The Unauthorized Autobiography of Me. Section Six.

 

Earworms.

I was infected at a young age.

Poet and Peasant overture.

Second Hungarian Rhapsody.

The Last Spring.

Radetzky March.

Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana.

Never Mind the Why and Wherefore.

Hungarian Dance Number Five.

The television spouted this music

as Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker

cavorted; the tunes tunneling into

my brain.

John Williams frostily narrating ads for

the Longines Symphonette records,

inviting me, a dumb five year old,

to let the melodies wash nakedly 

over me.

It's a wonder my parents

didn't notice my musical

orgasms. 

Or maybe they did --

and kept silent,

mourning my corrupt

and elfin ways.

There is a goofy musical bridge

in Saps at Sea

when Stan runs over Ollie

with their model T.

It is an elegy played on

discordant flutes

for every grimace

that every clown

has ever made

in frustration

at the callousness

of fate.

Every note of that

inconsequential ditty

corrosively etched on

my default memory --

automatically playing in

a loop whenever I'm bored

with a book, a person, a movie.

As a first of may at Ringling

I put in a dozen appearances

during the three hour show.

Clown alley far from the entrance,

I had to remember dozens of musical cues

 to prepare

props and get into place for the big

production numbers.

My blood boiled with joy

in the ring gags

as the strident music

took me off this planet

full of woe and gravity

to a place where ethereal

beings swatted each other

with cricket bats.

Those raucous gallops, polkas, and screamers

still haunt the fringes of my mind,

invading my sleep with slide trombones

and siren whistles. I wake up,

ready to do a buster.

To take a header into a shaving cream pie.

Ah, these old bones won't stand

any more pratfalls.  

But come the Resurrection,

come that hilarious rebirth,

I'll be doing 108's with Ben Turpin

in front of the Throne of God.

While angelic instruments play

the Mosquito Parade March. 

Today's timericks.

 

I trust doctors, yessirree/those who sport a real MD/they have studied long enough/that they really know their stuff/but the age of quacks ain't done/still gouging us with their end run/I hope they treat themselves one day/and justly choke then pass away.

Facebook ads ubiquitous/I believe iniquitous/I can't find a single post/without some commercial host/all my friends and fam'ly gone/replaced by stinkin' Papa John!

There is not another joy/like China as our whipping boy/politicians love attacks/on that country with an axe/Someday do not be surprised/when Beijing has mobilized/and another war begins/for our leaders' hawkish sins.

Black Friday shopping at the malls will record breaking be/as addle-pated shoppers show a low down apathy/to social distancing and masks, so caught up in their greed/they're gifting COVID-19 with more liberty to breed!

Do not panic; do not sweat/you will beat that turkey yet/it might burn or never thaw/or turn into some turkey slaw/serve up wine and highballs till/all your guests are feeling ill/then they'll eat most anything/including their own napkin ring!

This day China has announced/poverty has just been trounced/No more homeless paupers drift/in the markets to shoplift/All are fed, and housed, and clean/Ev'ry hut with TV screen/Freedom, on the other hand/is pretty ragged by command.

The Unauthorized Autobiography of Me. Section Five.

 

In 1965 I introduced John Lennon to this pile of Norwegian wood,

and then he wrote the song.

My sister Sue Ellen

had the largest collection

of bulk vending machine

tchotchke

in the Western Hemisphere.

She kept it in plastic one gallon

ice cream pails in the bedroom

closet we three shared.

Linda, Sue Ellen, and me.

I didn't get my own bedroom

until I was twelve

when Billy finally moved out

to marry his first wife Barbara.

Sue Ellen never let go of anything.

Trinkets. Resentments. Bad habits.

She got her trinkets at the

Red Owl supermarket

in New Brighton

where mom went shopping

every Tuesday.

A nickel in the slot 

permitted a clear plastic capsule

to pop out containing

elongated coins

tiny rubber skeletons

that glowed in the dark

plastic charm bracelet figures

cricket pinchers

keychains

little segmented hula girls

miniature plastic three note harmonicas

compasses the size of a penny.

