Prose Poem: Bret Stephens, the onlie begetter.

 

 

I took a night class from Bret Stephens.

About Shakespeare.

The first night I asked belligerently:

"What do you know about Shakespeare?"

"Not as much as I should" he replied frankly.

Which response won my heart. 

He continued:

"I'm actually a newspaperman."

The class gasped in Unison. Which

is an unincorporated village in Loudon

County, Virginia.

"The first thing we do, let's

kill all the reporters" said

a horse-faced girl next to me.

The class laughed nervously.

But Stephens didn't miss a beat.

"Buzz off" he explained kindly.

After that we settled down to

study the character of Falstaff.

"Who wants to explain why Falstaff

still fascinates us today?" he asked

the class.

We looked down at our desks

and shuffled papers. 

Nobody knew who Falstaff was.

I didn't. The horse-faced girl didn't.

Mr. Stephens didn't, either, I gather,

because he looked real disappointed

when nobody answered him.

"Okay, then" he said sullenly.

"Let's move on to global warming."

"What about Shakespeare, prof?"

asked a boy in a red cardigan.

"Drive that blasted cardigan out

of here!" Mr. Stephens yelled at him.

"It's a gas guzzler."

The bell rang just then,

so we gathered up our vellum

and quills.

But Mr. Stephens held up his hand.

"Before you leave" he said earnestly, 

 "I have just been informed that the Lemp

Brewery made Falstaff Beer for over a 

hundred years. That is all."

No wonder the guy won

a Pulitzer.

 

 

Prose Poem: Jared Goyette and the Dandruff Machine.

 

 

when people are television 

personalities

strange things happen to them.

 

take the case of Jared Goyette.

a noted celebrity on Fox 9.

he grew up on the wrong side

of the trucks

almost getting run over.

his parents were poor

but avaricious.

they sold their dandruff

to medical schools

to pay for Jared's 

education at Brown

Institute of Broadcasting.

 

once he became a star

Jared bought his parents

a home in Bemidji.

He also bought back

all their dandruff

and had it sprinkled

around their house one

dry winter to simulate

a snow storm.

 

but what i meant to tell

you about was the time

he lost his car keys and

had to walk home.

 

on the way he met a small

man wearing a red belt.

the small man asked him

for money to buy a crumpet.

 

Mr. Goyette gave the little

man with the red belt some

magic beans instead.

but the small man 

turned out to be 

the fox 9 station owner.

and he suspended Goyette

for egregious stinginess.

without pay. for six weeks.

 

if you don't believe my

story you can always

go read a book by

Deepti Kapoor.

 

***********************************

Mr. Goyette's email reply to the above poem:

"Amazingly nothing to do with me but still funny."

 

 

 

Prose Poem: A Baton for Amy Argetsinger.

 

the cost of a baton is outrageous.

they used to cost a dime,

back in the days when balsa wood

was still used as currency and

leprechauns hadn't traded in

their pots of gold for

cybercurrency.

 

just out of curiosity 

i stopped by the baton shop

the other day.

a basic no-frills baton

is now going to set you

back a cool one thousand

dollars.

if you want a fancy model

you can talk to the dealer 

about financing a loan.

 

so you can imagine why

Amy Argetsinger,

who likes to write crusading

pieces for the Washington

Post, got involved in the

scandal.

 

she's uncovered a lot of

good old boy connections

that artificially inflate

the price of batons --

most of which, 

by the way,

are made by children

in Bangladesh.

 

all my sisters had batons.

the good ones, from France.

they didn't cost an arm

and a leg back then.

so i'm glad Ms. Argetsinger

is finally getting to the bottom

of the baton cartel's scheme.

i wish her well.

i hope she's not bumped off

in the middle of the night

by some gunsel.

 

i'd send her a donation

to help her crusade

but i just bought a dozen

eggs

and had to get a 

second mortgage 

on the house. 

Prose Poem: Mitt Romney Goes to the Library.

 

We never meant it to get out of hand.

We were a peaceful group.

A think tank, leaning to the right.

Academic and committed to the core

to scholarship.

What happened is a sunspot

on a dirty winter day.

 

It started when we read that

Mitt Romney had a nanny

take his kids to the library.

He never went himself.

We were outraged.

Flummoxed, really.

This seemed to us

the shipwreck of sound

parenting.

 

So we started an online petition.

To invite Mitt Romney to visit

the Seattle Central Library.

It's a beautiful place.

 

Well, our online petition

got out of hand,

as these things do;

and suddenly it morphed

into a referendum

to recall Mitt Romney

from the Senate.

