Narrative Poem: Google.

 

My Dear Children;

Here is what happened to me today.

I was googling my name and found someone with my exact name who was a 17th century Doge in Venice. So I went to Wikipedia to find out about the guy.

He was some villain! He had children murdered if he considered them too homely. He put housewives in stuffy wooden boxes when they fried fish too close to his palace. And he made all the men wear red suspenders.

Timothy Robert Torkildson, the 99th Doge of Venice, dredged the Lagoon for sand. Which he shipped to Siam for a fantastic profit. He started a war with Lombardy, which ended with the enslavement of Lombard soldiers as chimney sweeps. He banned the use of peacock feathers. And the use of verjuice in cookery.

The populace finally arose and deposed him, cutting off his head and mounting it on a barber pole. Where it turned round and around for the next ten years. 

I felt a strange kinship to him -- as if he and I were brothers.

"Devo impazzire! I thought to myself.

Dark thoughts, tyrannical daydreams, invaded my mind. I decided to go work out at the gym to rid myself of them.

But at the gym I stepped onto a treadmill next to a man who kept scowling at me.  We both finished our workouts together. He wiped his face, and then announced fiercely to me:  "I am Benito Mussolini!" 

"In a pig's eye" I told him. Then put a 'Z' on his forehead with a red magic marker. 

A semi hauling a vat of Chef Boyardee ravioli overturned as I was walking back home from the gym. And I was covered with tomato sauce.

Things were getting a bit too Italian for me. Dangerously so. 

So I ducked into the nearest vacuum repair shop to have a long discussion with the owner on Pascal's wager. He convinced me that there is no harm in being good, through the use of fluid dynamics.

When the sun had reached the tip of the Italian stone pines I shook hands with the owner of the shop and went home.

Your mother asked me: "Where have you been all day? The dog needs watering!"

To which I replied:  "Woman, weepest not. I am now convinced that Pascal's wager is true. Let's go out to celebrate at the Silver Dish."

But when we got there the place was closed in celebration of Chinese New Year. So we heated some bricks and roasted potatoes on our patio instead. 

A shooting star overhead inspired me to tell your mother:  "Life is shorter than expected but longer than a traffic jam."

"You are so right" she told me, as we walked into an open question.

Love,

Heinie Manush.

Narrative Poem: The Nuclear Winter.

 

My Dear Children;

The nuclear winter was not as bad as we thought it would be.

Oh sure, lots of people went missing; they were never found in the rubble. But surprisingly enough almost all the people who really mattered in government, education, science, and the arts, survived.

I’m glad to say that our extended family only lost a few aunts, uncles, and a smattering of cousins. For the most part, we were all still here – ready to start over again!

And don’t let anyone tell you we had to start from scratch, with our bare hands! No Siree!

The banks still functioned. The trains ran. Side streets were passable. Bicycles were being given away. 

And, praise be, the supermarkets continued to do a land office business. Don’t ask me how they got their produce, or from where – I never asked, and I never really wanted to know. I mean, c’mon, do you really care if bananas are purple and hamburger glows green in the dark? Food is food. We had plenty to eat. And the earth, far from being sterile and contaminated, gave forth abundantly. Remember that bacon tree in our backyard?  The one that produced long strips of crispy brown bacon each spring? The wheat crop never failed, and the chickens laid eggs like crazy. I never paid much attention to those rural fairy tales about the bull men who snuck up on you in the dark out in a field to gore you with their horns. Or the pig-things that went ‘oink’ but flew up into the trees at the least disturbance. Somebody’s idea of a joke, I’m sure.

Here in the city I went back to work a few weeks after nuclear winter started. It was pleasant to walk through the drifting snow to my office hole. 

One benefit of the extended cold and snow that everyone recognizes is that it got rid of the Covid virus once and for all. No more masks or shots. No more sick days (for the virus – everyone gets lots of sick days for radiation poisoning.) As a community, we all discovered that a full set of teeth wasn’t all that important. You can chew just as well with two teeth as with twenty. 

