Category Archives: shards

February 12, 2018 · 5:24 pm

pen pals & chat rooms

PEN PALS & CHAT ROOMS

I have a pen pal. He’s shy on paper. He talks about the weather. His dog Rodney. His paper route. I try not to probe, but a paper route? How old could he be? When I ask I don’t hear back for almost two months, and then no mention of age.

Pen pals are what people had before chat rooms. It will never be known how many pen pals there were in the world before chat rooms. Or how many are left. I may be one of the last, me and my pen pal from Kentucky with the paper route.

I’ve never been to a chat room. I’ve been to a funeral parlor. I remember looking down at Uncle George and wondering if he’d ever had a pen pal. That’s how long I’ve been at it, since the age of six.

At one point, in my early twenties, I had five pen pals, almost like a chat room. I have no idea if that was common, having multiple pen pals. It’s almost like infidelity.

I wonder if what drove people to seek a pen pal is the same thing that drives people into chat rooms? Knowing that would be a good indication of how much things have changed.

I have the feeling that people lie a lot in chat rooms. About their accomplishments, their prowess, their gender. I have the feeling that people who go to chat rooms are restless and on the prowl. Pen pals, on the other hand, are lonely and reclusive. Becoming a pen pal is as close as they get to connecting with another human being.

“How’s the weather down there in Kentucky?” I write my pen pal. “How’s Rodney?” I don’t mention the paper route. “My dog died last week,” I write. “It’s windy here. I may take a trip.”

I seal the letter in an envelope and paste on a stamp.

Walk it down to the mail box.

Drop it in.

Leave a Comment

Filed under shards

Tagged as , , ,

· 1:43 pm

pets

Pets

He had a pet dog. He had a pet goldfish. The dog died of a seizure. The goldfish went belly up with grief – they’d bonded thru the curved glass of the fish bowl. The cat remained aloof on the sofa. (Yes, he had a pet cat.)

He buried the dog and the goldfish in a common grave in the back yard. The cat watched from the windowsill.

He went back inside and stared for a long time at his pet hamster putting miles on its treadmill. The cat watched too.

He bought a white rat and a hoot owl. A spider monkey in a little red suit. A mute parrot and a potted plant. A boa constrictor and an ant farm in a ten-gallon glass tank.

He stopped checking his Facebook page and renting movies from Netflx. He stopped turning the lights on when darkness fell, stopped taking walks and using his cell phone, stopped checking the mail. He did away with leashes and cages (except for the glass tank that the ants were in) and then he hung perches from the ceiling for the hoot owl and the mute parrot.

This is what it took to convince him that he had no use for human society.

Then he did away with the cat.

Leave a Comment

Filed under shards

Tagged as , , ,

February 11, 2018 · 6:39 pm

nuke the chinks

NUKE THE CHINKS

Lines written before jumping out a ten-story window. While cowering in the belfry of Westminster Abbey. While building a stone wall to keep out the neighbors.

Lines on the mirror, lines on her face. Beauty marks and age spots and the wild sun’s corona. Lines in the dust, in the single’s bar, strung out between a parabola of poles. The Wichita Lineman, splicing one voice to another over mountains and prairies, deep under troubled waters. Soup lines, unemployment lines, soldiers all in a row.

 

***

 

If you lined every Chinaman up six abreast and marched them into the sea, it would go on forever. That’s what General Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay, in charge at the time of a fleet of perpetually airborne B-52s armed with atomic bombs, said to Arthur Godfrey on the Arthur Godfrey Radio Show. This alone, said LeMay, was a good enough reason to “nuke the chinks”.

All hell broke loose, and LeMay was told by the President to apologize. He never did. Instead he said that the woodpile was full of Communists who were putting words in his mouth. Nuke the woodpile.

 

***

When I was 13 years old, my father in the Air Force and stationed on Offutt Air Base, I took General LeMay’s daughter, Janie, to a matinée at the base theater. We went to the same school. When the lights went down, she took my hand and placed it on her tiny breast, and that’s where it stayed until the movie was over.

It was like Che Guevara dating Richard Nixon’s daughter.

I was obliged to meet her father when I took her home. LeMay was sitting in his easy chair in his shirt sleeves, sipping whiskey, smoking a cigar, and watching football on TV. He looked me over, told me to make sure I served my country when I grew up, and then went back to his football.

Little did he know that his daughter had gone to the movies with someone who would one day march on the Pentagon and the FBI would start a file on.

Leave a Comment

Filed under shards

Tagged as , , ,

· 6:32 pm

outside the box

OUTSIDE THE BOX

The Boxer Rebellion. Boxer shorts. Boxers with cauliflower ears and memory loss. The box in a box in a box big surprise. His father boxed his ears one time too many and he whipped out a gun and blew the old man’s head off.

