her scar starts/by encircling her left big toe 96 times/in a tight coil/that looks like a pale toe ring
continues as a single line/to the instep/where it makes a logarithmically-spaced double spiral/ultra-dense at its center/where the line retains its unoverlapping singularity/by flanking itself and sparkling back outward/from the center
and the single line continues/with a floor plan of the house she grew up in/placed above the gastrocnemius muscle of her left calf
the line stops at mid-thigh after having become four condors wheeling around her kneecap
at precisely the two-mile point
because she’s out of disposable funds right now/and recreational laser surgery is not cheap
“I ain’t much, Lord, but I’m all I got.” The down&out West-Sider lowered his head in prayer. But before he started, the voice of the LORD rang in his head, saying “Never mind the prayer. Go to the pawn shop on the corner of 12th Street and Indian School.”
Stupefied, the bum (he called himself such) obeyed, going Eastbound on a bus whose driver waved away his two bucks.
At the pawnshop was a guitar the LORD told him to buy. As Divine Providence had it, the guitar was going for seventeen dollars less than what he had.
“Now go to the McDonald’s on 51st,” saith the LORD. “Get a small order of fries and a water cup.”
At the McDonald’s there was a woman about his age who, watching him order, interrupted the transaction by saying, “Please, Sir, let me buy you something more, substantial than that.” Soon he was sitting down to two Quarter Pounder Deluxes, a large fry, and an Oreo milkshake and large Dr. Pepper. Then she took him home, where she had him take a hot shower and change into some of her late husband’s clothing.
“Play me a song, please, on your guitar.”
He picked up the guitar, and though he hadn’t played in years, his hands were nimble; and he began playing and singing a song that had never before existed.
Lord, I ain’t much lowered,
So I’m getting to my feet.
Dear Lord, I ain’t much lowered,
So I rise, and I cast off all defeat.
I know You help those who help themselves
So I’ll see you when my Resurrection is complete.
Suddenly he stopped playing and singing.
The lady applauded, and stuck two fingers in her mouth to whistle loudly. But the man shushed her. “Ma’am, I have to leave. I just realized I have to live up to the words I just sang. I can feel your loneliness, and I know you can feel mine, but we are not on equal terms right now. I hope to knock on your door soon and offer you more than a down-and-out bum with a song in his heart. Meantime, though, please accept my thanks. I am grateful.”
He rushed out the door as quickly as he could.
A month later she received mail from him, and a money order for fifty dollars. He told her he was unlowering himself nicely and the money was for the meal and clothing.
Three months later he sent her yellow roses and told her he had been upgraded to full-time work.
A year and two weeks later a car pulled up in front of her house and there was a knock on her door.
to the late jane bowers stoneman on her 90th birthday
hey there, mom happy birthday in the great wherever
and here’s hoping you are healed and free and in the company of some you love
paula was your middle name perhaps you and uncle paul have reunited
perchance you dream glorious starscapes perforcedly beyond my or any human ken
your light-green eyes in the sunlit kitchen you looked into eternity heedless of Hey Mom
.
but you always needed times of inaccess in the many-pillowed bed for a two-hour nap reading the phoenix gazette taking a walkered walk in your latter life how glad i was to make you laugh dimple up your face and make you proud to have mothered me yet there was certainly a good bit of arguing
I thought I woke up this morning/But it was afternoon instead.
Oh, I thought I woke up this morning/But the Sun was way up overhead.
Baby, please come to my rescue, and let’s make better use of this bed.
.
Tied a string around my finger/But I can’t remember why.
Tied a string around my finger/But my brain’s a cloudless sky.
Maybe it means I should tie one on. My sense of humor can be quite rye.
.
They say my brain is shrinking/But it somehow won a prize.
Such tiny thoughts I’m thinking/Want a burg and curly fries.
The MRI says ATROPHY and I can’t wait to put it on my shelf. Now for that burg!
.
Notes:
Charlie Gordon was the main character in the Hugo-award-winning short story Flowers for Algernon. He was a mentally challenged man who through brain surgery became super-intelligent, but only temporarily. He recorded his mental rise and decline in the form of “progress reports” and so his decline is especially heartbreaking as his sentence structure loses complexity and his spelling becomes erratic.
