Poem - and like in a slapstick movie

you were just getting back
and then you were gone

and like in a slapstick movie
they took you to the hospital
that you had just left

and your sick friend
had no idea you were downstairs
in a quiet area
with a sheet over you

Twins

There were two beautiful brunettes that lived around here, and they were twins. Mysteriously serious, they wore sunglasses and walked matching dogs. Then one day there was a single twin walking two small dogs. She introduced herself to me and said her name was Jenna.

I asked her where her sister was -- and Jenna said that Brianna wasn't feeling well, that she had been institutionalized. But the family was holding out hope for her, it had happened before.

I asked her if she wanted to grab a coffee sometime, and she said yes.

Later, after Jenna and I had been dating, she asked me if I wanted to go see Brianna. So I said yes, and we traveled to the facility. It was a nice quiet place, bright and professional, with lots of people in lab coats and clean looking families.

We sat down in the private visiting room, with Jenna lightly holding my hand, which trembled a fraction feeling like a dried leaf when Brianna was led into the room. Brianna smiled at us both radiantly, delicately, and sat down.

Brianna said softly she had heard all about me from her sister, and was so glad to finally meet me. She was feeling much better now. She looked forward to going home soon. Jenna decided to leave just then, to ask the Psychiatrist a question about Brianna going home, she would be right back.

When Jenna left the room, Brianna looked at me with a dull look in her eyes, and I noticed her hair was disheveled. I want you to know something, she said in a hollow voice. I am not Brianna. I am Jenna.

I am Jenna, she said. The door opened and her twin was with the Doctor and they were both smiling.

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PlentyOfPhish

The online dating service he uses -- "PlentyOfPhish" ripped off his bank account, stole his passwords, and ruined his Google calendar. But he does not know this. He's been going to the new appointments, the dates stand him up, he wonders why he scheduled them, and he has no bus fare to get back.




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Terrible Accuracy

I go to the golf course to be angry, extremely angry. I works well for me. My game has not improved, but I've perfected an explosive yell and a 9 iron toss. I can shoot that 9 iron like a javelin, at anyone on the links, with terrible accuracy.







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Pops the Goon

Pops was the kind of guy, who, if he heard of something bad happening to someone else, he'd feel a little better, in general, with his own life. You could say he'd get a bit of 'bounce' from bad news. We are all like this in some ways -- the Germans even have a word for it: Schadenfreude.

But Pops was an example of this tendency run riot. He constructed a cat's-cradle like context of days, months, and sometimes years, based off the misfortunes of his friends, associates, and family. 2001 would be remembered by Pops as "Bob's Cancerous Car Accident" May 11th 2011 was marked in Pops' mind as "Mary's Epic Spring Ladder Fall into the Glass Bottles". June 2013 was known simply as "Unlucky Bob Gets the Shits in Church".

Pops saw all. He kept calendars of the faults and accidents of the people around him, with a simple coded scoring shorthand, much like this:

FP = face plant
LI = lost item
AD = arrested drunk
AD2 = arrested drunk again
1, 2, 3, 4.. = the number of venereal diseases
F = fired
S = stabbed
K = killed

And it was all going well until he accidentally donated one of his annotated calendars to the thrift-shop around the corner, and Bob found it inside the sleeve of a scratched album of The Velvet Underground. Bob was sorting the new things that were donated, and he recognized Pops' tidy writing on a stickum note on the album, "Music to Enjoy".

Ironically, the vinyl album had been scratched in Pops' ecstasy of finding out Bob had deadly cancer ('DC') and a car accident ('CA') after finding out about the diagnosis on the way home. Bob let everyone know about Pops, and there wasn't much to explain.

I Always Imagined

I always imagined you were at death's door and dying slowly in Dickensian poverty -- heroically, even a bit sadly, as a shut-in. I imagined how you'd look at the wall and a patch of sun, tracing the arc of the wall every day, over your books, your papers, how you would sit there with dry tears in your eyes. And how your wife would move slowly and quietly like a ghost in the background, offering you hope. But I found out yesterday you have been on vacation in Maui, and you've been feeling fine for about 5 years. So I feel cheated.




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Bodice Ripper - or - Thundering Romance Story

I plan on writing a 'bodice ripper' to make some money, but when I start, I get stuck with the plot, the characters, and the setting. For the past 10 months I have lived in a airshaft, with a stolen laptop and pilfered food and Wi-Fi. I wasn't always like this, hiding in an airshaft and shitting in a a tin, drinking out of old gin bottles I use to have water here. Perhaps my romance novel will start with the main handsome fellow, hiding in an airshaft -- and by chance he falls in love with a beautiful expensive lady, who has a means to understand, and support him. Like the one on floor 4, in this shaft. Until he gets back on his feet. That would be a hell of a start for a thundering romance story.

All I Need is One Spoon

I get a shocking boost of testosterone and a sense of well-being from silverware. Just me, genetics I guess -- when they figure out it is the silverware, they lock all the silverware up. I enter a period of deep mourning for my spree, and how I can have it. After I give the FDA and the military doctors the slip. All I need is one spoon.

Asking Three Times

When I asked a Buddha what he or she had for me, they said, "Nothing."

When I asked again, they saw my willingness, and said, "Something."

When I asked a third time, they saw my honesty, and nothing more needed to be said.


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Quail Meadow
July 2013

Poem - The Flower Sermon

..... like this

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Poem - I don't need to know the news

I don't need to know the news
I see how it drives people into anger

I see how the commercials with the news
inflames passion and unhappiness

I see how the news tries to twist us
and get us to be opinionated to argue

There are people who want us to be agitated
and live in tragedies we didn't experience

Then we are split by the life around us
because it isn't on the news

 

And the strong bright day

or trembling love will never be reported

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Poem - at the end of a darkened street

before i'm ready i'll write a poem
to elvis costello

he sings about going to the very end
and it should be fine though he knows it is wrong

even though tonight we'll meet
at the end of a darkened street

avoidable these errors
because we rely on people and dreams

Poem - Astonishing

it was just a song
I listened to

the same song when
I first got to know you

and when I heard it
it reminded me of everything today

like someone who had misplaced
all of the continent of Africa
and then they remembered

it is astonishing
what we can forget
as well as what we can remember