Me, I was strictly a gumball man.

If I couldn't chew it, 

I didn't want it.

I threw away Carl Yaztrzemski

and Hank Aaron 

baseball cards to chaw

contentedly 

on brittle pink strips

of god knows what --

it couldn't have been chicle,

since it shattered like glass.

Ah, if I only had had

the miserly instinct of my

sister --

I would now be rolling in wealth

commanding my chef

to put canned anchovies

on my Totino's frozen pizza.

Drinking Bobby Burns

Black Cherry Soda

until it poured out my ears.

Tossing Sputnik bubblegum balls

and Atomic Fireballs 

to the adoring crowds

instead of spending a

miserable old age

mumbling on soda crackers

and Bongard's Processed American cheese

from the CFSP.

Gather ye baubles while

ye may.

When my mother made tuna salad, I went on a hunger strike

that lasted for years.

The Unauthorized Autobiography of Me. Section Four.

 

"Helluva tale. Sounds like the kind of mystery and mischief I was drawn to as a 9 y/o"

Christopher Mele.  Senior Staff Editor, New York Times. 

A brigade of large elm trees

stands at attention along 19th Avenue Southeast.

They are my trees.

I have a right to them.

They give me bark 

to stack miniature rustic cabins with.

They whisper raspy nonsense to me

in the long summer breeze.

In winter their austere pattern

of branches against the slate sky

forms a blank bleak stained glass window.

Black carpenter ants busy themselves

crawling endlessly up and down their

trunks on business so important they

do not stop to succor a

fellow ant when I incinerate

it with my magnifying glass.

Dried elm leaves smell like mummies in

a hayloft.

Rain dropped and filtered

 through elm leaves

tastes of melancholy.

Baby robins fall from their

elm tree nests in the spring

to leer at me with the grotesque

mask of death. Their huge

black eyes shut,

never to open.

The elms have devious roots

that upset the sidewalk slabs

rendering my roller skates useless.

Harshly the smoke of fallen elm leaves

burning on my front lawn

snakes through the neighborhood

snakes around the elm trunks

erasing homes, cars, people --

isolating me in a smothered silence

like an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Out of this spectral fog

leaps Wayne Matsuura

to push me into a red currant bush,

yelling "Gotcha!" 

Bleeding red currant juice

I curse him with childish fervor:

"You dopehead! You scared a brownie

out of me!"

Laughing uproariously

we scuffle in the ash of elm leaves.

The Unauthorized Autobiography of Me. Section Three.

 

I managed to escape my captors in a hot air balloon over the Jamoke Mountains.

"Tork! What a team we were!"

Steve Smith, former Dean of

Ringling Clown College

and gag man for Chuck Jones.

Radio meant something when I was a kid.

It had gravitas and credibility.

I remember this advertising slogan:

"We are closed on Sunday."

"We prefer to see you in church."

There were two popcorn balls on WCCO,

Boone and Erickson,

who laughed at their own jokes.

They were like crazy uncles

in the morning while I ate

my cereal.

I worked with them on their show

in 1973 while doing advance work

for Ringling with my partner

Steve Smith. 

They showed me a parody of a

Time Magazine cover with Governor

Wendell Anderson --

instead of holding up a walleye

he was holding up a Playboy 

centerfold.

Huh. Back then

people thought clowns were

dirty-minded and drunk.

Too bad most of them were.

I am often called "the salt of the earth."

If my work, my autobiography,

my meanderous prose,

is a smell to you

instead of an aroma,

all I can say is:

Enjoy the ride or get off.

The rotary phone hung on 

the kitchen wall.

It was yellow.

Our phone number was

612-331-7441.

Long distance calls

were so expensive

said my mother

that I never made one

until I left home to

join the circus.

No one rang you before

9 a.m.

or after 8 p.m.

Unless a family member 

had died in a zeppelin explosion.

There was no such thing

as telemarketing.

A stranger on the other end

meant nothing but trouble.

To emphasize this distrust

of strangers

we watched a TV episode

at grade school that featured

a hand puppet chanting in

a high shrieky voice:

"Danger! Stranger!"

