I have spent this past Pandemic Year creating and mailing a good many postcards, to both friends and strangers.
And occasionally I receive one in return. Such as the following:
From Eli Raczynski, of Massachusetts:
I meditate on all thy works,
O Lord of Night and Day;
thy mighty hands have formed my soul
like supple potter's clay.
Remember not my frailties
and follies, Lord of hosts:
Forgive my idle reveries
that turn to pompous boasts!
This place has been around a long time in Provo.
But I ain't gonna tell you where it is.
Cuz I don't want it to be busy when I want
to go there to get a good hamburger.
They also do Chicago dogs, but they tend to turn
into gloop after the first few bites, cuz
they have more soggy verduras heaped on 'em
than Carmen Miranda's hat.
jiggery-pokery, but their burgers hold
together, stay strong and cohesive
like the Rock of Gibraltar, even when
they get shook up bad while I lumber
uneasily on my arthritic legs the three
blocks back home.
open at 10:30, and that's about the time I get home
from the Rec Center after my deep water aerobics class
and a long soak in the hot tub -- so today I decided
I wanted something decadent, something that pandered
to the carnivore in me to break my morning fast.
This burger did the trick. For five bucks.
I didn't bother with fries, which I now regret.
There would have been room for 'em.
was when I got back home, sitting in my
recliner and watching an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise
on Netflix, makes me want to go back there right
now for for maybe a Texas burger this time.
As my old Thai girlfriend Joom used to
say to me, shaking her head:
"May roojug paw!"
Which means "You always want
too much of a good thing."
Didn't quite turn out; I'm sure that after watching
me struggle to get this shot, the proprietor
now thinks I am an elderly overweight lunatic.
Wednesday, because they give a Senior discount
on Wednesdays -- ten percent off.
Maybe I'll try the Texas burger then . . .
We sailed through the Suez Canal during a sultry
afternoon in March.
I was worried about our cargo:
Norwegian walnuts are subject
to all sorts of hot weather wilting
issues.
But many members of my crew
had never seen sand in their entire
lives:
Lascars and Antimacassars,
Laplanders and Foozlemen.
After our rough passage around the
Grimstead Archipelago,
I figured they deserved a
reward for their hard work
and sacrifice.
Abbiby, our pilot, seemed nervous.
"These waters can be Quixotic" he told
me, when I mentioned his twitching
and feral glances.
"The Canal has many moods"
he continued, chewing on a
Baby Wampas Bar.
"So do I" I told him grimly.
"So don't hand me any tall tales
and just get us past the Dry Heaves, pronto!"
My little outburst seemed to settle his hash,
but two days later, as we sighted Marmalade Kettle,
Abbiby abruptly abandoned the wheel to jump overboard.
He landed on a sandbank and scuttled away.
We grounded on that same sandbank,
at which point I lost control of my crew --
they threw themselves onto the sand in an
ecstasy of unbridled joy, scooping up the grains
to pour over their heads and down their shirt
fronts, and they even began swallowing the sand.
"Tastes yust like sugar!" yelled Finn Mark,
my first mate.
I knew it wouldn't be long
before the sand flies got 'em,
so I lured them back onboard
with rollmops and lemon schnauzer.
Then opened all the stopcocks.
The ship settled into the sandbank,
never to move again.
And I planted all the Norwegian walnuts
along the bank of the Canal . . .
Eventually we built a country club
and started a credit union.
Then the crew started clamoring
to make me King of Sandbank Island.
But I told them such a thing
would surely lead to vassalage,
and their daughters would become
confectionaries.
But they insisted,
so now I'm the King.
King of an upstart gang of
arrogant and immature men.
They're such proud boys . . .
**********************************
An English Professor at BYU responded to the above with his own poem, based on the Beatle's 'Norwegian Wood.' --
I once had a nut,
Or should I say, I was a nut?
She showed me her nut:
Isn’t it good, Norwegian nut?
She called me a nut
And she told me to sit on a nut.
So I picked up a nut
And noticed it wasn’t a walnut.
I sat on a rug, eating my nut,
Drinking her nut.
We talked like a nut
And then she said, You are a nut.
She told me she worked like a nut
And I laughed like a nut.
I told her her nut
Took a bath and then crawled like a nut.
And when my poor nut
Woke, I was the nut!
This bird was nut.
So I fired the nut--
Isn’t it good, Norwegian nut?
Some have goodly parents
who have taught them right from wrong;
others aren't so fortunate
and somehow scrape along.
No matter what the case may be
for you and I, dear friend --
I testify that angels still
our welfare will defend!
It was a strange-looking device that
rattled down the street in my home town
back when I was a boy.
The old folks said it was from the devil.
But younger folk, those with open minds,
wanted to give it a chance --
so the strange thing was not run
out of town on a rail.
Instead, it was allowed to rumble
into the gazebo at City Park,
where it hummed and hissed,
belching out a noxious black smoke
from the smokestack on top.
There was a Victrola horn on the side,
and as soon as the strange machine
was settled in the gazebo a harsh
mechanical voice began tickling
our ears with balderdash and
innuendo.
My mother tried to keep me away from it,
but after dinner I snuck out my bedroom window
and went down to City Park to listen.
The machine told us that Mrs. Johnson,
a school teacher,
was secretly married to Nikita Khrushchev.
Our Town Hall was full of wormy
catalpa seed pods,
to be sold to Mexico at a huge profit by
the mayor and city council.
Mr. Plummer, a veterinarian, licked
fire hydrants at night.
And my own dad, Fred Palazzolo Sr.,
hoarded matches.
"It's a dirty lie!" I yelled at the horn.
Then I threw a rock at the darn thing.
It went down the smokestack and
a minute later huge glowing red sparks
came flying out of the machine
as it burst at the seams.
We all ran screaming back to our homes
before that dratted disinformation machine
exploded -- destroying our beautiful town
gazebo.
Don't ask me why, but all the prominent citizens
in town turned against the old folks
who had warned us in the first place
about the strange machine --
so those prominent citizens
had every single solitary senior citizen
hauled off to the county poor farm.
That's why I never got to know my grandpa Palazzolo.
God has made the world to be
run by sweat and industry.
Making money from thin air
seems to be most people's care;
but all true prosperity
comes from humble drudgery.
Learn a skill and ply a trade,
to be well and truly paid.
In Heidelberg cars are verboten/mare's shank is what they're promotin'/So take the bus line/And fossil fuels? Nein!/Then down the Neckar you be floatin'.
Razor wire in D.C./is the brand new normalcy/militias prowling all around/make D.C. a battleground/land mines are the next big step/in our nation's combat prep/Now we are a Third World state/filled with nothing but cheap hate.
Is that you, Joe, behind the mask?/The reason that I have to ask/is cuz no one looks quite the same/playing this here masking game/The other day I thought a guy/was my old mother's sis, Aunt Vi/I'm agreeing with those wags/who say we need to wear name tags!
These are original postcards that I fabricate myself, then mail to President Joe Biden c/o the White House. I have been told they are subversive, enigmatic, funny, threatening, and profound. I prefer to think of them as just pure Zen.
The welfare of my soul
lies with the Great Physician,
who cures me of my ills
upon complete submission.
No bill does he submit;
his prescript is that I
serve all my fellow men
with kindness in my eye.
