“Of course we have our ways
of eating elephants,
but they’re egregious
and I’ll take no part.”
-Mother Chorizo
from her famous ‘Sermon on The Gout’
Tag: Mother
Faux Pas
Bajillion Peregrinus started his day off right today–with a succulent cobb salad and a couple of margaritas. Slippery slope, margaritas, but as a denizen of the night, Baj has always managed to avoid that whole “too early in the day to imbibe” faux pas. However, considering the depth of his late-night cavorting, he often finds himself breaking that rule by pulling all-nighters and keeping the party rolling well past dawn.
This particular day wouldn’t normally prove to serve Baj’s personal agenda, seeing as how he needs to knock out some domestic drudgery and then immediately tuck into a full-blown work shift. Not very much time to himself at all. Just another one of those days. It’s not like he’s not used to this kind of treatment; he’s become quite accustomed to it at this point. Bills and impulsive expenditures (food delivery and designer headphones) necessitate his daily drudgery–for the most part. The remaining part of the pie chart (as far as he could figure): his intense, immense sense of self-loathing, which he quietly carries around on his shoulders like a hobo’s bindle–not too heavy, considering the unbearable lightness of being, but always noticeably uncomfortable.
As far as he sees it, he figures that the self-deception is a byproduct of his unfulfilled human potential. Well, not his own perception of failing, but the societal norm facilitating the “us vs. them” mentality that sends the vast majority of rat racers into skill corners, where they’ll proceed to bang their foreheads against brick walls for the rest of their lives, restricting whatever semblance of freedom to a 15-minute meditation session sometime between breakfast and work (otherwise known as their morning commute). The mental elasticity of previous generations is systematically eroding.
Baj is rather sensitive and internalizes most everything he comes across; most of the time he has no idea how it will surface, since the nature of the universe is that of uncertainty and chaos. In the case of human devolution, however, Baj knows for a fact that people are losing their sheen at a rapid clip.
Because of all this, Baj understands that, no matter what he does, he will always come up short in a financial sense. Just as his mother and father had, and their mothers and fathers before that, and so on and so forth. He’s recently begun to trace back his lineage on one of those newfangled ancestor websites, all the way back to a point in medieval Europe where some sort of town fool or drunk owed a debt to the local magistrate, and the interest is still accruing to this day.
Figuring It Out
Don’t fuck up, don’t be late, don’t make people hate you.
Well, another day, another dollar. Aren’t I just the greatest thing that ever existed? The peak of existence, I tells ya. Yeah, see. I’m just so great… well, maybe. Or maybe I’m just full of shit.
Don’t fuck up, don’t be late, don’t make people hate you.
Well, don’t you know it, a woman with a stroller is getting on the bus. Is this going to fuck up my routine, my rhythm? What the hell, she’s taking forever!
Don’t fuck up, don’t be late, don’t make people hate you.
But her face is strained, she looks tired. The kid isn’t really paying attention to anything that’s happening, and this poor lady is just trying to figure out how to get to her destination without completely losing it.
Don’t fuck up, don’t be late, don’t make people hate you.
This mother is doing everything she can! Look at her, taking the bus on her own with a big-ass stroller that’s taking up way more space than she would care to take up in the first place.
Don’t fuck up, don’t be late, don’t make people hate you.
I make brief eye contact with her and we exchange knowing glances, even though I know absolutely nothing (first-hand) about being a mother or providing for a family. Even being a woman, for that matter.
Don’t fuck up, don’t be late, don’t make people hate you.
I get a look at the kid in the stroller, their eyes darting around to see the new sights, soaking them in like a sponge. Inquisitive. Colors everywhere. Information streaming in that may never leave.
Don’t fuck up, don’t be late, don’t make people hate you.
We lock eyes. I grin from ear to ear. He/she/they smile back, and keep the eye contact going. I have to look away after a couple seconds, for fear of other people noticing this interaction with a small child.
Don’t fuck up, don’t be late, don’t make people hate you.
I think that this person could be a leader, a future president. I don’t want to spoil their innocence by selfishly avoiding their gaze. Their innocence can only stretch so far in the face of cynicism. I put my hand in the air and wave.
Don’t fuck up, don’t be late, don’t make people hate you.
I look at the time, and it turns out that I’m going to make it to work without delay anyway. All that worrying, all the hand-wringing for things that were ultimately out of my control.
Don’t fuck up, don’t be late, don’t make people hate you.
