Long ago, while I was walking in Hoboken, Frank Sinatra came down the other way.
He walked up to a lamp post and tied a string to it.
Tugging on that string, he muttered “What a world!” before untying it and moving to the next post.
He did this for 30 minutes before a limousine caught up to him, and some guys in tuxedos helped him into the back.
When he died, I wondered if they tied that string to the inside of his coffin.
I dug up his grave, but it was empty.
(Perhaps he’s sitting on a rainbow?)
Category: My stories
Brain
If I suffer some horrific tragic accident that reduces me to becoming just a brain in a jar, I want that jar to be a cookie jar.
Because, let’s face it: the kids these days are fat.
And there’s nothing that puts a kid off of between-meal snacks like reaching for a Chips Ahoy and coming up with a handful of grey matter.
But then again, kids don’t wash their hands, either. Disgusting, nasty creatures!
Pawing around my lobes, their booger-covered fingers scrambling my neurons… ewwwwww!
They’d reduce me to a drooling, blithering idiot.
(Unlike how I am now, right?)
The Bowl
We use a large wide clear glass bowl as a water bowl for the cats.
If I lay on the floor next to it, I can watch them drink, their tongues curling and flicking water into their mouths. Stopping, glancing at me over the side, recognition, ear twitching, wary.
And starting again, drinking, not looking at me at all.
Then, finished, a drip of water still on their chin, licked away, a head shake, turn to me, staring, an ear tilted back, then both, confused, ears forward, tail up, and walking away down the hall away away away and gone.
Poets Steal
T.S. Eliot said “Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.”
Me, I steal, demand ransom, and threaten to cut off toes and fingers if my demands aren’t met!
He’s been tied to a chair in my kitchen for 3 days.
“My life is measured out with coffee spoons,” he says, and smiles.
I dump out the silverware drawer over his head.
“Let’s not be narrow, nasty, and negative!” He whines.
“Time’s up,” I say, pulling out my gun… and…
The damn thing misfires.
So, I pull a knife from the butcher’s block and I killed him.
Boy, did he did whimper.
Knowing
Whenever GI Joe used to say “Knowing is half the battle,” I wondered what the other half of the battle was.
My friends didn’t know.
“But knowing is half the battle!” I said.
“Yes, the other half,” said Ricky, the kid who ate paste. “Perhaps the other half is not knowing?”
“Just like that Socrates guy!” said Sue. “He knew that he didn’t know, so not knowing is… knowing you don’t know!”
“Maybe we just need to buy lots of their toys?” I asked.
We agreed, and played GI Joes in the sandbox.
Except for Sue; she played with matches.
That Shit Burns
I made the mistake of watching the news.
Our embassies were being attacked
Because while incinerating garbage
At a military base
Worn-out Korans had also been burnt
And this pissed Muslims off.
And our president
The leader of the free world
Apologized
Fucking apologized
Instead of telling them
Why don’t you take some of those
Billions in oil profits
Billions in foreign aid
Call up NASA
And buy the heat-shield tiles
That can survive re-entry from orbit
From the retired space shuttle fleet
And write your prophet’s words on them
Because when you put them on paper
That shit burns.
Dead Switch
Roger found a service called DeadSwitch that would let him address a note to be sent after his death.
If he didn’t log in once a week, the service would assume he had died and release the note.
The problem was, he didn’t have very much to say to anyone, let alone anybody to say it to.
So, he wrote a joke note to the president, saying he wouldn’t have to pardon him for all his brutal and horrific crimes now.
A week later, the site got hacked, and all the notes were sent.
Roger never did get a pardon.
Sonnet 18
I see him, wrestling through would-be Plaths, Frosts and Burkowskis at the coffeeshop:
It’s Open Mike Night, and, like a schoolchild, he’ll recite Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 from memory.
Dreadful.
From the stage’s barstool, he’s downright singsongy, ruining the verse, digging up Shakespeare’s grave, skullfucking the corpse…
Enough! I shout. I would rather be beaten across the face and chest with a volume of Shakespeare’s work than hear you open it and read from it!
The crowd is stunned. Shakespeare’s torturer stares blankly.
Reciting from memory, he has no volume to beat me with.
But he’s got the barstool.
I run.
Kolaches For Cats
While heading to work, I stop by the park and give treats to the feral cats who live in a maintenance shed under a bridge.
Other people give them food, too, but they really like the treats. They’ll stop eating from their plates and come out to grab treats.
I feel bad when I forget the treats, so I stop by the donut shop and pick up a kolache, tear out the rolled-up strip of turkey from it, and toss pieces to the cats.
They chase down the bits of meat and eat happily.
And then I head into work.
Chew on it
There’s a folder on my desk.
I open it, and there’s a stick of gum in there.
So, I unwrap it, pop it in my mouth, and chew.
Charts. Graphs. Tables.
They hit me all at once.
My boss knocks on my door. “Ah, you’re chewing on the Peterson Account. Think the fourth quarter numbers are good.”
I chew some more, shift the gum around my mouth, and it all adds up.
“Yes,” I say with confidence. “Maybe even better.”
“Excellent,” he says, and pops his bubble and leaves.
I spit out the gum and file it under my desk.