickey's place back here with the
mere neurotics.
Done deal! and I rushed to the garden and there
it...wasn’t. Oh well...gathering up my Times
I had dropped alongside a few crackers and the
styrofoam cup half filled with leftover breakfast
coffee.
You can’t make things happen with a halfass
show of ritual.
When I had done that, I kind of staggered back
and fell onto the wall!
There I thought: Did Mark do his other handymna
chores or merely wizard them? Didn’t seem fair.
Labels: disappearing, habit, internal politics, routine, times, wall, wizard