 

Suddenly our petition

received tens of thousands

of digital signatures.

 

Things looked bad for Mitt.

Until he sensibly went to 

Seattle and spent a day

inside the library.

Reading to Ukrainian orphans.

The ruckus died down immediately.

 

But some members of our think tank

liked the taste of cyber blood.

So to speak.

Now they regularly create online

petitions to remove everyone

and their cat from office.

We are having a board meeting

this weekend.

And if the board does not put the

kibosh on this horrible trend,

I, for one, am resigning,

and returning to my teaching position

at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, 

Maine. 

Prose Poem: Happy John Schwartz Day!

 

John Schwartz Day is coming up again.

Real soon.

Tomorrow, actually.

So you better buy your sweetheart

a box of candy.

Or get some flowers.

A dozen bottle rockets would be nice.

Just get something for the one you

love.

After all, John Schwartz gave his

life so lovers could keep loving.

At least that's the story they

used to teach us in grade school.

See, there was this scribe named

John Schwartz back in the medieval 

times. Back when newspapers

were real, along with dragons

and unicorns.

One day Schwartz comes upon

a pair of young lovers weeping.

"Why weepest thou, young lovers?"

he asks them.

"Our parents forbid us to wed!"

they cry in unison.

"Well, I can fix that. I'm a big shot

scribe!" he assures them.

So Schwartz girds up his loins

and goes to see the parents.

But they have never heard of him.

They only ever watch Fox News.

So they chop off his head.

And now every year on February 14th

we commemorate John Schwartz's

heroic deed and senseless death

by exchanging gifts with our lovers.

And hanging Rupert Murdoch in 

effigy.

 

Prose Poem: The Adventures of Joe Palazzolo.

 

Now I'm not saying anything of this

is true.

And I'm not saying any of it is made up.

I'm just saying that in a world of 

infinite possibilities

some of this might just have happened.

And it might just as well have happened

to Joe Palazzolo as to anyone else.

 

Joe's a reporter. A damn fine one.

He works for the Wall Street Journal.

Well, one day a man comes into his

office . . . 

No. No; Joe doesn't work in an office anymore.

Hardly anybody does. Everyone

works from home.

So . . . let's see . . . 

Okay. Got it.

One day at his home

while tuning his accordion

Joe looks out the window

and spots a man

carrying a green pony

on his back.

Being a reporter,

this naturally incites Joe's

curiosity.

 So he puts on his reporter

trench coat

and follows the guy

at a discreet distance.  

 

This man that Joe is following

goes down a dark alley

to climb up a fire escape ladder.

And into a third story window.

Joe waits a minute, then follows

him up and in.

This is a terrible mistake on Joe's part.

When Joe recovers consciousness

he finds himself in a dingy room,

with the green pony staring

malevolently at him. Joe is

tied to chair.

"What's this all about?" Joe asks.

"Wouldn't you like to know" sneers the pony.

"Yes I would. I'm a reporter for the 

Wall Street Journal" Joe replies steadily.

This seems to upset the green pony.

It backs away from Joe, muttering:

"This wasn't part of the operation."

"I better contact headquarters."

 

The green pony bolts out of the room.

 Left alone, Joe manages

to gnaw through the rope tying his hands

and escapes.

 

Back home Sergeant Muldoon

from the police is waiting for him:

"Did you happen to see a green

pony or a man carrying a green

pony pass by this way?" he demands 

of Joe.

"Wouldn't you like to know" sneers Joe.

"Well, okay -- I was just asking. You

don't hafta bite my head off" says

Sergeant Muldoon, close to tears.

"Don't worry, Sergeant" says Joe

in a soothing manner.

"You can read all about it

in tomorrow's print edition."

"Gee, thanks, Mr. Palazzolo.

You're a swell guy!" And the

Sergeant bolts out of the house.

Happy as ham and eggs on Texas toast.

 

 

*************************************

haiku:

so who owns the clouds?

not federal property --

some guy in Dubuque?

 

Prose Poem: Winnie Hu and the matador.

 

A matador is an embroidered fool.

But then, aren't we all . . . 

This story is not about a matador.

This story is about the last newspaper

published in Belle Fourche

South Dakota.

 

I have no reason to think

that Winnie Hu,

who is not an embroidered fool,

but works for the New York Times,

had any inkling of what happened

in Belle Fourche.

 

You might think that mentioning

a noted journalist in this manner

is simply egregious name-dropping.

A fishing expedition,

I think jurists call it.

 

But she is an archetype,

an avatar,

that gives this Belle Fourche

incident meaning and 

substance.

