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 . . . 

A Prophet Speaks This Very Day

 

President Russell M. Nelson.

A prophet speaks this very day;

and will we hear what he will say?

Or will our worldly disbelief

so rob us of his good relief?

A humble heart, not analytic,

will make believers of each critic!

 

Today's timericks.

 

I'm using all the brains I have to get by nowadays/I doubt if it is ten percent -- I'm always in a haze/The rest of my grey matter's on a permanent vacation/It's incommunicado at some tropical location.

Pastors want their churches open, it is plain to me/so they keep on working and collecting a fat fee/Idle clergy do not get much manna from the Lord/and empty pews give clergy but a trivial reward.

The elephant has sad old eyes/and so it comes as no surprise/when eccentrics guarantee/the animal's humanity/But if I were a pachyderm/that would really make me squirm/Since humans are so very cruel/and rarely live the Golden Rule.

Free radicals are after me/so full of rank duplicity/in my bloodstream they do lurk/doing hemic dirty work/hurry, mountebanks, to me/with your nostrums gluten free!

I love scallions, yes I do/but if I should breathe on you/your reaction is to make/faces at me like a hake/so I'll switch to garlic corm/as my staple snacking norm. 

Inside the house I wear my shoes/because bare feet are bugaboos/they pick up lint and turn all black/and I might step upon a tack/If I could float like Voldemort/I'd take 'em off like a good sport.

Today's Timericks

 

I love sauerkraut, you bet/yet I often do regret/eating it so late at night/with a fiendish appetite/I have dreams that Hitler would/call a reason for sainthood.

Sore losers come in many shapes/gnashing on their sour grapes/but the current prize goes to/a certain White House bugaboo/he's so brittle and unreal/he sounds just like a glockenspiel.  

Don't travel on Thanksgiving/that's the word from CDC/just stay at home relaxing/watching football on TV/Order Chinese takeout, with a six pack on the side/and if you grow despondent/try a little cyanide. 

state governments are trying many things to fight the plague/but somewhere 'long the line they're still a-thinkin' mighty vague/they're closing schools, then curfews start/but ask them to shut down/biznesses again and all you get's an angry frown.

Rudy Giuliani is a bedbug crazy guy/who leads his legal team to doom while hollering 'banzai!'/he hasn't got a chance in hell, but that won't stop the suits/he's filing like a madman for the client and his mutes.  

The grave shall have no victory

 

No victory goes to the grave;

Christ our Savior all will save --

some to great estate beyond,

while others their estate have pawned --

but all will resurrected be

I testify most happily.