Category Archives: shards

May 13, 2019 · 9:02 am

real men don’t cry

Real Men Don’t Cry

 

What’s that green slime oozing out of your ears? Don’t you think you should do something about it? Sponge it off before it runs down your neck? Stick plugs in your ears? See a doctor or hook up with a fortune teller? Move to Prague and take part in the uprising?

Maybe these aren’t helpful suggestions, but I can’t just stand here and say nothing, I wasn’t raised that way.

Maybe your liver is crapping out. Maybe you’re being eaten alive by envy. Maybe you’re Irish.

Go ahead, say something cute about the orange tears running down my cheeks, but it’s not the same thing.

And what will you do when the bus gets here? Do you have tokens? I’ll bet you’re one of those no-counts who ride around the free-ride zone all day because they have nothing better to do. Me, I’m loaded down with destinations, and I’ve got a wallet stuffed with twenties to prove it.

So why don’t I take a cab if I’m so flush, is that what you’re thinking? Can you see a cabby pulling over for a guy with orange tears running down his face?

I don’t know when they turned orange, the tears. It’s not like I cry all the time. Real men don’t cry. They could have turned orange and been sloshing around in my tear ducts since I was a kid. What took me by surprise wasn’t so much that they were orange when they finally spilled out, but that they were tears. There I stood with a towel wrapped around me after a hot shower, gawking into the mirror at orange tears running down a face lathered with shaving cream.

“Are you alright in there, dear?” my wife called in to me, and then she tapped on the door.

“Of course I’m alright!” I barked, but the tears kept coming.

This could turn into a delicate situation. You’re the first person to witness the tears. But don’t go thinking it’s the same thing as that green slime oozing out of your ears. It’s not. Not at all.

Listen, I’ll ride around the free zone with you for awhile, but then I’m going to transfer and head home where my wife will have supper on the stove. You could have a life like mine too, if you’d just get a grip and learn how to control the green slime.

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May 5, 2019 · 7:12 pm

rainy day rag man (for Gregory Corso 1930 – 2001)

Rainy Day Rag Man (for Gregory Corso 1930 – 2001)

 

He’s barking at the moon. He’s barking up the wrong tree. He’s tangled up in blue. He’s shoplifting dialects and dangling them with hangman’s rope from his crash-pad ceiling. On come the black lights, the strobe lights, the bright lights, the stage lights. “Let there be light!” he cries out, naked as a blue jay and flat-out on the shag rug, throwing darts at the ceiling.

He’s seen rumors flying like wounded bats and false evidence sticks like gum to his shoe soles. He’s seen dreams go up in smoke, grave conclusions dumped in body bags from hot-air balloons, fist-sized monkeys nailed to fence posts. He’s grown gun-shy of false promise, mauled hope, pontifications and the fine-print of love. His soul is like an ironclad Merrimack sending volleys over the bow of a Nantucket schooner. The Lie is self-perpetrating, the dark stain is everywhere.

He’s a rainy-day rag man with a push-cart mind, a midnight tailor in the attic stitching pockets shut. He’s the mutant love child of our unabashed sham.

He’s the weather vane that tells how the wind blows, the dimpled vulva of the wicked queen, the death throe of our whacked self-importance as we prance around with our chests puffed out.

He’s the last exit to Brooklyn.

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May 3, 2019 · 7:00 am

pledging allegiance

Pledging Allegiance

 

You walk in the first door with a sign over it and people behind desks stand up and applaud.

They take you to a back room and dress you in a uniform. They strap a pistol on you and hand you a billy club and brass knuckles. They take you into a large auditorium filled with men in uniforms identical to yours. They sit you down.

March music is blaring. A man in a uniform similar to yours but much more elaborate marches out on stage, turns to face the audience, and snaps to attention. The music stops abruptly. The impact is electric. And then, in a strong, resonant voice, the man begins reciting The Pledge of Allegiance.

You and your new comrades come to your feet and join in. Your doubt and confusion evaporate.

You are given a squad of men to command and sent out on the street to hunt down terrorists.

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April 28, 2019 · 3:51 pm

public education

Public Education

 

God & Guns
Made in America —
a bumper
sticker
on a
5th-grade
teacher’s
back bumper,
& on
either side
of that,
one with
a picture
of Obama
with horns
and another
that says,
Jesus Is the Way.

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April 26, 2019 · 3:45 pm

paperback writer

Paperback Writer

 

He wrote the book of love. He wrote the Book of Mormons. He dabbled in Buddhism but it slipped thru his fingers like water. So much open-ended eternity made his head spin.

He slammed out the Koran and set to work lopping off fingers. In his spare time he knocked out manifestos and constitutions.

He milked the Bible dry, it was his mother lode. Turn the other cheek he’d tell his not-too-swift followers, and when they did he’d deliver the Judas kiss while lifting their wallets.

From time to time he’d go on vacation, a spree of child molestation and date rape and an ocean of drugs. This was necessary because of how the world misunderstood him. But he always forgave everyone and settled down again to write a new script for salvation.

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· 6:59 am

paying dues

Paying Dues

 

It’s not how you say it, it’s what you say if you say anything at all. It’s the timbre of the voice, the glint in the eye, which way you veer at the crossroads. It’s the amount of contrition, your robust ambition, your bring-it-on leap from the cliff, how you clear your throat on the way down. Do you pick yourself up at the bottom and climb up again? Do you wait your turn, or elbow/lie/cheat/steal to get to the top again?

Is this a marriage worth saving? Do you collude and cooperate, cave in when the baby cries, borrow against time to buy back some frayed memory? Can you love what they’ve made of you, is your conscience clear?

On a clear day you can see forever, dodging in and out thru the juniper, professing this and suppressing that, a pale kind of enormity.

Enormity, enmity, eunuchs on a spree in Schenectady, looking for pallbearers to carry the load. This is your heritage, your slim bill of rights, your sullied opinion that you wave in our faces like a grotesque absolution. Come on now, be honest — don’t you want the whole enchilada, smothered in hot sauce?

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