It’s the smiley that really breaks my heart
the little happy face you
tack on
right after you break goodbye, say the news, share that thing.
You’re happy. And I’m glad for it.
But where is your nose?
Now who will save
your missing nose?
Cecil Vortex
It’s your prerogative
I’m surprised you’d
say that. I mean, you’ve
read the articles, right?
I sent you the articles, so you must have read them.
Which means you know all about my generation
and the way we
transformed
pipe-cleaner-beading
from a sort of kid’s sort of
crafty project into a serious art form
and then, finally, a competitive sport.
I was at the center of that movement.
I was near the center of that movement.
And you can sit there
with your bucket of light-shifting beads and your horse-brown pipe cleaner
and you can lecture me
on the importance of varying color and closing out the sequence with a half-twist
because you know, that’s your prerogative.
But I’m surprised.
x-post: And the Monkey and the Vortex and the Radio Theater of it all
After nine months in the cooler, those nefarious Monkey Vortex Radio Theater-types are back with The Phone Call, Part I arguably their most sinister free-audio-download yet. Now available for your easy downloading good-times right here.
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Emotions
When your kid tells you they love you
and they’re laughing when they say it
wandering off toward slow down
toward stop and sleep well
everybody sleep tight.
sleepy tight everybody.
Ice Skating
Don’t hold on to that wall.
Don’t let it pull you backward
to its fixed side.
Hold my hand
and now we glide.
Biz Trip
Airplane seats never fit his body.
Not just his legs,
though there wasn’t enough legroom, that was for sure.
And you lower the tray and it goes right up
into his rib cage, like he’s a grown man
sitting in a baby-sized high-chair. And the day is scraping
baby food off his face with a small
spoon, cool metal, plastic nubbin of a concave
food-holding dip at the end.
And putting that face-warmed leftover vegetable goo
back into a
squat bottle.
Pacing
Jake has lived with these dogs for four years now. They pace around his cage on dry paws. He rotates as they pace, tracking their progress but never catching their eyes.
He learned this truth in the first few weeks: catch the eye of a hungry dog and it will bark. And not a yippie bark, but a rough angry thing that feels like a scraped knee somewhere inside your head. He doesn’t need that.
Meanwhile, there were these other guys, the ones pacing around the dogs, pacing around him. The dogs smell almost sweet — light-rain-sweet — but those other guys smell bad. One day, Jake asks them to shower.
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Sedates the dogs. Keeps them from barking so much. You know that.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot.”
“Hey, at least we don’t smell like Fish People,” one of them jokes. “Oh wait, you’d probably like that.”
“Ha ha.” Jake drifts back to the war, five long years ago. What had he been thinking, aligning himself with those Fish People? That was a huge mistake. And now here he was, paying the price.
Just a really gigantic mistake.
A mellowing
I was so angry, so spinning with all my anger
I remember at one point saying to a good buddy
that I was going to tell everyone I met
for the next TEN years:
“if you meet someone named [her name here]
please give her a kick for me.”
I figured the word would spread over time, like a belly.
But now that I know where she’s at
all these dozen plus years later,
I no longer feel the need to kick her.
Or to have her kicked.
x-post: Brer Osama
So let’s see: Iran has a new democractically elected leader that, well, he’s not nice. Iraq is in the process of putting together a new government that’s likely to end up far more pro-Iran and pro-fundamentalism than the Bathists, and now Gaza and the West Bank have elected Hamas as their majority party.
I can just hear Brer Osama Bin Laden saying to Brer George W. Bush: “wow, if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s your democratic way of life. Please, Brer Mr. President, whatever you do, don’t throw me into that democracy patch.”
For more reactionary mutterings, click your Brer-self on over to Edgewise….
Don Quixote Deathmarch Looms….
Just a quick heads-up for them what follow such things, that the Don Quixote Deathmarch is now officially looming on the horizon. The exact start date hasn’t been selected yet, but it’ll most likely be right around the beginning of March. Probably a Tuesday.
Me, I’ve got a little work to do before we kicking the DQDM off — like, finishing the last one (At Swim-Two-Birds), which I jumped back into yesterday. And ordering those dang Gravity’s Rainbow Deathmarch mugs! Must get mugs!
OK…watch this space for more news…..
-Cecil