The horses are grazing over at the World Trade Center.
Tourists form a wide circle around the field
translating plaques out loud to each other
looking down at the grass-covered pit
before strolling over to the local Fire Department
where the hay stacks are piled higher than feels safe.
Squinting through dark glass into the station
past the truck, past the pole
they’re looking for a cow they can rope or a lunch bell to ring
in this unexpected land of big sky.
Cecil Vortex
Overheard tonight on NPR
Guest: Studies have shown that two-thirds of what people buy, they weren’t planning on buying when they walked into the store.
Host: So you’re saying, if I go into a store to buy a pair of socks, I’m going to walk out with three things I didn’t want?
And I screamed at the radio: “No! No that’s not what he was saying! You idiot! That would be 3/4s! Or, if you counted each sock individually, 3/5s!”
And I drove my car into a pole.
Cruel (and Wordy) Open Mic Heckle #2
Please... write what you know but also:
know something interesting.
Yaniv’s Cruel Heckle
They’re telling shapeless stories
at the open mic
reading from travel diaries
picking up where they left off last week
and Yaniv wants to shout:
“Get a blog!”
The founding fathers
Never gave thanks. Never had blogs. Owned slaves. Some of them owned slaves. Were shorter than us on average.
Yes, some of them fought against it tried to move things forward toward
a blinding bright world but
not all of them.
Just a wee fragment of a much larger and more substantive work
Like “stinky”
in MadLibs,
she always delivered.
Circus Ghosts
Most people don’t like ghosts.
But everybody loves circus ghosts.
Circus ghosts may not remember
who they were in the real world or
what kind of car they drove.
But they remember their tricks.
They say: “Watch me juggle. I can eat fire.”
“oooOOOOOoooo.”
“I can eat fire.”
My people
We played with sticks for a while, my people
looking for wood that was strong and flexible,
turning it into specialized sticks.
Sticks for scratching
for digging out hard to reach
infected patches.
Then we made the Torah.
The pencil they gave me
The pencil they gave me
was covered with paint. I scraped at it.
Artisan, whole-leaf paint chips
dropped off
in spidery clumps.
And now I can see, it is an artisan pencil.
Made by a man in the mountains of Peru.
Separated out from the base of a Peruvian Pencil Tree.
Peru.
It is a savage land.
And there’s my friend, the legendary artisan
with his Peruvian pencil-carving knife, its handle
snapped clean off
from the root of some
mountain vegetable.
Most of the knife is edible, in fact.
Even the blade.
But only if you cook it long and slow.
And who would eat such a thing?
Who would eat the knife cooked tender?
Someone with a pen, no doubt.
Or a typewriter.
Welcome
Welcome
to the Golden Age
of me flossing my teeth.
An upgraded Age of Reason
and now even the common man understands
that the pale dots
on my bathroom mirror
are just pale dots and not some grim portent.
At night there is light
in this magical time.
I am guided by the soft reflection of
my polished mouth bone
and these gums
have never felt
so fierce.