A not-so-fun fact is that my own brain has shrunk over that last five years, and the docs say it’s a more significant shrinkage than is deemed normal for someone my age. They say that it’s diffuse, though, and should not be affecting my verbal skills. I consider my writings of late to be my “progress reports.” I’ve stepped up my production–have you noticed? 🙂
Grateful acknowledgment to Bob Dylan for writing “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues.” Here’s a taste of his lively lyrics:
Sweet Melinda, the peasants call her the goddess of gloom She speaks good English, invites you up into her room And you’re so kind and careful not to go to her too soon And she takes your voice and leaves you howling at the moon
they’re not making tinderboxes anymore/o well not as many as in years of yore
but we do not have a dwindling
of a huge supply of kindling
in the form of fissile weaponry in store
we never’ve really had a peace on earth/and of enlightenment there is a dearth
but december thirty-first
will see fireworked missiles burst
since we all still live & breathe for all we’re worth
and saith the preacher let us feast & drink/after all our time on earth is but a blink
and throughout our raddled history
there’ve been cliffs and here’s the mystery
we have always muddled past them don’t youAAAAAaaaaa a a a a…..
Happy New Year, Friends, especially to those of you who keep Doom from devouring us all. Here’s hoping that the coming years bring a hard-won maturity to our efforts, and that we the people of this globular starship stop making deadly, life-ending contraptions that perpetuate conflict and hinder our attainment of the Peace On Earth we all so passionately desire.
Personal note: I am ending 2024 having written at least one poem or quasi-poem or fable or reflection every single day since July 25th, making 160 consecutive days. Doing so helped me understand what it would be like to be the mythical Sheherazade, weaving word-nets nightly under penalty of death. Here is a link to that story about storytelling.
President-Elect Donald Trump (not a Hoax! not a Dream! not an Imaginary Tale!) now warns…
Drum-roll and eye-roll, please…
That unless the Biden Administration acts to address the debt-ceiling issue before he takes office in three weeks and a day, there will probably be a Depression.
Some people still take him seriously, even though “baseless claims” is one of the favorite ways journalists describe things he says.
Oh, by the way, in case you didn’t notice, he wants to buy Greenland and make Canada the fifty-first United States of America. And just in case you didn’t notice the historical record, this is consistent with the dark side of American History known as Manifest Destiny. Thieves in power have throughout American history stolen or swindled or otherwise indecently acquired just about all of what is called America. The short answer to the question “Why, in the name of all that’s decent, do they do this?” is “Decency has nothing to do with it.”
He is also reported to be “walking back” many of his more apocalyptic campaign promises.
And his bromance with Elon “Smells Like Teen Spirit” Musk continues, enraging a few of his minions.
And George Stephanopoulos apologized to him for calling him a rapist and not merely a sexual assailant.
There is poetry in this. After all, “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg is considered just as much a poem as is “To My Daughter” by Weldon Kees, which follows the Sonnet format down dark, corrosive corridors. And Ginsberg started his poem by asserting that good minds have been driven mad.
I don’t know how good my mind is, but I do know that I am a lot madder that I was half a year ago.
Writing a screed about the Great American Come-On is the least I can do, since I am anti-violence but am just as virulently anti-being-violated, both as an American and as a child of Mother Earth.
And, speaking of Mother Earth, does everyone notice that the land Trump covets will be the last havens north of Antarctica from the ravages of global warming? The same global warming that “Drill, Baby, Drill” will exacerbate?
Coincidence, Friends…or Co-Incidents?
Literally, and urgently, I implore all with a conscience and courage to get The Hell out of Here
with one hand we can speak. with two we can applaud. a surgeon cited hands as proof
of the existence of God.
a hand with age might hurt and hurt. arthritis, carpal tunnel. but a chrono-synclastic infundibulum
is a fictitious, time-warping funnel.
that last may seem quite off-the-wall with from-the-subject strand, but it all ties in when you are told
that this arthritic, Carpal-Tunnel-Syndrome-blighted admirer of Kurt Vonnegut wrote this thing you are reading just to give Kurt a posthumous
hand.
.
Note: The Chrono-Synclastic Infundibulum and its fascinating properties may be found in The Sirens of Titan, one of the richest, most entertaining flights of imagination I have ever read.
One with Clay, Image and Text 