Prose Poem: The Inspector.

 

"No! No! No!" cried the Inspector shrilly,

when I tried to hang a string of pickled walnuts

on my Christmas tree.

"That item is NOT on the approved list."

I was about fed up with him.

He had arrived the week before,

shown me his credentials,

and then proceeded to lord it 

over me ever since.

Each bauble, bangle, and bead

had to bear his imprimatur

or be tossed on the dust heap.

I'm all for enforcing tradition --

but this was pouring it on a bit thick.

I had already complained to the Home Office;

like always, those bureaucratic fuddy duddies

had gabbled and gobbled and done nothing.

The Inspector stayed put; spraying down my

tree with rosewater once a day and

keeping track of the number of fallen needles

on the carpet in a miniature chapbook. 

The last straw in the creche came

when he told me the angel on top of 

my tree was too amorphous. 

"It looks like a sack of potatoes" he said.

"So?" I replied. I was in a mood to feud.

"Find something more like a seraph 

or cherub" he rasped.

"The devil I will!" I replied hotly. 

That angel was a gift from my phrenologist. 

"You know the penalty for noncompliance"

he said ominously. The candlelight made

his shadow dance like a demented fiend

on the damask curtains.

"Do your worst!" I shouted. 

"I'm all done with Tree Inspectors,

and Sugar Plum Enumerators and Blixem Collectors!"

I crammed his inspector's cap on his head

and pushed him out the front door.

I had the satisfaction of watching him

stumble down the front steps and fall

on his face in the gray murky slush.

Then I packed my bags,

set fire to the house,

and, under an assumed name,

 took the night boat to Scituate.

As far as the world knows,

Clement Clarke Moore

died in a house fire on Christmas Eve.

"

This life is a probationary state

 

This life is a probation,

to see which we will choose --

to live with God forever,

or His alliance lose.

You cannot have it both ways,

mixing right with vice;

you'll either be rewarded

or have to pay the price.

Prose Poem: Dead Sailors.

 

There was one too many in the pool.

I did a surreptitious head count, just like everyone else.

"Alright!" yelled our instructor, 

a short woman with bright red hair,

"When I call your name hold up your

hand -- and keep it up!"

That's hard to do when you're in a fourteen

foot deep chlorine scented pool at the Rec Center.

But we managed. All of us.

She ticked our names off the list,

her voice muffled through the mask.

Then she did it again. The morning sun

glared through the plate glass windows.

Our class time was leaking away --

we only had one hour. 

Most of us had jobs to get to.

"I still count thirteen, and there's only supposed

to be twelve in the deep water pool at one time"

she said helplessly, throwing up her hands in despair.

So we had a dirty stowaway among us --

too cowardly to give himself or herself up.

The lifeguard did a head count.

"Yup" he said stoically. "Thirteen."

"Do we have a volunteer who'll get out

so we can get started with class?"

asked our instructor hopefully.

No one volunteered.

We refused to make eye contact with

each other.

We just floated there, silent and flabby --

like dead sailors.

Today's timericks

 

Tuna salad for my lunch

really packs a grody punch;

people who then catch my breath

will go into 'sudden death.'

Luckily, with masks abundant,

screams of anguish ain't redundant.

Malicious code from Russian hackers

(brutal as the Green Bay Packers)

has breached so many firewalls

our infrastructure's in mothballs.

The only cure (and please don't laugh)

is to go back to the telegraph.

Magicians sans a spot lit stage

are also sans a living wage.

But if they make Trump disappear

I'd buy 'em all a glass of beer!

Put me in a cardboard box,

with some bagels and some lox.

Check on me 'bout once a week;

say hello and take a peek.

Better that than nursing home,

where I'd soon be 'neath the loam.

Become as a little child

 

The invitation has not changed;

in order not to be estranged

from our Father up above --

rid yourself of all but love.

Call it inner child or not,

miracles by it are wrought.

Prose Poem: The Empty Box.

 

The delivery guy took the refrigerator

out of the box and set it up in the kitchen

for us. Then he carted the old one away.

It looked great and ran so quiet --

not like our old clunker,

which rattled and dripped condensation

continuously onto the floor.

I put the big refrigerator box

in the spare bedroom --

because I thought it might come in handy

someday.

Those things are huge --

big enough to house a person, really.

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

It came on very slowly,

and we hardly noticed it for months,

my wife and I,

but finally we admitted to each other

that a chilling sadness had settled 

into our home.

We both walked into the spare bedroom

and immediately knew it was the empty box.

The empty refrigerator box, 

where no one was ever home,

which no children ever played in --

a thing with no purpose.

"Throw it away!" my wife pleaded.

But that didn't help much.

There remained a dead silence underneath

the carpeting that muffled our aspirations. 

Until she bought a ficus plant for

the spare bedroom.

Then the sunlight that streamed

through the window motes

began to remind us of warmth.

Next I put up a bird feeder

in the backyard --

nothing but sparrows and squirrels

ever show up at it,

but their frantic chatter 

stays a comfortable echo

during the blank nights.

Then in quick succession

we set up a fish tank,

learned to bake artisan bread together,

which we donated to the local Ronald McDonald House,

and acquired an aunt for the spare bedroom.

She is dotty and collects glass doorknobs,

like that character actor on Bewitched.

And our house began to blush and breathe again,

like a living thing.

We haven't taken the final step yet,

of having a child,

because children bring so many boxes

into your life.

And I'm not sure if Amy and I

can stand another empty box in the house again.

Maybe if we started small, with an empty

candy bar wrapper,

and worked our way up . . . 

Photo Essay: Postcards Mailed to President Elect Joe Biden this Week.

 

Prose Poem: The Buddha's Top Hat.

 

I fell through my own mind,

to land on my feet like a cat.

Dusting myself off, I proceeded

to take action without thought.

Was it instinct or habit

that caused me to knock

the top hat off the elderly

man I met on the road?

Either way, he thanked me kindly

for my action --

and I realized he was Buddha.

Then I hid my face and wept.

But he was gentle with my 

immaturity,

saying: "The Original Sin

of our First Parents lay in

giving names to things --

for you can only desire what is named."

Later on at the shy lake 

I pondered anew the relation

between pure thought

and pure action.

I used the Buddha's top hat

as my thinking cap on the shores

of the coy pond -- 

to conclude that there was 

no conclusion. That I must be,

not think of being.

In quick order I:

blew my nose using my thumb

ate grass like Nebuchadnezzar

watched the sky remain blue

felt an ant crawling up my arm

observed the ice age

shook hands with myself

and let slip the banana peel of doubt.

Then was I at peace --

or so I thought until my lunch hour was up.

Back at the office I put on my mask,

sat at my desk,

and deleted emails.

Someone had left a half-eaten

 pepperoni pizza in my trash can.

Then I hid my face and laughed.

True at all times

 

Be true at all times and the Lord God will know

that your heart is solid and won't ring hollow.

Two faces are better than one only to

on black stringy crow double what you can chew!

They threw down their weapons of war

 

They threw down their weapons of war,

those ancient and straighforward men.

Commanded to kill their own kin,

their orders ignored there and then.

And so scripture shows us that hate

and organized murder will cease

with covenants kept in resolve

to honor the true Prince of Peace.