 

The last newspaper ever

published in Belle Fourche

used an article by Winnie Hu

about planting more trees

in New York City.

 

South Dakota has so few trees

that those that spring up 

are suffered to grow unmolested

like a park statue.

 

And now the state has even fewer

newspapers, once the Belle Fourche

paper ceased publishing.

 

It happened like this --

No, I guess it's not that important.

It wasn't a very good newspaper

anyway.

Their obituary writer routinely

 misspelled the names of the dead.

And they ran a column of old quotes

by Harold Stassen.

Sorry, Winnie.  

Sorry, Belle Fourche.

Sorry, Mr. Stassen.

Apologies, matadors.

I thought I had something

important to say.

But I don't.

*********************************

haiku

woke up from a nap --

my mouth tastes like cough syrup --

the Sabbath silence.

*************************************

 

Ms. Hu's somewhat puzzling email response to this poem:

 

Hi Tim, good morning and thank you! So sorry to hear about the Belle Fourche paper but I enjoyed your tribute. And hopefully there are more trees in your future! Winnie  

Prose Poem: Peter Baker turns to brick making

 

There's a brickyard outside

of Reston, Virginia.

I go there sometimes to watch

the workers make bricks by hand.

 

They slosh the red clay mud

around in rough wooden troughs

before pouring it from buckets 

into wooden molds that dry 

in the sun. For many weeks.

They do peaceful, quiet, steady work.

Mostly older men in faded overalls.

But one day there was a man

in a grey pinstripe business suit.

Sloshing the clay mud around.

His face was round and contented.

I decided he must be a famous person.

Who gave up the hurly-burly of fame

to make red clay bricks

to build homes and libraries

and courthouses.

"Do brick makers get paid well?"

I asked the guy loitering next to me.

"I suppose so" he replied.

"They all drive Volvos."

At the end of the work day

I followed the man in the suit

to his Volvo and then followed

him home.

Past fields of bright green grass

that looked spray-painted.

He pulled up a gravel drive

to a wonderful old house

hidden amidst chinaberry trees.

I pushed the buzzer at the gate.

"Who lives here?" I demanded.

"Peter Baker" came the scratchy reply.

"The reporter? Why is he making bricks?"

I asked in confusion.

"He wants closure"

replied a different voice,

equally tinny and scratchy.

I got back in my car and drove away.

There were no clear answers here.

My curiosity bubbled over.

But I figured every person

has a right to their privacy

and I had a duty to mind

my own business. 

So I went home to look in a book

where I remembered reading

that Winston Churchill joined

the English bricklayers union 

but was ousted because of his

conservative views.

 

From which I concluded

that great men build alike.

 

 

Prose Poem: Fried Cheese Curds from Amanda Hess.

 

In Wisconsin they have fried cheese curds.

With a conniving oily sour taste.

Every county fair has 'em.

I lived off 'em all summer long.

As a feral child.

 

I was abandoned by my parents

while we were in Green Bay

during the big game.

They told me to go get a Coke

and when I came back they were gone.

 

 That's the story I told Amanda Hess

one night at a party in Oshkosh.

I don't think she believed me. 

But every Xmas since then

she sends me a box of fried cheese curds.

 

I hear she's a reporter out East.

That she lives in a house 

that's floats over the Hudson,

held up by a blimp.

And she never uses the same pencil twice.

 

Me, I repair bent tokens

for the Milwaukee Transit Company.

I never met anyone as interesting

or as compassionate as Amanda Hess --

before or since.

 

If you're ever out East 

and meet her, you might

tell her that the shipped

fried cheese curds she sends

me always get stolen

off my front porch nowadays.

Prose Poem: Travis M. Andrews, meet the REAL Jeff Goldblum!

 

It's not that I have anything against

the reporter Travis M. Andrews.

I don't. I read his stuff all the time

in the Washington Post.

 

But I have to say I was put out

when he published his book

about Jeff Goldblum.

Without talking to me.

 

Because, you see, I am 

the real Jeff Goldbum.

I have the birth certificate

to prove it.

 

I made all those movies.

I lead the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra.

Did all the video games.

And started my own theater group.

 

That guy Andrews interviewed

is my stand-in. My stunt double.

How the mix up occurred 

is an unfathomable puzzle. 

 

I thought about suing

or, at least, egging his office.

But, nah -- Andrews writes so well

it's a pleasure to read his book.

 

Even though I regard it as fiction.

 

******************************************

to which Mr. Andrews replied via email:

"Tim! It’s been far too long. So happy to hear from you, and loved the poem as always! I award it five Goldblums."