Visitation

Sweetwater, Saltwater

We dress you in purple silk,
pearls in gold shells at your ears.

We sing to you, pray
to be led beside the still waters.

At nightfall, as we leave you,
rain pours over black umbrellas.

One grandchild, tall as her mother,
stands on the steps holding lilies,

her own face
wet with rain,

her own way of looking
into the night: free ...

you're free now,
she murmurs;

lightly, in the marrow,
she carries you.

She's No Lady, She's An Iowegian

Three men were sitting together, bragging about how they had given their new wives duties.

The first man had married a woman from Indiana, and bragged that he had told his wife she was going to do all the dishes and house cleaning that needed done at their house. He said that it took a couple days, but on the third day he came home to a clean house and all of the dishes were washed and put away.

The second man had married a woman from Utah.  He bragged that he had given his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, the dishes, and the cooking. He told them that the first day he didn't see any results, but the next day it was better. By the third day, his house was clean, the dishes were done, and he had a huge dinner on the table.

The third had married an Iowa girl. He said that he told her that her duties were to keep the house clean, dishes washed, lawn mowed, laundry washed, and hot meals on the table for every meal. He said the first day he didn't see anything, the second day he didn't see anything, but by the third day most of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye, just enough to fix himself a bite to eat,  load the dishwasher, and telephone a landscaper.

They Grow Up So Fast

I pick up the grandson and the granddaughter after school, who greet me with "Are we going to the park?!" 

"You bet!" 

Can Jordan and Matthew and Quinton come, too?  Can they can they can they? 

"You bet!"

Grandson jumps into the front seat, I straps Granddaughter into her seat, Matthew into the other side, and Jordan & Quinton in one belt in the middle.  They're brothers and they're used to it.

Where's the treats!?  demands the grandson.  What treats? asks I.  Nana always sends treats! admonishes grandson.  Ok ok, they're in the wayback, I'll get them out when we get to the park.

Utter, complete, magnificent, unrelenting, deafening pandemonium for the twelve minutes it takes to get to the park.  Shrieks, howls, admonitions, threats, pleadings, and only a couple of them mine.

I scarcely get the 'Burban into the parking space and they spill out like it's a clown car.  Grandson throws open the wayback, snatches Nana's goodie bag as quick as a kid on a Baghdad street and they streak across the lot and up the hillock to the picnic tables, me trailing behind waving a bottle of sunblock.

The daughter phones.  "How was his day?"  I don't know, didn't want to ask him in front of his buds.  'Let me talk to him." 

G-Unit!  It's Yerma!  Tell her I'm busy! 

Get over here, shorty, now!

Hi Ma!  Oh!  Good!  Got a Happy Face!  What? Oh OH What?  What?

He looks at me with this sly gap-toothed grin, holds the phone out from his face a bit, goes "CCCCCCCRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhkkkkkk"  Sorry Ma, you're breaking up!  Gotta go!"  Flips my phone shut, slides it across the picnic table to me, left, once again with his mouth agape, in awe at the pace of things.

Iraq & Vietnam

Considering the wars' expenses in terms of dollars, Vietnam is estimated to have cost in the range of $530 to $660 billion in today's dollars.  The cost of Bush's Iraq incursion is now running at about nine billion dollars per month, with the ultimate cost likely to be $1 trillion to $2 trillion.  This from a country that can't find a way to spend $1 billion on health care, nor education, nor research.  But of course, Halliburton doesn't do health care, do they?

To Mecca with Love by James Tracy

After work at H and M Market Liquor and Deli,
quietly pondering the choices life gives us—
a Twenty-First Century natural selection:

Coke or Pepsi
Seven-Up or Sprite
Dr. Pepper or Mr. Pibb
Old English or Guinness in a Can
Doritos or Encharitos
Lottery or Super-Lotto

Someone is haggling for a fourty-ouncer.
Someone is scratching a lottery ticket.
Someone calls out for spare change.

Behind the canned food aisles,
underneath the glow of the far security monitor,
I hear a man chant, the one who sold me
last night's beer, chips and tuna.

He is chanting devotion to Allah,
to Mecca with Love,
crouched on a cardboard flat;
a lone tear rests on his cheek.

A poster of a blonde straddling a beer can hears
his prayers.
The hum of the freezer harmonizes with him tonight.
Someone is still haggling for a fourty-ouncer.

I walk to the counter to the man
who will sell me
tonight's beer, chips and tuna.

He says, "How's it goin'?"
I say, "Pretty good, same as usual."
He says, "Anything else?"
I say, "Yeah, a newspaper."

Walking away I look at the front page headlines

BLOODSHED AS ISRAEL RETALIATES
IN WEST BANK: 13 DEAD.

Gleanings from a long, busy weekend

Before you turn on the big leaf sucker-upper thingee, make sure no one is holding a cat.

If someone has been working all weekend making posters for the big PTA carnival, it really isn't funny at all to ask how many "k's" there are in the word Tickets.

Thirty-five years and three months less one day was a pretty good run.

Follicular Challenge

As a long-time, shining example of the ravages of late-term testosterone poisoning, the prospect of my first "real" haircut in more than a quarter century had me as unsettled as a virgin at a prison rodeo.

Some pointed and maybe just-a-bit acerbic back and forth twixt me and my long time 'barbette' led to the brisk (and thus mutual) decision that I should take my "pineapple that came out of the de-thorner tub 3 turns too early" to someone who understands that "It's not how much hair one has, it's how those hairs are displayed."

In my case, each individual Follicule Blossom must be arranged and displayed in a fashion denoting its specific, individual, (and becoming unique) triumph over genetics.

So I got sent down the street to Gentleman Jim's.  That story, if/when I gather the strength, to follow.

 

The Tool User

I have mostly the greatest admiration for IKEA.  Their furniture is top notch quality; they retain good people on staff; they must be doing a terrific business, as the young woman (who has been at the store since its opening maybe three years ago) watching us plop from bed to bed confided that they get four to six semi's in every night, restocking.  The business model of selling only constructible furniture that can be shipped in flat boxes is genius.  So why must their assembly instructions be so perverse?

Sure, the little guys in the wordless drawings all have beaming smiles, except when they're showing the wrong way to do things, in which case they have big, sad grimaces, the scene's implicit horror punctuated by a giant black X over it.

I'm almost certain that in a small, presumably windowless room in Delft, a squinty eyed sadist oversees the step-by-step instructions and cries "Huzzah!" when he finds the most insidious place to subtly blur the distinction between two integral interior structural members of whatever She's brought home and I have spread across the bedroom. 

I get the thing assembled to the point where I'm down to the last seventy some steps, and realize, Oh My God, I've put every single drawer together inside out. 

That Netherlands corksoaker.

Just to gild the frame around the picture, while I'm assembling, disassembling, and reassembling, She's on her computer over there in the corner, working on some PTO brochures at breakneck speed, making her keyboard sound like a snare drum.  I shriek, mortally injured, bleeding profusely   - blood dripping       -  ok, some blood evident on my finger.  "Look!  Look!"  She glances, no discernible slowing in the typing.  "You remember where the bandages are?" 

"Jesus Mary and Joseph, I'm bleeding over here!"

"This would be a good time to check your blood sugar, you don't even have to prick your finger" she offers, slowing slightly now, whether to change fonts or due to real concern, I leave it to you, Gentle Reader, to discern.