Saturday, September 12, 2020
Prose Poem: Off the grid.
When I decided to go off the grid,
I didn't tell a single solitary soul.
I wanted to see how long it would be
before my family and friends missed
my sparkling presence on Twitter
and Facebook.
I was fed up with the narcissistic malarkey and
outright falsehoods my social media accounts
were filled with.
So I pulled the plug.
No more emails.
If people wanted to get a hold of
me they could mail me a letter.
Which is what I would do to them.
Or come over to see me.
Or call me on my Tracfone.
Of course, they'd need my new number.
So I sent out a batch of postcards with it.
I had ditched my smartphone
and got myself a Tracfone instead.
Then I sat back and quietly waited.
After a week I began to worry;
didn't anybody miss me?
Was I so insignificant that
not a person on earth cared
I was gone from the internet?
After a month of no responses
I went over to
Crazy Henry's house.
He's my oldest friend.
He answered the door
and invited me in for
cornbread and iced tea.
"Miss me much?" I asked him
finally.
"Nope" he said. "Did you go someplace?"
"I'm off the grid" I told him impatiently.
"Have been off it for months!"
Crazy Henry squeezed more lemon
into his iced tea.
"Can't say I noticed" said Crazy Henry.
"I spend all my online time with
Project Gutenberg, reading old Argosy
stories."
"Well, that's a stupid waste of time" I told him.
He shrugged his shoulders and began
peeling a quince.
That's when the revelation hit me;
all my friends, all my family,
had been corrupted and maimed
by social media.
Not a one of them could hold up
their end of an intelligent conversation
anymore.
So I said goodbye to Crazy Henry
and went back home.
And waited.
Waited for intelligence to contact me.
From anywhere. From outer space, even.
I never heard any voices; I never got any postcards.
My phone never buzzed.
I walked down to the drugstore
every day to pick up a newspaper.
You can trust newspapers.
They never get an obituary
or crossword puzzle wrong.
Finally, a year later, I got a letter
from the National Security Administration.
They wanted to know why I was off the grid.
They were, they wrote, concerned I might
die alone in my house and no one would
know about it for months.
The letter was personally signed by
J. Edgar Hoover.
That's when I grew a beard
and began to wear nothing but moccasins.
I moved onto a derelict barge
on the Mississippi.
When The New Yorker writer came by
that winter to do a profile
on me
as "The Last Holdout,"
I told her I was starving and
had rickets. Beri-beri, too.
She bought me food and tried
to get me to drink a bottle of wine
with her.
That's when I knew she was
a government agent, not a writer
from The New Yorker.
If she were with The New Yorker
she'd get a bottle of cheap gin instead.
I threw a moccasin at her and dove
into the icy Mississippi.
And haven't been heard from since.
Prose Poem: Ready to be myself.
At long last, I am ready to be myself.
For the first seventeen years of my life
I played the part of a waif.
Even though I had good parents,
plenty to eat, and
a nice big house
with a huge backyard.
I sat on curbs near bridges
over the river in the downtown
section of a Midwestern city,
making wistful eyes at
passersby.
Some gave me money.
Some gave me used clothing.
Some gave me candy.
All of which I threw in the river.
When I turned eighteen
I became a genius.
I got a scholarship to Harvard.
Where I smoked a pipe
and constructed complex
algorithms.
I shunned the girls
and schmoozed the professors.
And became the youngest tenured
faculty member in history.
At twenty-five I grew weary of the
academic rat race,
so I stowed away on a
schooner headed for the
South China Sea.
My mistake.
It was only a ride at Diseneyland.
So I sold popcorn from a bright red
wagon on Main Street.
Until I got caught eating the popcorn.
Then it was Sing Sing.
A hardened recidivist,
I crashed out of the joint
several times
but was always caught
and thrown into solitary.
Where I bounced a rubber ball
endlessly against the damp wall,
and composed a reply to Oscar Wilde's
'De Profundis.'
Which got me an early parole.
But none of those roles were me.
At heart, I'm just a swineherd.
Watching over my Lincolnshire Curly Coats
as they snuffle for mast in the autumn leaves.
That's what I thought I wanted.
But never achieved.
Instead, I was caught up
in the mad whirl of
North Dakota's literary scene
during the 1990's.
I married the governor's daughter,
then went completely vegan.
When the dust settled,
I was on my own in Thailand.
Unfriended, unknown, and undernourished.
A tribe of Huguenots took me in
and made me their mascot.
But that was only to fatten me up
for a sacrifice to their volcano god --
Mugwump.
I escaped by the skin of my teeth.
Stayed with an aunt in New Jersey.
And suddenly grew old and mossy
and smelly.
That's when the pigs started following
me around.
Now I live in a cabin on a pond
next to the railroad tracks,
where I butcher the pigs that
seek me out, so I can feed
itinerant hoboes on their way
to the wildfires out West.
It's who I really truly am:
A murderous carnivore
who battens off the miseries
of the lumpenproletariat.
Prose Poem: The Bank Teller.
