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Ain’t Much Lowered: A Fable

January 4, 2025
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To Perry Sams

“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.

new and used genies

December 28, 2024
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two genies walk into a bar. they look like father and son but are in fact twin brothers. the one who looked older had had a callous, uncaring master, whose wishes involved interference in the laws of nature and whose wish-fulfillment took its toll on his genie’s very essence. the other genie, the one in the thousand-dollar business suit, had for a master an investment banker who required only personal training and insider knowledge.

they had both been recently freed by a celestial equivalent of an ethics committee, who granted them amnesty from thralldom but also reduced their reality-shifting powers to a mere trickle. they were going to the bar to discuss what they ought to do.

“”what’ll it be, fellas?” the busty, intricately-tattooed bar lady asked them.

“do you know how to make a cloaked scarab?” inquired the genie who looked older.

“i don’t yet…” she said, but then scrunched her eyes, and a boingy sound straight out of I Dream of Jeannie accompanied the eye-scrunching, “but now i do. sorry, i don’t have all the ingredients. a Scorpion with a dash of worcestershire sauce would be close.”

“that, then,” said the “father.”

“make it two,” said the “son.”

in an hour they were half-drunk, professing their love for each other, weepy-eyed. the “younger” grabbed his brother by the back of his neck while looking deeply into his eyes. “share and share a like.” there was a flash and suddenly they were truly identical twins again, splitting the wealth and the age disparity, so that they both had salt-and-pepper hair and well-cut but off-the-rack suits.

“time for grand adventures,” said the bar lady. she pulled out a lamp from under the bar and rubbed it.

HER identical twin came out of the lamp, conserva.tivrly dressed and u tattooed.

sparks flew. the two pairs of twins paired up. the bar lady flipped the neon OPEN switch off, drew the blind, locked the door, and whistled. a rolled-up carpet in a corner went aloft, scooped them all up, and took them through the skylight to their Destiny

Taken Shaken Godforsaken

December 7, 2024
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Life was fleeting fun and fudgy/Then you die and things get judgy/Sins remembered fry your bacon/Taken shaken Godforsaken.

“There’s No Hope” is what the door meant/Here comes Santa bearing torment/Flame and tiny demons jabbing/In your ear Aunt Esther gabbing.

You’re repentant you’re remorseful/But the horse crap by the horseful/Buries you in flaming poo/Not a damned thing you can do.

Then the heavens part and smoke/Makes things disappear. “A joke!”/God Herself declaimed, and laughed. “You’ve been pranked! Spanked! Punk’d! Giraffed!

“Hell is but a vicious rumor/Scripture satire! Doom with humor!/Boogeyman in chaptered verses/Spicing Blessings up with Curses.”

Then God’s browline lightly knit./”As for heaven, He-She-It,/You may find it, you may not,/That depends on what you’ve got.

“Use your Viewpoint. Watch and learn./Use your Wisdom. Think; discern./Be an Angel, not a Creep. Dream without the need for sleep.”

God began to dim and fade./”Find yourselves and interbraid./Right some wrongs. Unbotch some botching./Love as if your friends are watching.”

God was gone. In space, adrift,/This new Angel-Ghost made shift/A satellite, then speeding dart/To Earth, to guard, to watch, to  [heart].

the jumper in the beige overcoat on the bridge at 1:37am (part three of three)

October 15, 2024
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as olaf lindberg fell feet first/he pushed a stud on the side of the cylinder/and a nine-foot luminescent rod, pale blue/telescoped instantly/from the bottom end of the cylinder

and as the rod touched the water it bloomed/into an inverse trumpet shape/with notches that the man’s shod toes fit into

the man gripped the rod and leaned slightly forward/and as the trumpet shape clove the water/bubbles and then a wake came up beyond the lip of the trumpet/behind the man

he looked into the camera eye of his faithful drone/and raised his voice above the churning water noise to say

