Prose Poem: The Crocodile Form.

 

At the rec center they wanted me to

 sign a piece of paper 

before letting me into the pool area.

"What's this for?" I asked the young lifeguard

who handed it to me.

"Just a standard crocodile form -- nothing

to worry about" he told me, his blond 

hair obscuring his shifty eyes.

"Whoa! Wait a minute" I replied,

taking a step back from him.

"What crocodiles?"

"The ones that might somehow

someday someway get into the

pool" he told me, trying to brush his

blond hair out of his shifty eyes,

but only succeeding in looking

all the more shifty.

"Won't the chlorine keep 'em out?"

I asked him earnestly.

I loved swimming at the rec center,

and didn't want to have to stop.

"We sure hope so" he said.

"But if you don't sign I can't

let you into the pool."

"Why all the sudden concern about

crocodiles?" I asked him shrewdly.

"Have they been sighted around here?"

"No sir" he replied stoutly.

"But several children have gone completely

missing in the last few weeks.

So we got to assume the worst."

"Couldn't be a cougar or something else?"

I asked.

"Of all the big carnivores" said the

blond lifeguard authoritatively,

"only the crocodile leaves nothing behind

of its victim -- swallowing the clothes, 

shoes, and even belt buckles and suspenders."

"But you haven't actually seen one 

around here, right?" I asked.

"Not yet" said the kid.

This was a great conversation to have,

at least for me, 

to get your bowels moving.

So I went to take care of that

and then came back and

signed the crocodile form.

That's when the cougar attacked me.

Prose Poem: Food Insecure.

 

I've been food insecure all my life.

But it didn't get really bad

until last March.

That's when my magic breadbox 

stopped working.

Up until then

all I had to do was

wish for a meal or

food item and it would magically

appear in front of me.

Kinda like those replicator

thingies in Start Trek.

Except mine was magic;

it was given to me by a 

troupe of elves

on their way to a Yankees

baseball game long ago.

After the calamity 

I felt so food insecure

that I regressed into the 

state of an amoeba.

I mean literally -- 

I became a one-celled organism.

Somehow I managed to land

on a head of iceberg lettuce

in a school cafeteria,

and a heroic lunch lady,

exclaiming "What in the world

is this piece of yuck doing on 

the sandwich lettuce -- don't

they wash this stuff no more?" 

gently removed me with a paper

towel and set me in a petri

dish.

Where I prospered so well

that I turned back into a human

being.

And I married that lunch lady.

Her name is Ruthie.

She makes me spaghetti 

with Hormel chili whenever I want.

Prose Poem: Not in MY neighborhood!

 

We've got to do something about these

displaced vegetables!

Just the other day I was at home,

minding my own business,

when a frowzy summer squash

knocked on my door, leered at me,

said it had been planted in a nearby

garden,

and now wanted a handout --

or a bottle of cooking sherry

if I had any.

I slammed the door in its face.

Then took some organic kratom.

But that wasn't the end of things.

All week there have been ugly

brawls behind the mulch pile

in the alley.

Blemished tomatoes against wilted celery.

Radishes gone to seed, acting tough,

 with a 

bad attitude.

And there are carrots,

 out of their minds

on Miracle-Gro,

lying in the gutters and

making rude comments to

passersby.

The neighborhood, my neighborhood,

where I raised two boys and a girl,

and kept nasturtiums,

has become Skid Row.

I went to see the Mayor,

for all the good it did me.

She said that I needed to open

my heart to the friendless kale

and despised rutabaga.

"How many zucchini have interrupted

your dinner lately?" I asked her bluntly.

She didn't have an answer for that!

I talked it over with some of my neighbors,

wondering if we should take the city to court.

But we'd probably get that Mr. Potato Head judge,

who bleeds beet juice. A waste of time

and money.

Well, if the city won't do anything,

there's more than one way to peel

an onion.

I got me a whole warren of rabbits now.

And if they happen to get out of their hutches

 one night,

and rampage through the neighborhood,

and snack on a few derelict cabbages

or pole beans,

well, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

After all:

Who's gonna blame a cute little bunny?