I had to go to the bank to get a roll of quarters.
To do my laundry.
The teller was a very nice young woman.
She had a lovely smile.
She got me my roll of quarters,
then asked if I would be interested in
a car loan.
"I don't drive anymore" I told her.
"Do you need a second mortgage,
or a reverse mortgage?" she asked politely.
"No thank you" I replied. "I'm trying to stay
out of debt."
She gave me another lovely smile,
then wrote something down on a
yellow legal pad.
"What are you writing?" I asked her.
"I'm making notes for my MBA class
on marketing" she told me.
"About me?"
"Well, yes" she said. "You show
remarkable sales resistance."
"Oh, do I?" I said, suddenly very pleased
with myself.
"Yes, you do" she replied. Then hesitated,
looking down and then back up at me.
"Would you mind answering a few
questions for me -- for my class?" she asked.
"Of course!" I said gallantly. "Anything to advance
your education!"
So she took me into a back room to
ask me all sorts of questions about my
spending habits and attitude towards
debt. She took copious notes.
When we were done she thanked me
effusively.
I was so overcome by her attention --
I'm a widower of many years --
that I went ahead and took out
a car loan -- for my daughter;
she's driving an old wreck that's
going to fall apart any day now.
And I applied for a reverse mortgage, too.
I've always wanted to put in a backyard
hot tub.
She shook my hand warmly and tenderly.
Even though that's against the rules nowadays.
I couldn't help myself: I asked her to marry me.
She was very sympathetic, and let me down easy.
She had to get her MBA first, she said.
"Then we can talk about a relationship" she
finished, handing me a brochure on investing
in Bitcoin and gently pushing me out the door.
I got back in the nursing home van and sat down
with a knowing smile
that drove the old ladies sitting up front
crazy.
"You look like the cat that swallowed the canary"
said one of them.
"I almost did" I told her smugly. "Do any of you
gals need quarters?"
Friday, September 11, 2020
TImericks from today's Washington Post.
Trump’s dubious tax gambit fizzles, as even red states balk.
Even the rednecks can see
Trump's tax plans are lunacy.
He'll bypass the laws
to play Santa Claus,
till he gets the old third degree.
Facing backlash, Netflix defends ‘Cuties’ as ‘social commentary’ against sexualizing young girls.
Nothing succeeds like young sex,
so Netflix is cashing big checks
because now and then
the dirty old men
like to get steam on their specs.
‘Worst case scenarios’ at Sturgis rally could link event to 266,000 coronavirus cases, study says.
Restraint ain't a biker's ideal.
The virus to them's no big deal.
They gathered and spread
disease without dread --
Their conduct is that of an eel.
Timericks from stories in today's New York Times.
As Clock Ticks, Trump Engulfs Himself in Chaotic News Cycles.
When a president begins
tweeting naught but trash and sins,
he will find the spotlight thus
fixed on him producing pus.
If he's given one more chance,
I wonder -- will he keep his pants?
Dated 1920, a Postcard Finally Gets Delivered.
The mail will get through; never fret!
But maybe they won't break a sweat;
after it's sorted
it will be transported
by tortoise or sloth, but not jet!
Timericks from stories in today's Wall Street Journal.
Hopes Fade for New Stimulus Checks, Federal Jobless Aid.
Congress moves with lightning speed
when the rich are in great need.
But when common folk grow poor,
Congress answers with a snore.
Thus we see that legislators
only work for large donators.
AUTONOMOUS ROBOTS ARE COMING TO THE OPERATING ROOM.
When surgery is necessary
robots will be making merry
with the scalpel and the gauze --
slicing, dicing, without pause.
I would rather cyborgs stay
from my tonsils far away!
Private Texas Border Wall Will Fall Into Rio Grande, Opponents Say
Like the walls of Jericho
border walls to heck will go.
When the engineers are done,
Mother Nature has her fun;
flooded out or earthquake shook,
they're condemned by the Good Book.
Wednesday, September 9, 2020
Timericks from stories in today's Washington Post
End of an era: E! announces ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ will air final season next year.
And so all mournful Trashian
will have no more Kardashian.
The brawls and scandals soon will cease
and big screen TV will have peace.
What to buy and what to wear
no longer will be their sole care.
They'll have to find some work that's real:
May I suggest they sell fish meal?
Coronavirus cases spike among school-age children in Florida, while state orders some counties to keep data hidden.
Little Johnny cannot read;
and his lungs may start to bleed.
When his teacher starts to cough
still a mask he does not doff.
Little Johnny isn't naughty;
he just needs to use the potty.
Angels lift him to the skies,
while the school board shuts its eyes.
Hot new job title in a pandemic: ‘Head of remote work’
Now your boss is far away
(and let's hope he stays that way!)
So a new boss takes his place,,
with a smile upon his face.
He (or she) looks at your screen
and can tell where you have been;
playing solitaire all day,
or a slave to Frito-Lay.
Napping, reading, writing poems --
he knows if we work in our homes.
So beware this cyber fink,
or you'll get the slip that's pink!
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