A Touchdown is Attainment of a Goal.
There are many ways to describe the gaits we have used in the course of a long lifetime. No single word can capture how a marathoner whose calves cramped up at the seventeen-and-a-quarter point of the race and who wrestled with despair and dehydration the other nine-plus miles of the footrace at last crosses the finish line, but the invented word Trudgedown is a fair approximation.
A Trudgedown is Redemption of the Soul.
a baby sobs uncontrollably after unrequited hunger or hurtful startlement smite her.
a young lover sobs unrelievedly in the face of permanent, preventable, hormone-driven loss.
a soldier sobs for the rest of his life, haunted by the phantasms of life-changing mayhem.
ah, but the ocean throbs and sobs with the orphaning of her children and the unsustainable slaughterhouse her depths have become, and she weeps more tears than ever humanity has.
let us not sob for that. let us atone.
four-eff means unfit/for military service./hannibal lecter.
(If closed captioning transcribes the bone-chilling sound Anthony Hopkins improvised in Silence of the Lambs, I suspect it would read “F-f-f-f.”)
.
fluff a pillow/to enable attainment/of its potential.
.
festival vestments/and their divestiture/invest foofoorah.
.
freelance fred free-falls/fleeing felonious/fierce flighty fighters.
.
compassionate giant/hesitates whilst Jack escapes:/”fee, fie..foe….fumfuh…….”
(one nifty aspect of the use of lowercase in poetry is that when you throw in something uppercase it becomes oddly emphatic. Since Jack is the star of the fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk” it’s appropriate to emphasize him.)
(Grateful acknowledgment to the late author Harlan Ellison for using the Yiddish-derived “fumfuh” in one of his talking-to-the-reader introductions. It is more commonly spelled “fumfer” but I like Ellison’s variant better.)
.
“fini” means The End./”Finito Mussolini”/may well describe…
(The ending of the final ‘ku is left as an exercise for the reader. [smiley face])
O Yippee-Kai-Yo, Sis/We’re here in the fray
Because of Mitosis/And split DNA.
Go tell it on mountains/In whimsical rhyme
Our fountainhead fountains/One strand at a time.
hey there–
don’t you hate catchy titles that just bait to switch? we get roped in again by some son of a bitch who knows our curiosity’s worse than a cat’s so they lay down a briar of thisses and thats.
but this right jolly fellow with gray hair and wrinkles with a grin that is crooked and a left eye that twinkles now ceases the nonsense and staves off attack having baited and switched why he switches right back.
there was a calm scientist aaron by name who sought not only knowledge but fortune and fame and his pigeon chest swelled even more with the pride that his asthma was cured and he’d taken a bride.
they lived well off his royalties and truest love and they searched here and yon and below and above for the best installations of magic and light that would make perfect rainbows by day dusk and night.
so we now close the curtain on aaron and djenn the pragmatic asthmatic and his sacred wren and imagine prismatics that let our eyes feast on genetic æsthetics that soothe savage beasts.
my christmas begins w/a jaunt in the street
over asphalt & g r a v e l and concrete & tar
one w/midtown & stars & a calm so complete
near celestial bliss & h o s a n n a s — o hark
thanks to the hershey folks
even an old mateless man
can get a kiss on christmas eve
.
and he can pour himself christmas cheer
into a lovely goblet of his own making
and with the seagram’s v o in the cupboard
he can toast the spirit of his deceased father
with the spiritous liquor
that was his father’s favorite
.
by now you may be feeling sorry
for this lonely old codger
having been emotionally manipulated
by said codger
but you need not be
all he needs for all the unloneliness he wants
is to get off his fat ass
and go out into the world
call a pal or a gal or a gal pal
and see if a christmas movie is viewable
go to the dive bar across the street
or better yet a coffeehouse
with a cheerful barista
who knows him by name
and ask for the usual
shoot a text to a faraway loved one
or a joke to a nearby old friend
.
but before this old myself does any of this
i’ll have another so delightful kiss
and kiss you, my cherished reader, as well
in a way appropriate to the both of us
and urge you to celebrate in your way
what you find most fittingly celebratory
and i raise my goblet to you
and wish you the best
first let’s establish what SOTM stands for/and later i will beg for it to stand for something else
SOTM stands for Show Ourselves The Money
and is pronounced, unsubtlely enough, Sodom
I felt SOTMized this last election cycle/because i wanted a few candidates to win so badly/that i contributed modest amounts to their campaigns
and to this day, almost seven weeks after the election,/ALL of those candidates,/and some of their pals as well,/are hounding me/and pleading with me/and guilt-tripping me/and badgering me
to Show Ourselves The Money/(the Ourselves being the candidates, of course)
to give them more for next time/because the bad guys are outspending us
i want this bloodsucking buggerish nonsense to stop
because the implication is Whoever Has The Most Money Wins
and Decency and Right vs. Wrong do not seem to matter
so i am begging everyone to change the paradigm
and please make SOTM stand for Something Other Than Money
.
other more civilized countries put money in its place/and limit campaign spending
let us learn from their example
for i cannot sit comfortably with this going on–
can you??
After he had watched the movie {proof} he got a little angry and then quite sad
His own brain harbored no delusions but it was shrinking and had gone from a fusion reactor of ideas and insights to a sputtering engine with bad carburetion
And the movie did drive home how finite Earthly time can be
So he suddenly felt the urge to settle his affairs of the heart
Got out many pens and markers and dozens of sheets of his letterhead stationery
Wrote a sonnet that would apply to every one of the fourteen significant lovers he had had
And then wrote thirteen more sonnets similarly themed but unique to each lover
Retaining the final line in its original form for all fourteen of them
It was the line that was most absolutely true yet would mean something different to each person:
I so regret we did not make more love.
He sent most of the messages by snail mail. Two he scanned and e-mailed. One, the sonnet in its original form, he kept, because the lady was dead.
.
As often happens, attempts to settle affairs end up with the affairs being more unsettled than ever
but that,
to use a phrase found in many mathematics textbooks,
is “beyond the scope” of this account.
most of us/before we die/die down.
you can say dial-down if it makes you feel better./most of us are comforted/by some degree of euphemism. “die” in its various forms proves too//off-switchy.
this seventy-year old text-speaking to you/is dying down. his muscles do not bunch the way they did/and his brain shrinks. the fires of his youthful lust/are mere embers, glowing dimly./his skin withers and his hair/has lost pigmentation
but on the upside anxiety is down/braggadocio is down/vanity takes a back seat to sanity/and contentment is frequent
the die-down devalues hoopla/and prizes the warm glow of a comfortable conversation/and a restful nap? o my
“in seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy” said william blake
may you have a long, enjoyable winter, my listening friend/with underblanket warmth/and much hot soup and oatmeal and coffee/tea/chocolate
and then
let Spring follow