Photo Essay: Experiments in Collage. Vol. 12.

 

Prose Poem: Snowball in Hell.

 

My team and I took a snowball to Hell.

We had to clean away centuries of

basket debris piled at the entrance,

but eventually we  managed to get

past the high water and present ourselves

to his Infernal Majesty.

He proved to be most gracious,

and curious.

"My dear mortals" he began,

"Why do you wish to bring a snowball

into my domain?"

"Well, it's this way" I told him.

"The glaciers are all melting topside.

And yet the winters get colder

while the summers get hotter.

We believe the human race no longer

has the chance of a snowball in Hell

to survive. We're here to prove that thesis,

one way or the other."

"And peppermint bushes now walk like men"

added my assistant, unhelpfully.

His Infernal Majesty appeared nonplussed.

"Please to produce the snowball" he finally requested.

I held it up for his inspection.

 It had melted into itself,

becoming a ball of ice.

It was dripping very slowly;

I calculated that at its current melt rate

it would last approximately two more days.

Mr. Scratch (if I may now be so familiar) clapped

his hands and two minions scurried over to

take the snowball from my hand to place inside a 

chest freezer in the corner.

"Funny" I mused out loud. "I didn't notice 

that freezer before . . . "

"My dear morsels" said the darkening figure on the throne, 

"I just materialized it.

 Please give your snowball no more 

thought whatsoever."

"Hey" said my assistant, "he called us 'morsels, instead of mortals."

"Indeed I did" said his Infernal Majesty (seemed like the use of his proper title was a better idea.)

"I find your ignorance and your conceit delicious, and I shall enjoy it, slowly and daintily, for eons to come" he said, sounding exactly like Frank Nelson on the old Jack Benny show while licking his glowing red lips. 

I knew we should have just stuck to drilling ice cores . . . 

Prose Poem: A Walt for All Seasons.

 

There was a man above all the seasons, when I was a youth.

He was contrary and caring at the same time.

An enigma wrapped up in brown paper soaked in

vinegar.

But it wasn't Walt Whitman, or any other Walt

you've ever heard of. 

It was Walt Greenblatt,

who owned the corner grocery.

Walt smelled like his store:

stale jawbreakers mingled with charcoal lighter.

Most people thought he would burn the place

down for the insurance any day.

But I knew he wouldn't.

Not Walt.

Good old Walt.

He hated kids.

He hated their mothers.

And he absolutely refused

to wait on men under the age of

forty.

He'd send his assistant, Shorty,

to handle customers,

while he sat in the corner 

by the Old Dutch potato chips

and kept up a continuous commentary:

"Sugar and matches, sugar and matches;

that guy's up to no good -- mark my words!

She want's milk on credit, for her baby?

I wanna see the baby first.

Rubbery carrots, she says.

Rubber's good for your eyes, toots."

For many years I dreamed of working

for Walt.

Of learning how to tell a yellow onion

from a white onion,

and how to sell Turtle Wax to 

people who didn't want to buy

 Turtle Wax.

But one night as he was closing up

the mops attacked him.

In the morning they found him

in a pool of Mr. Clean. 

So I became a watchmaker instead,

working on Native American reservations

you've never heard of.

I got a lot of government contracts. 

Prose Poem: Burning Calendars.

 

The Anti-Holiday Party swept into office this fall.

And since I was party chairperson, I got a

nice cozy sinecure.

My job was to collect all the old paper calendars

that had Halloween, Christmas, the Fourth of July,

and so on, noted on them, and incinerate them.

The bonfires were spectacular.

Some people watching them got carried away.

They threw their masks into the bonfires.

Then I had my men thrown them into the 

bonfire.

It all came about this way . . . 

No, I don't think I'll bother to explain it at all.

Why bother?

The facts of the matter are that we have no more holidays

of any kind -- national, religious, ethnic, or even silly like Ground Hog Day.

Every day is a work day.

There are no weekends.

Every day you get your temperature taken.

You have your mask inspected at a mask 

inspection station. 

