the poetrysheet

whimsy, subversion, bowling

Number 444, Dec. 9, 2003

Robert Service (1874-1958)

 

“He felt this girl almost like a perfume. He felt an excitement and a hunger. It’s just that you don’t often see a girl like this, so attractive and so nice, he told himself. And then he heard himself talking and he hadn’t even known he was going to talk.”

 

—John Steinbeck, The Wayward Bus

 

 

The tribesmen speak on Sunday, mourning

By LaMartina and Dobson

 

Sunlight slanted through the smokehole at the top of the kiva in steep, moted rays. Jed, Ray, and Buddy had escaped the bacon-drop air of their respective households and repaired to their favorite gathering place with the Sunday edition of The Times. They were waiting for the start of the football game.

 

Ray pointed the remote at the television mounted above the air vent, where a crime scene investigation was on the news. “Calories–consistent calories–that’s the bane that’s truncating human evolution,” he said and patted his ample belly.

 

“I gotta agree with ya, Ray,” Jed said, shaking out the front page. Jed was nearly as heavy as Ray and sat with his stick legs tightly crossed. “Fouling our rivers and air…and, says here, jeans manufacturers’re addin’ a new category–freakin’ cow wide-bodied lard-ass–to their lines of casual wear this season.”

 

Ray chuckled, rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, and took his feet off the bench that ran along the inside of the kiva and planted them on the floor. “Yup. Two meals a week, I say—no more, no less.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, the remote in his folded hands. “Used to be our people ate a goat a week. Sat down and ate a whole goat at one sitting and cleaned up the leftovers, the organs and lungs and things, a few days later with some rice and fresh-mown hay. We lived to be a hundred and seven.”

 

Ray sat up straight, craned his chin toward the smokehole. “Now look at us, sitting around in the kiva, drinkin’ four-dollar lattés and skimmin’ The Times watchin’ saddle boys bring in the firewood. We gotta go to the damn doctor for pills for our blood pressure, for our cholesterol, for our damn prostates—just to live to be sixty-five and senile.”

 

Jed crumpled The Times in his lap. He sat near the television, rays of light haloing his head. “Return to the three dubbyas, I say: Walkin’, wagglin’ and wankin’.”

 

Ray and Buddy looked over their paper-sleeved paper latté cups and nodded in agreement, their hands and cups bobbing.

 

“Walk until your lungs burn a little, past the point your legs ache, until you feel like your moving on a layer of air an inch off the ground, until you become a 200-pound oxygen tank.

 

“Waggle your finger at the abdicators rooting for teams and beer and chips and guts, but don’t condemn them; it’s easier to embrace the trivial than to admit we’re trivial and still think about the big picture.”

 

Now, sunlight fell directly on Jed’s face. His eyes burned with a special intensity, and the kiva rang with his voice. “And wank as often as possible…in diverse places: the bathroom, the train station, the station wagon in the drive-through, the broom closet at the art gallery, the produce aisle at Price Chopper, on a fire hydrant—anywhere you can get away with it.”

 

Ray leaned back and slapped his knee. “Now you’re ready to think this thing through.”

 

Buddy shook his head. “That’s all fine and good,” he said when the kiva stopped echoing. “But there’s lots of people out there who won’t put their feet under them for the life of the Great Spirit. They ain’t gonna listen to us, no matter how much finger-wagglin’ we do. And they sure as hell ain’t gonna understand the god-given benefits of wankin’ in the WalMart.”

 

Jed jumped up and threw The Times into the fire. “So, whatcha say we start right here and now? Get our women and those lazy, Cartoon Network kids off their fat, lumpy asses and start on our way.”

 

“Great idea,” said Ray. “Start at home. That’s what we can change.” He settled back and changed the channel with the remote control. “Right after the game.”

 

“Saddle boy, bring a bundle for the fire,” said Buddy, taking the last sip of his latté. He looked with longing at the smokehole.

 

Today’s poem:

 

Fatherly vows

By Rev. David DeChant

 

I promise to maintain the following as long as it is within my power to do so:

  1. No drippy gushy answering machine message with kid speaking (“David, Ann-Marie, and Cosette aren’t here right now. Please leave name number at beep and we will get back to you later”).
  2. No Barney.
  3. I still don’t know what it is, but if my daughter participates in Top Hat Soccer, I will never have one of those cryptic bumper stickers about how I (heart) it.
  4. My daughter can follow whatever fashion trend is popular as long as we can afford the clothes if it is important to her. Hopefully, however, I will convert her as a sweatpanter, such as myself.
  5. Although she is the best baby there ever was, as a parent I won’t pretend she is gifted beyond normalcy and insist she take six languages, ballet, yoga, software design, etc., until she is good and ready and asks for those studies.
  6. I will not make fun of her music no matter how bad it sucks.
  7. She can follow her heart as her main drive and intuition. Her religion, her sexuality, her politics, and her income will always be her business and not mine.
  8. She can date when she wants and whom she wants.
  9. I may not always be her best friend, but she will always be mine.
  10.  She will prefer Letterman to Leno for obvious reasons.

 

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