Now you may laugh, kids, when I tell you this, but ten years ago most people had hair on top of their heads. Men, women, and children! Of course we know now that facial hair is very unhealthy and unsanitary – it breeds all sorts of parasites. And it eats up so much time each day to take care of!

I’m so glad we are all rid of the curse of hair nowadays.

And now, kids, I have some very special news for you. Your mother and I have finally metastasized enough to begin that final phase of our radioactive transformation. Yes, that’s right — we now have the ability to defecate cryptocurrency!  I can unload Bitcoin, and your mother dumps Ethereum. Isn’t that wonderful? Now our comfort in old age is assured. And don’t worry, you kids will be getting plenty of this windfall. After it’s been cleaned up a bit.

I hope this missive finds you well and not growing any more heads.

Love,

Heinie Manush.

Narrative Poem: How an extremist is made.

 

The sidewalk was cracked and uneven

 in front of my house.

Tree roots have buckled it.

Have heaved it up into drunken slabs.

So I called the Sidewalk Department.

They put me on hold for ten years.

During that time I got an MBA.

Went to work for the city.

And was put in charge of

the Sidewalk Department.

When I finally got through to me

I promised the situation would be

looked into.

I took down my name, address,

email, and telephone number.

Then promptly lost the information.

Luckily, I record all my phone calls 

at work.

I had my secretary type up

a transcript. In triplicate.

Then our department went paperless.

Everything was scanned. 

Then it was hacked 

and held for ransomware.

We had to pay off in bitcoin.

I was fired as head of

the Sidewalk Department

and had to take a job 

sweeping out sawdust

at a lumber mill in Vermont.

So I sold the house.

Now the crooked sidewalk in front

is somebody else's problem.

In Vermont I bought a sugar bush

to supplement my income.

As a small businessman

I think any vaccination mandate

is unconstitutional.

As is a sales tax. 

I'm ready to dump all

my maple syrup into 

the Walloomsac River in protest.

Who's with me?

Narrative Poem: The Talking Bush.

 

So I was walking along the alley

when a scraggly bare bush spoke to me.

It said:  "Take off your hat, mug."

"You're on holy ground."

I gaped a moment, then said:

"Are you talking to me?"

"Yeah" said the bush,

"There ain't no one else here, chump."

Whether it could talk or not,

this bush was rude.

I decided to ignore it

and continued down the alley.

"Hey wait!' it called after me,

"Dontcha wanna know my secret?"

"Tell it to the dumpster" I replied airily,

before turning the corner.

Now the alley became just a path

paved with clinkers. There were

a few scrawny trees. Piles of junk.

And a glowing red pool that was singing.

The lyrics went something like this:

"Come along to my shore,

where my face you'll adore."

I threw a clinker into the pool,

which turned into a handsome older woman.

Dressed for the opera, with a diamond tiara.

"You have released me from a curse 

placed on me by Abe no Seimei" 

she said to me.

"What is your wish?"

"A ham and cheese on rye"

I replied without thinking.

"Who the heck is Abe no Seimei?" 

I asked.

"Donald Trump in a former life"

she replied, slowly melting away

into a blue mist. 

I threw the sandwich away.

Uneaten. 

Haiku: 小さな音の快適さ

 

the rush of hot air --

the comfort of small noises;

pull the covers up.

熱気のラッシュ-

小さな音の快適さ;

カバーを引き上げます。

far off train horn moan --

the comfort of small noises

in my night cocoon.

電車のクラクションのうめき声から遠く離れて-
小さな音の快適さ
私の夜の繭で。

the bacon hisses --

the comfort of small noises;

no alarm clock now.

ベーコンヒス-
小さな音の快適さ;
現在、目覚まし時計はありません。

Narrative Poem: Fast Food.

 

"I don't mean what I say"

I told the police woman.

She ignored my comment

and took me before the desk sergeant.

"Disorderly conduct" she told the sergeant.

The desk sergeant wrote busily

while green ink flowed out his ears.

"I have many witnesses to attest to this"

I continued stoutly,

for when my friends and neighbors heard of my

arrest they flocked to the police station.