Where is this kid going, anyway? What are they going to want to do with their life? They obviously have a mom who wants the best for them. These are all things that probably won’t be reckoned with for some years (hopefully, if ever).
Don’t fuck up, don’t be late, don’t make people hate you.
Was I like that bright-eyed kid on the bus when my mom was taking me to work with her on my days off from school? Hopping on the blue line and talking about the little things we noticed on the platform and in the tunnel? Were there older people on the train making that same kind of eye contact with me? Did they avoid my gaze after a couple of seconds?
Don’t fuck up, don’t be late, don’t make people hate you.
Here’s my stop. One last glance at the mother and child is enough to charge me up for work, to give me that one last pause before I have to deal with the deluge of humans who may or may not know what’s good for them. But hey, we’re all figuring it out in our own time.
Wooden Spoons
Double up the foundation dust,
trouble finding lurky lust while wincing
under beveled falls; egregious
concertina riffs agree with Wes
(our father’s postman): the passion
never does leave the feet.
Snowcapped griffins found asylums
rich in iron, poor in aprons.
Mythology holds no place
in institutions of higher psychology.
Where reprimands come for assurance,
our collective mothers grease their wooden spoons.
We may only marvel as to which grease traps
were harvested for such a folksy purpose.
You insist that I have a soul for dingers,
I retort that your trout lost its diaper yesterday.
You ask what that means, and while
seething in your stupor, I quip
“which radishes peak first?
Why, only the early growers, son.”
——
First draft posted on 6/11/11,
originally entitled #10
Collection
The day of I know not what but I always could figure it anyway if you asked me to, but not if you ask me in a way commensurate with the smiles you’re bound to receive when I let my mother’s antique movie penguin replica collection go into the record books as a swindler’s dream, very never-so-minded and genuinely enraptured by the Germanic trepidation we all seem to face on a daily basis.
Stronger than the average jurisdiction machine, I marvel at the time I shot penguins through dragon school as a favor to my mother, on account of her love for penguin scholarship “what with the range of predicaments exclusive to this underwhelming era that brings us nothing but worry.” Or she would say something in that vicinity, at least.
So today, just like any other day, we spill the courage of the middle class across our collective janitorial musings, content to soak up any modicum of civility that would be offered to us upon completion of a correspondence course (for a nominal charge, of course).
Systematic – 07:22GMT
Heaven-bent for suicide and lifted from a promissory life, I spent my passion undermining solitary refuge as a systematic impulse-follower.
She said to me, “listen son, I’ve gotta tell you something you may not wanna hear. I ate that last piece of taffy you had saved up, and it was glorious. I know you were planning to give it to your grandma next week, but guess what? Now we’re even. Don’t you go around promising me trips to Hawaii anymore, you arrogant prick. Just because I birthed you doesn’t mean I need to be your friend. Fuck those stereotypes. Now are you staying for dinner or aren’t you?”
Is that all I am? A systematic impulse-follower? I can paint over my stripes, but it’ll chip off and reveal my ugly nature before too long.
I miss having the option to chew my food.
I really wish I could use my arms, too. Fork, knife, the whole deal.
Maybe I crossed too many people to be a free man.
Empire
Well, as far as that’s concerned, Charlene kicked the bucket about eight years ago, givin’ birth to our youngest of seven young’uns. I named him Squiggy; that’s probably what she would have named him. She created a fashion empire, one clothing line for every chillun we sired; left behind quite a fortune with the Brandon, Stephen, Kalen, Armbruster, Eddie and Sherry labels. Squiggy’s just starting to realize that he has no clothes named after him, so he’s started making a point of wearing burlap sacks every day. He just wants to piss off his fashionista siblings. They don’t much like it, but they’re a bunch of snobs now anyway, with that fancy Hollywood upbringing. I never much cared for that methodology, and my ditch-digging career is just about all that keeps me sane these days.
I figure nothing’s bringing Charlene back, and she’d still be here spoiling them kids–if it weren’t for Squiggy’s breach birth. I loved her to death, never gonna remarry. I figure I’ll just get a few more dogs and move on with my life. So far I have Scruffy, Tipper, George and Sheila. They aren’t allowed to come into the house because of those damn kids. My best friends and I spend most of our time out there digging ditches. Squiggy’s going to take up the family profession soon, just like his ol’ dad, dad’s dad, dad’s dad’s dad, etc. If I were a literate man, I’d come up with some clever autobiography–“Life’s a Ditch” or some sort.
WHARVED 