Tag: Crossing

Anyhow

The gratitude of my temporary inmates seems only to ring truer with each passing circumstance. I suppose I may have acquired a skill or two over the years where it pertains to the custodial caretaking that so many in this throwaway culture would prefer to ignore.

It’s not Stockholm Syndrome that these folks have come down with, since I’m not the one responsible for my subjects’ captivity, but it is definitely a similar phenomenon (a guy sure could get used to all the attention, anyhow). My wards do actually receive that kind of no-strings care that the medical insurance industry forgot about as soon as private concerns got their hooks into it (even though their advertising tries to sell a different story).

Perhaps because of this comfort, every single one of our emerging beer-krausening technologies has been behind schedule under my watch. Maybe it was a mistake to combine a halfway house with a chemistry lab. Our three chemists-in-captivity are functioning alcoholics who just use this particular project to get tanked on the job all day–with my tacit blessing, I suppose. Last Thursday, Ernie–the least-tactful of the three–decided to not look both ways before crossing the street on his lunch break (I do give them at least a little time in each week to get out and smell the flowers). Long story short, Ernie got hit by a shipment of cabbages (with a truck attached), survived, and is now suing the city for not putting a stop sign in a 40 MPH zone. As soon as he got back from the hospital, you’d better believe I gave him quite the lecture on roadside awareness!

Frontier

A healthy schnitzelfritz
is all we would need
for a cut-rate Dependence Day
on the Frontier of Many Puddings.

Ever since the rolling scabies epidemic
took its time crossing the Ganges,
twelve men have made it their business
to carve necklaces from oak stumps
as a way of reconnecting
with their wood nymph sides
while honing their dedication
to sculptural accessorizing.

After all those mentions of scriptural evangelizing, our Maker’s Dozen–as they like to call themselves–made the executive decision to secularize the whole process and peddle the wares of their ingenuity for a tidy profit (at least, wherever flea markets intersect with local art exhibitions).

One mustn’t mistake this ingenuity
for dogmatic commitment to peculiar crafting,
as these enterprising young monks
would be the first to tell you.
Frankly, these fellows have
a bit of a competitive streak in them
that has yet to be beaten out
by assumptive authoritarians,
and a near-endless supply
of stump-grade dynamite
only served to seal the deal.

Bully for Them

The very first horse-drawn carriage must have come as a shock to the ants taking their time crossing the land that at one point had never been designated specifically for human travel–and subsequent travails.

Now the unattached heel of a wayward boot has come across my plane of vision, and all of a sudden, horse-drawn carriages and ant opinions have no bearing over my perception as a red-blooded artist keen on taking over the world several well-placed poems at a time.

A long-suffering server has come to understand–a solid number of years ago, mind you–that people have no rhyme or reason when it comes to leaving their shit behind at a bar (even if they haven’t imbibed enough to lose their conception of personal property and the detriment of ignoring the objects directly surrounding them). Perhaps that very basic principle just isn’t present in their conscious minds in the same way as the long-suffering server–we’ll call him Frank.

Perhaps, just perhaps, they’ve transcended the idea of personal property entirely, to the point where everything is everything and nothing, and a backpack or purse or boot heel are inconsequential in the grand scheme of their lives. And bully for them.