"He also picks his nose in public"

added the police woman. Unnecessarily.

"He said Don Ameche was his father"

said my roommate. "But then he later

confessed it was a lie."

Mr. Birnbaum, who lives across the street,

piped up "Yeah! He called me a mole hole -- 

then publicly retracted his statement at McDonalds."

"It was at Subway, you pickled walrus!"

I yelled at Birnbaum -- for he was obviously 

trying to defame me. "I never eat at McDonalds."

There was a gelid silence.

Then spake the desk sergeant:

"Take Mr. Birnbaum away; he's a spy."

I was then released,

and treated all my neighbors

to sandwiches at Subway.

Where I admitted I often

ate at McDonalds.

A letter to my kids. Sunday. Jan 23. 2022.

 Dear Scions;

I hope your Sunday has been as quiet and peaceful as ours has been so far. We went to church this morning at 8:30. Your mother was called and sustained and set apart to be a Temple Family History Specialist. After Priesthood we came home, where your mother visited with your brother Steve while I went in the bedroom for a long nap.

We figured out where the flour moths are coming from – a big box of Honey Bunches of Oats that someone gave us a while back. We’re constantly being given stale and bug-ridden food – we usually catch the bad stuff right away, but sometimes it gets past us and thus the bug outbreaks. Bleah.

I’m baking a loaf of Irish soda bread to take over to Sarah’s today around five. We love making this kind of bread, cuz it’s so easy. Just takes a lot of buttermilk. My lunch today, in fact, was a big dill pickle and a glass of buttermilk.

Do you ever get homesick for North Dakota? Think you might like to go back there to live? Well, it’s going to get awful noisy there – as this news article from a recent Billings Gazette attests:

‘North Dakota’s bitterly cold winters make for the ideal setting desired by a new industry eyeing the state: cryptocurrency.

Interest has picked up over the past year in locating data centers within North Dakota. Such facilities consist of computer servers that can be used for a variety of purposes, including to mine digital money in the case of some of the companies considering the state.

Data centers generate a lot of heat. They tend to require a significant amount of power and cooling equipment to function well.

“Every time I talk to a utility and mention data centers, they say, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve got all kinds of people talking to us wanting to come,’” said John Weeda, director of the North Dakota Transmission Authority.

Data centers are needed for cloud storage. Banks use them for financial transactions. The facilities are increasingly in demand to facilitate cryptocurrency transactions, which are recorded in ledgers known as blockchains. Computers lend processing power to validate those transactions, and they are rewarded with more cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin.

That so-called “mining” process is energy-intensive, as electricity powers the servers and the fans used to cool down the hardware.

The fans associated with a large standalone data center could generate a lot of noise, and city officials say the facilities inquiring about coming to Bismarck may or may not place employees on-site. Officials have expressed concerns about the potential for data centers to catch fire, as has happened in other North Dakota communities such as at a Grand Forks computer server farm in 2019.’

It sounds like North Dakota might be a good place for your next fortune, though – if you have Uncle Benny-type money laying around. Just make sure you have good fire insurance.

Next, as the offspring of a clown who started at the top and worked his way to the bottom, I’m sure you want to know about the comedy scene here in Utah County. With which I have nothing to do at present, although your mother and I have talked about going to Open Mic Night on Mondays.  From the Salt Lake Magazine, this bit of purple prose:

A Mormon, a Catholic and an atheist walk into a comedy club…and the Diet Cokes they order are the dirtiest punchlines in this story because this club is in Utah County. Ask anyone who has made their final exodus from Utah County and they’ll tell you the culture of Happy Valley leaves much to be desired, but the strange milieu of prevalent cultural influences were the perfect conditions to create a petri dish in which the bacteria of a burgeoning comedy scene can grow. A squeaky clean comedy scene, the germs of which have become Utah County’s main cultural export, partially thanks to the viral nature of social media. We endeavored to discover the secret of the scene’s evolution and laud the success of the comedians, performers and content creators at its core.  “I kind of love and hate Jim Gaffigan fans,”  says Tanner Rahlf of the famous comedian known for his all-audiences brand of humor. “They’re like ‘he’s just so clean’ but I watch what he does as a comedian myself. He’s not good because he plays clean. He’s good because he’s a great comedian.” 