“With nano and jet-ski tech and beamed energy–” a slight jolt from the turbid chop/interrupted him. “…something weighing only eight pounds–” and another jolt tipped him a bit–“saved my life.”

then another chop of water/tipped the man more harshly/and a bit of the river/flowed into the trumpet/and it submerged/and the man’s feet and ankles went underwater…

cheerfully and loudly he exclaimed/”It was a hell of a fun ride while it lasted!/I shall have to abandon ship!”

chest-deep in water/and as he and the river/approached the next downstream bridge/the man brandished his now rodless cylinder/and shouted joyfully “Plan B! Monofilament tech! Batman tech!”

he thumbed the stud again/and monofilament wire shot out of the top end of the cylinder/and its adhesive end/stuck to the far-side underside/of the downstream bridge…

and just like batman and vicky vale/the wire pulled him upward/but he was so heavy with water and overcoat and gadgets/that the wire disadhered from the bridge…

and as he fell he pulled out his drone controller and yelled “Plan C! Dronefish!”

(end of part three)

…

…

epilog

to make a long story short, because we all need to get on with our lives, a fleet of little drones dropped out of the sky above him, fell into the water, and formed a sort of magic carpet raft for him. they quickly conked out but he had time to go to plan d, which was a friend of his in a nearby helicopter. but just as he reached the third to top rung of the rope ladder the friend turned rogue and hit a button, quick-releasing the ladder, and so the man switched to plan e, which was really plan a all along, and his real and ground-breaking invention, which was a giant disembodied hand that sparkled as it scooped him out of the water and lifted him slowly and gently into the sky. the man had his drone stop following him after his last recorded words, which were “Don”t you DARE call this the Hand of God! It’s just tech! Seems like magic, though, doesn’t it? And WAIT till you see the mischief it and I are going to make, Kids!” And then he was lifted away from the drone, which stopped recording and uploaded the video it had made to various social media, and the billions of views it got were a harbinger of history-changing things to come.

The End

Hidder Midst/Meta-Man

October 18, 2014
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Hidder Midst says nothing and thinks bubbles–a true Superhero in search of an Origin Story. Meta-Man may have more to say than Spielberg’s A.I. or Asimov’s “The Bicentennial Man,” but he may just be all about a pose occluding text. The Book of Ecclesiastes says both “All is vanity” and that there is nothing new under the Sun. But that second one is a trick answer, as far as we mere mortals go. We are NOT “under the Sun.” We are OVER the sun, just as the Moon is over us. Should we fall into the Sun, we’d be falling down.

002

Synopsis Symphony

May 16, 2013
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Image

Supposedly there are only a few stories, and we ring endless changes on them. I don’t think that’s true, or maybe it’s true to a crude extent only.

Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN, OR, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS is a cautionary tale, just as the original story of Prometheus was. Much more recently, “Blood Music” by Greg Bear takes the premise to a wonderfully horrifying extreme. An Internet search will lead the curious reader to a synopsis, and a more curious reader to the “gray goo” concept.

We are an increasingly synoptic culture. So many things demand our attention! Why, I myself am demanding your attention at this very moment! I better keep it brief!

Words:

SING, O MUSE, of summ’d-up stories
Yawners, t h r i l l e r s, allegory
Nasty fall or heartmelt gem
OMG-er: booze/buff/hemp
Parabol that’s fulla Pooh
Sappy RomCom: thrice-pitch’d woo
If/then/else in Kind or Mean
Sapience: Aye, THERE’s the key

I used “parabol” instead of “parable” to give a flavor of arc to the story.

“Pooh” does and does not refer to a certain Bear of Little Brain that I’ll always have fondness for, even though my hero Dorothy Parker scorned him and his chronicler.

“If/then/else” will be familiar to those who indulge, even to the slightest degree, in computer programming. “If/then/else,” I submit, is the distillation of Story to the barest of bones.

“Sapience” means Wisdom. Our species has the taxonomy “Homo sapiens.” Riiiiggggghhhht.