Welcome to the undertow!
There’re eight ways to freedom,
but only one that you can go.
It’s down, down — while spinning ’round,
feeling the stretch in the struggle,
though hearing not the slightest sound.
No gasping. No gushing. Just blood rushing
to the fear center of the brain
as water’s weight feels more crushing.
Surely, you’ll surface in due time
though, maybe, miles-and-miles away.
They’ll tag you: “Victim, sans a crime,”
and go on about the live-long day.
There was an old man from Kazakhstan
happy to hear of the testing ban.
His house didn’t explode,
but sometimes it glowed.
&
Despite a lead vest he still had a tan.
What’s leached the life from these lands?
Winter snuck in. True enough.
But that doesn’t mean a bird can’t hoot, caw, screech, or titter.
We may be too deep in the season for lizards to dart, or even schlep in tailless bluntness.
But surely squirrels, fluffy-tailed rodents, should be out, shoving aside leaf litter in search of sacred acorns?
I don’t trust my mind in a soundless forest —
it leads me to believe that I tumbled back into the recesses of my mind, and only noticed [too late] that I forgot to load the soundtrack.
There was a beautiful woman of Japan
who was never without her folding fan.
She seemed to play coy,
but it was a ploy.
Her saké breath could kill a caveman.
There was a gregarious girl from India
who was bonkers for Bollywood cinema.
With great happenstance,
she’d break out in dance
in classrooms and clinics across India.
Under blue skies, the live oaks were just trees — hearty and expansive trees.
But in the feeble light of waning days or the frequent forays of morning fog, the rangy and sinuous moss-draped limbs became a Lovecraftian monster, head stuck into the damp loam in an attempted retreat to the underworld.
And if one stood still enough, those limbs just might start to writhe.
There was a young man from Hungary
who always wore his blue dungarees.
In summer they fit;
in winter not a whit.
Kürtőskalács made his rump “rumper-y.”
And when the darkness looms
we wander on our way
deep into the forest
and from the path we stray.
A lonely way to go?
I’m not sure I agree.
No lonelier than a bed
far from the nearest tree.
Not blocked from the agents
of Death or of Decay —
perhaps, we feel the Web
more than the fear of prey
as we stagger that last mile.
Straight out of college, my first job involved strolling into the homes of strangers. This is when I learned about hoarding. Turns out, you don’t have to venture into many American homes before you stumble into a full-blown hoarder’s lair. I don’t mean a messy home. There’s no moderated middle for hoarders. If it’s not floor-to-ceiling chaos, you’re just a slob — not really a hoarder. [Oddly enough, “hoarder’ sounds less offensive than slob, but it’s worse… much worse.]
The occupant of the first hoarder-labyrinth I sidled into was an old lady who’d busted her hip slipping on a glossy magazine from an avalanche that had collapsed into the narrow, navigable canyons of her living room.
At the time, I couldn’t understand the impulse to hoard. I’ve never clung to used up material objects. For me, books are the closest thing to a precious, inanimate object, but they’re like soup bones — once one has sucked the marrow out of them, they just take up space and gather dust. [With precious few exceptions that are uniquely-shaped and -sized for a task like opening a beer bottle or clubbing an intruder.]
Still, if I’m to be honest, I’m an ethereal hoarder. All that page-extracted marrow is clogging up my mental attic. I don’t know that I even have narrow, navigable canyons at this point. Too often, it’s a soul-crushing slog to schlep one of the few fine pieces out from storage. It may sound like a good problem to have until one realizes that a lot of it is rubbish, rubble, and remnants — no more useful than the broken-hip lady’s twelve-year-old newspapers, twenty-three year old Good Housekeeping magazines, or eight-track tape polka music collection.
There was an old man from Guatemala
who had once injured both amygdala.
That blow made him fearless.
On roads he was peerless —
well-poised to drive around Guatemala.