These days, he hosts the standup nights at ImprovBroadway and believes that just as sketch and improv comedy in Utah County have blown up, stand-up is the next big thing. 

“You can feel it in Provo,”  says Tanner , “There’s something about to burst. I’m seeing some of the funniest stuff at the open mics that I’ve ever seen. It’s palpable. Audiences are craving more standup. There is a joy and a rush for the audience and the comedians. Like we’re all in on the same joke together.” 

So I guess we’re in the right place at the right time for my next big comedy break- through. I wonder if you can do stand up from a rocking chair? I’d like to try it, anyway.

Well, it’s nearly time to go back to church for our Temple Preparation Class. The bishop asked us to be in the class as an example to the young couples called to the class. Trouble is, most of the young couples the class is for don’t show up. So it’s just us and the instructor. After that we’re off to Sarah’s. 

Roses are red/violets fade/I hope you enjoyed/this long gasconade!  

Love, 

Heinie Manush.

Haiku: 寒い落ち着きのない夜

 

Cat glares at the moon --

peony bushes rattle;

the cold restless night.

月を睨む猫-
牡丹の茂みがガタガタ鳴る。
寒い落ち着きのない夜。

mice shoot down the road --
the wind stands up a brown leaf;
the cold restless night.
マウスが道を撃ちます-
風が茶色の葉を立てます。
寒い落ち着きのない夜。

the blurry moon winks --
a hubcap rolls off a car;
the cold restless night.
ぼやけた月のウィンク-
ホイールキャップが車から転がり落ちる。
寒い落ち着きのない夜。

Haiku: カタツムリの遅いトレッド

 

slow tread of a snail --

a straight line to the next leaf;

brown, withered, and stiff.

カタツムリの遅いトレッド-
次の葉への直線。
茶色、しおれ、そして硬い

slow tread of a snail --

glistening beneath itself;

no butterfly, he!

カタツムリの遅いトレッド-
それ自体の下で輝く;
蝶はいない、彼！

slow tread of a snail --

seeking dampness and darkness;

stymied by a twig.

カタツムリの遅いトレッド-
湿気と闇を求めて;
小枝に悩まされた。

Letter to my kids. Saturday Jan 22 2022.

 

Dear Sprouts;

Well, we made quite an exotic lunch today. Soba noodles with quail eggs, and Japanese potato salad with seaweed and pickled ginger. The soba noodles turned out great; I will be adding them to my repertoire of standard Torkildson fare. 

We went shopping this afternoon. The Great American Pastime. Garments for me, and something called a Ninja Magic for your mother. It makes smoothies. 

It has otherwise been a lazy day. We slept in until 7:30 a.m. The urologist I saw 2 weeks ago gave me some medicine called Nocdurna, which suppresses the urge to urinate at night. So I’m sleeping a bit better and longer lately. 

I’ve been thinking about the happiness that comes from silence. At least it comes to me when I stay silent and surround myself with silence. So here’s a poem about the subject:

Silence is gilded for bozos like me;

A muted existence can make a man free.

Whenever I shoot off my mouth it doth seem

It makes others burn up from some laser beam.

I may have opinions and feelings real strong;

But it would be smart if I just sang a song. 

Or better yet just remain silent and smug;

Smile with a head shake and maybe a shrug.

In my brown recliner I love to lay back

And relish the noise and the racket I lack.

Tumult is not a state I would endorse;

I’d rather just mime it, not yell myself hoarse.

So let others posit as much as they please;

Give their advice and opinions with ease.

Me for the quiet life – no scuttlebutt!

At long last I’m learning just how to shut up!

I guess that’s all for today, mine heirs. As soon as your mother finishes watching “Dial M for Murder,” we’re off to the Rec Center for 20 minutes of stationary cycling. After that, who knows? Maybe go bowling . . . 

Love, 

Heinie Manush.