You bring your six foot pole with you everywhere,

or face a thousand-dollar fine.

After all,

how are you to know if you are at least

six feet away from someone 

if you don't have a six foot pole 

with you? You're allowed to use a barge pole

if you're a citizen of Great Britain.

Birthday parties, too, are out.

So the new calendars are very sleek,

very plain affairs -- 

month names, day names, and numbers from 1 up to 31.

It's going to work like a charm.

 Excepting I don't think any of the big brains

took into account this is Leap Year yet . . . 

Photo Essay: Experiments in collage. Vol. 11

 

Prose Poem: Tell No One.

 

I was having trouble with my remote.

It wouldn't change over from TV to Netflix.

I checked the battery and fiddled 

with buttons. No go.

So I called my boss about it.

She's a good guy

and I feel comfortable 

unloading on her.

She said to take two aspirin

and call her in the morning.

What a joker she is!

I called her back

(we had got disconnected somehow)

and said "No, seriously -- my remote

isn't functioning properly. Can

you come over for a minute to look

at it? It's really stressing me out."

She couldn't make it that night;

she said she was sorting organic allspice

and couldn't interrupt the process

without grave damage to the product.

I'm an understanding guy,

so I said sure -- come over tomorrow morning.

But strangely enough I got called 

into the office early the next morning.

and told I was downsized.

Was given only twenty minutes to 

clean out my desk.

At my next job I got along with

my new boss famously.

He was very fatherly.

He was an older man,

with a bad heart and diabetes.

So when I got a parking ticket

I waited until mid-afternoon,

after he'd had his lunch and

rested a bit, then went into

his office to ask him if he

could fix my parking ticket.

I had to go look up the word "effrontery"

after he was done talking to me.

After that it was a long time

before I found work again.

But this time I had learned my lesson.

When I got a boil on my neck

I scheduled a staff meeting to show

everyone on my team

 the problem on Zoom.

That worked out fine.

I got put in charge of charting 

everyone's daily temperatures.

Prose Poem: The suspected unwell.

 

(based on a story by Drew Harwell)

The temperature police broke down my door

at 8:30 p.m. on a Thursday.

"Are you here to burn my books?"

I asked timidly.

"What's books?" asked the youngest cop.

"Never mind that" snarled the chief officer of

the squad. "We got a report of potential risk

in this household; so we're gonna have to

search the place."

"Be my guest" I replied nervously.

I had nothing to hide. 

I hoped.

They took my temperature.

They took the temperature of

my cat.

And my goldfish.

Even the geranium in the window sill.

"Got something here, Sarge!" yelled 

the young guy from the kitchen.

They all crowded into the kitchen,

guns drawn.

I was baking cornbread in the oven.

"This device is way too hot" 

said the Sarge. "Turn it off immediately!"

So I did. No use arguing with authority

when it has a gun.

"Where's your face mask?" asked the Sarge.

"You need to be wearing it right now."

"You're not wearing one" I ventured.

That was a mistake.

"Oh, a wise guy" growled the Sarge.

"That'll cost you exactly fifty dollars, pal."

"Sorry" I said meekly.

"You're standing too close to that rubber plant"

said the young cop. I was really beginning to

hate that guy.

"Move away!" barked the Sarge.

I moved. And began to sweat.

Heavily.

"Look, Sarge! He's sweating like a pig"

said the young cop.

"He must be one of them

suspected unwell."

They hustled me into their green van.

An hour later I was in a sterilized holding cell

after the temperature police had made me

skip rope with a rubber hose.

A doctor examined me.

He found symptoms of dandruff 

and halitosis. 

That was enough to send me to Camp Fauci,

outside of Juneau Alaska.

It was actually quite pleasant.

We played cribbage with the guards

and had cooking classes from world class

chefs.

I learned to make beef bourguignon.

I especially enjoyed the yoga sessions.

When I was released two years later

they gave me a Land's End parka,

gift certificates for Walgreens,

and ten thousand dollars.

So I settled in Juneau.

A very nice place. No parking meters.

And when I came down with leprosy

they elected me mayor.