Children today. Right to bear arms. Boxed in a box canyon, they came riding out bareback with guns blazing. We called in the air strike. Dropped napalm and propaganda leaflets. Claymores and Tootsie Rolls.

The silent majority. The baker’s dozen. The odd man out. The wet dream and the American dream. There’s more truth and power in a single Emily Dickinson poem than in any revolution or manifesto.

The silent majority does not fear that the minorities will take over, it fears their absence of fear, which it translates into disrespect–for God; for the rule of law; for the stock market.

The hallmark of the silent majority is arrogance shored up with ignorance. The silent majority is not outraged by the outbreak of new minorities, it’s outraged that it can no longer lynch them.

Remember the Apache and the Navajo, silent minorities. Remember the Nez Perce and the Sioux. Remember who you’re dealing with when they invite you to sign their new treaty.

Leave a Comment

Filed under shards

Tagged as , , ,

· 6:28 pm

over the borderline

OVER THE BORDERLINE

I.

A borderline schizophrenic chattering away at the podium about borderline safety rules. “Safety rules!” he cries out, and clicks the safety off his concealed weapon. What a let down for the faithful waving flags in the orchestra pit.

You can’t talk about a schizophrenic in the singular. He could have been his own vice president as well as a corporate CEO and Captain of the Color Guard if he’d just not pulled the trigger. Now he’s facing pre-election impeachment as the body count rises and the NRA rushes in lawyers for damage control.

In comes an army of speech writers armed with pots of black coffee to rewrite the image.

II.

Something in the mail today from the Democratic Party. Two pages of multiple-choice options and one page for credit-card information. Then three lines to say what I think about the situation in fifty words or less, followed by a reminder not to forget the credit card information.

They’re not fighting the Republican Party, they’re fighting the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex that Eisenhower helped set up and then warned against as he left office. Someone talked him into scratching “Congressional” from that clarion-horn warning. A good magician never shows his whole hand.

They’re not even fighting that, they’re just bickering amongst themselves and with Republicans over who gets to drive the low-rider when they cruise America’s main drag on Friday night, anticipating date rape.

And there she is, waiting at the curb in an airy spring dress, manicured and perfumed and drugged, the statue of liberty. Get in the back honey, don’t let the general’s big gun scare you. Fasten your seat belt.

What the lady needs is a stun gun and some mace to put these clowns in their place.

Open the floodgates and bring in the immigrants.

Leave a Comment

Filed under shards

Tagged as , , ,

· 6:22 pm

plagiarism

PLAGIARISM

He printed the essay he’d just written and signed his name at the bottom. He was tired of being a nobody. He wanted to go places. The essay was titled “Essay.”

He took the essay into a bank and slid it across to the teller.

“What’s this?” said the teller. She wasn’t very friendly about it. She wanted to be somebody too.

“It’s an essay,” he said. “It’s my essay. I want $100 for it. In tens.”

He’d expected she’d give him the money, but she didn’t. She just stared at him.

“Make it twenties then,” he said.

“I can’t give you money for this,” said the teller. “This isn’t a library.” She knew that wasn’t right, but she couldn’t think what sort of place it was that the bank wasn’t. “This isn’t a hand-out center,” she said, and liked that better, even though she knew it still wasn’t right.

“I want to see the manager,” he said.

“Christine!” the teller called out, all the way across the bank to where Christine sat behind a mahogany desk.

Christine pushed her chair back and came across the bank in rapid little steps. “Is there a problem?” she said.

“You bet,” he said. “You bet your life.”

Christine and the teller exchanged glances.

“He wants money for this,” said the teller.

Christine leaned over the essay and frowned.

“It’s an essay,” he said.

“Sir,” Christine said. “This isn’t a place where we exchange money for essays.”

The teller resented the hell out of Christine. Christine knew how to cut to the chase. It’s why she was bank manager.

“This has value,” he said

“Many things have value that aren’t worth money,” said Christine.

That stopped him dead in his tracks. When he spoke again, it was in a loud voice. “Give me the money!” he said.

Just then two policemen came into the bank.

 

***

A detective down at the station questioned him for over an hour and then turned him loose–he was harmless. The detective could read character, that’s why he was a detective. The cops on the beat resented the hell out of him.

 

***

He walked into the first bar he came to and slid the essay over to the bartender. “I’ll give you this essay for a beer,” he said.

The bartender studied him for a moment and then shrugged and poured a beer. Slid it over to him. The bartender could read character. That’s why he was a bartender.

He drank the beer in one go and slammed the glass down. “Another!” he said.

“Fine, but this one’s gonna cost you,” said the bartender, and gave the bar top a swipe with a white towel.

Leave a Comment

Filed under shards

Tagged as , , ,