The telephone cord

was so curly

that Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis

made sight gags out of

getting tangled up in them.

I took a rotary phone apart

when I was six

with a screwdriver

and a pair of pliers.

I found it in a trash can

in our clinker paved alley.

I wanted the bell

which I kept in a green

cardboard box along with

the bellows from a cuckoo clock

a rabbit's foot dyed purple

a stainless steel ball bearing I winkled

out of a can of spray paint

steel pennies from World War Two

that I swiped from my brother Billy

an empty bottle of Sloan's Liniment

an empty snow globe

(I believed the water inside of a snow globe

had some kind of magical power to grant

wishes if it were drunk. It didn't.)

a set of keys, origin and purpose unknown,

and a plastic siren whistle from a box

of Cracker Jacks.

The telephone bell had a sharp enough rim

that I cut myself on it.

So Ma Bell got her revenge on me

for vivisecting one of her children.

As a young man I partnered with Igor Sikorsky to market

the first gyrocopter, but it never got off the ground.

Today's Timericks.

 

My glasses fog up with a mask; I don't know what to do/the remedies suggested by the experts are all foo/and so I take my glasses off, and lo the world's serene/cuz many things are gossamer and have a rosy sheen.

Why must food be served on plates/what good is a fork/think outside the salt cellar/must wine have a cork/revolutionize your meals/then when ennui strikes/butter up some toasted jam/served with deep fried shrikes.

Student test scores drop in math/this fills parents with great wrath/Little Johnny cannot count/this affects his bank account/distance learning is a flop/when your kid's a lollipop/if the parents don't instruct/all our children will be . . . at a great disadvantage. 

High rollers in Las Vegas are now scattered to the winds/they will not stick around to put down any more big skins/Casinos are as empty as a tomb on Judgement Day/the roulette wheels need oiling and the dice show much decay/vice is on hiatus, as the gamblers retire/and the devil starts to weep as he cries "Cease fire!"

The Unauthorized Autobiography of Me. Section Two.

 

Riots broke out when I lost the election.

"Seems like a good hobby, and nice for us journlists! I suspect you could help some of the journalists cut down their longer ramblings to more focused pieces..."

James Mackintosh. Senior Columnist, Markets. Wall Street Journal.

I walked home from

Tuttle Grade School

every day for lunch.

Less than a block.

That seemed normal to me;

and when I got to high school

and everyone else got hot 

cafeteria food, and I got

a summer sausage sandwich

and an apple in a wrinkled

brown paper bag

from my mom,

that, too, seemed normal to me.

Food was no big deal to me

as a kid.

I was skinny, with a long nose.

I looked like the number '1'.

Now I weigh over 320 pounds.

What happened?

What the hell happened?

Dad was always fat.

Mom was always thin.

They both smoked like chimneys.

My sisters starved themselves

to stay thin.

As long as I did hard physical work

with the circus, and walked and

bicycled everywhere, I could 

eat like a pig and never gain

an ounce.

Once I learned to drive

and got a car

after I was married

 my weight

began to climb, and has never come

down except once.

I'm gonna have a can

of oysters on a bed of

lettuce and cucumbers

for lunch today. 

With Italian dressing.

And flat bread.

I tell myself I'm drinking ice water.

But there's Shasta in the fridge

and I'll drink that.

Milk. Ice cold milk.

Whole milk.

Kids were supposed to drown 

in milk sixty years ago.

I drank mine with Nestle Quik

when I could get it.

Two full glasses each meal.

That was standard procedure.

My bones must be 

so indestructible 

that they will outlast the planet

and float off into outer space.

Grilled steak over real charcoal.

The grill lit using Wizard Charcoal Lighter,

with that terribly disfigured man 

on the label --

a monster, really.

He must have burned himself

while lighting the grill.

A marshmallow

impaled on a willow branch

 set on fire

over the dying coals

tasted of ashes and vanilla.

The backyard. Childhood 

summers so hot

the street asphalt turned to Silly Putty.

I chewed little balls of it

I pinched out of the road myself.

Then a paper plate.

Spilled hamburger and pickle

juice on the dark green lawn

as the sun hid behind Wayne

Matsuura's house.

In the dark I hefted a

marshmallow torch

to keep the plunging 

bats at bay.

Watch out -- it'll get in your hair!

I could believe in vampires

on summer nights long ago.

In Canada I'm known as 'loup-garou.'

Today's timericks.

 

Modern stylites we became/worshipping a grand mainframe/that salvation in a box/brings us in our robes and socks/Backs now turned to analog/our home is haven -- or gulag.  

Put your money where your mouth is/when it's fraud you want to claim/give us facts, not fiction/if you're gonna play this game/Even stalwarts tire/of your everlasting fuss/and soon will gladly throw you/under any passing bus.

Tofurky's an intruder that will never pass my gate/I'd rather eat a polecat or some splintered wooden crate/If tradition you are bent on positively muckin'/bring to me a succulent and toothsome roast turducken!  

Trump is pumping state assemblies/where he has a lot of friendlies/to defraud the people's vote/getting them to switch by rote/If his ruse becomes effective/Biden might be retrospective!

Giving Thanks.

 

Giving thanks is simple, yet

I so often do forget

to discover blessings small --

and that God's behind them all.

The Unauthorized Autobiography of Me. Section One.

 

The back porch where I was born.

"The little piece you have just sent is good and very interesting. The last two lines are especially engaging. I almost said they cracked me up—but in reality that’s not what their effect was. What I felt was more a sense of admiration and pleasure at the artistry and cleverness, along with delight in the small puff of somewhat elusive insight into your way of thinking.

 

Having said that, the overall “sense” of this poem is VERY unclear because it goes all over the place, and some lines (unless their plain sense is deceptive) contradict others. I would have to talk to you to find out what your point really is, apart from “I do what I want to do and if you don’t like it, you can go to another trough.”

 

In any case, it saddens me that, if I’m catching your vibes, you don’t really want feedback, feedback that I believe would be helpful, if you were willing to consider it."

I start this story

which may or may not

belong to me

with an email from

a friend.

Tomorrow, I think,

he may just be a ride

to the Provo Rec Center.

So many helpful critics in my life.

So few close enough to warm

yet distant enough not to chafe.

Maybe it's because my parents

never let me have a dog.

If I was born, I don't remember it.

If it's all just a dream,

I will row away with a girl

on each oar.

I don't know if my father

Donald Sylvester Torkildson

was at my birth.

I doubt it.

Sometimes, as a child,

I doubted if my mother

Evelyn Marie Gagne Torkildson

was there either.

My very first memory

is of writing this prose poem.

Before that, all is supposition

and myth.

I was poisoned from the beginning.

Winston. Salem. Alpine. Tareyton. 

So many cigarette brands used by

the adults in my life;

in closed quarters during long winters --

it was like being incarcerated in the

proverbial 'smoke-filled room'

of political lore.

It was thought that if a candle 

were lit all the tobacco smoke

would be eaten up by the flame

and become harmless.

I cough myself awake most mornings.

Why was I born?

Ah, the first big question!

Requiring a flippant and

deceiving reply?

I was born to make people laugh.

And to make them cry.

And to get them riled up.

And so so often to bore them.

and puzzle them.

And finally I was born because

a fantastic plan is in place --

a cosmic conspiracy involving 

the whole human race.

And I am a crucial part.

As are you.

My mother had two boys before me.

Leonard and Billy.

She had two girls after me.

Sue Ellen and Linda.

So I was the pivot.

The hinge of fate.

The toad in the hole.

The world revolved around me

until my mother slapped me

when I was six.

For sticking my tongue

out at her and not eating 

my Maypo, which I had

begged her to buy for me

because it looked so delicious

on the TV commercials.

But it was just oatmeal.

Nothing special.

Why didn't my mother

recognize how cheated I felt

at that moment?

I need to hijack 

the Way Back Machine

to tell her I was frustrated

and disappointed, but not at

her -- at the Maypo, mom!

The Maypo!

So much of my life has been Maypo . . .