tom lyford

UNSTUCK IN TIME WITH BILLY PILGRIM

Should I be worried? See, lately I’m sort of hung up on this phenomenon that’s raised its curious head in my life since turning 76 a year ago. It’s an odd thing. Probably an aging thing. A bit troubling but much more intriguing than troubling, actually. Still, a real head-shaker, something I‘ve been mentally chewing on like the dog with its proverbial bone.

“When a person drowns, Your whole life passes before you in an instant!”

You‘ve probably heard that at some point in your life. As a kid, it was simply part of the bigger patchwork of urban legends that swirled around the neighborhood back then, something you took for granted– that, and all the other playground malarkey that was getting passed around back then. It was the Fifties, after all. And whenever I think about it back then, I’d try to imagine what it would look and feel like, having all twelve years of my twelve-year-old life, say, go barreling straight across my vision in the blink of a frickin’ eye like a steam locomotive with 4,380 boxcars of animated images on board behind it . A marvelous set of images.

I remember thinking to myself, But how could anybody ever even know that? ‘Cause if you drowned, you’re dead, right…? And dead men tell no tales, right? So… unless there was somebody right there with that drowning person to witness our guy crying out, “Oh my God! I‘m drowning here and, jeez, my whole life from my birthday till right now just swam by right in front of me… glug glug glug!” then there’d be no way to pass that info on, right?

However in the long run, I was just this young and guileless kid, plus in the Fifties you learned fast that the adults knew everything and you didn’t know squat, so whatever they told you must be RIGHT.

So when my mom “taught” me that if you sliced the tips off both ends of the cucumber that you were peeling, and then rubbed them vigorously in a circular motion back against the cuke’s exposed ends, any bitterness in the cucumber would vanish, like Voodoo. I swallowed that one hook, line, and sinker, and guess what: years later, whenever the grown-up-me prepared a green salad, I was still that guy, the one still performing The “Amazing Cucumber Exorcism Ritual.” And then too, how many years had to pass before I could shed that Never swim until a full hour after eating a meal or all your muscles’ll cramp right up and you’ll drown! (which could only occur, mind you, after your entire life passed before you in a split-second)? Gawd! That’s pretty embarrassing to look back on now. Yep, go back in a time machine and you’ll find my generation a crazy little tribe of junior shamans with so much occult “knowledge” etched between our ears, you’d fall down and die laughing.

But I’m digressing here. Let me get back on track with that aforementioned phenomenon I started out with: Your entire life would pass before you in an instant.

I’ll begin with a confession. In this, my 77th year on the planet, I’ve begun to be plagued with some slightly serious memory loss. But not the garden variety “memory loss” so many of my peers complain about all the time. No, “I’ve got that beat,” as Hooper once assured Captain Quint and Officer Brody during their Who’s Got the Prize-Winning Scar Competition? down in the belly of the Orca. Truth? I’ve pretty much had to get myself over the embarrassment of constantly having to just come right out with, “Hey, look. I’ve got your name dancing right on the tip of my tongue but just can’t for the life of me seem to spit it out. So please accept my blushing apology for having to ask you to remind me what it is again.” And of course 99 times out of a hundred (because we old farts almost exclusively end up chewing the fat with other old wrinkled bags of bones like ourselves), the response I get back is the knowing chuckle and warm assurance not to worry, that yes, they too often find themselves in the very same boat. Now see, that is what I call the garden variety of geriatric memory loss. The trouble is, with me it’s much much more often than… often. And see, we’re not in the same boat, because my boat’s leaking like a sieve. And sure, we all occasionally cross the living room and end up wondering why the devil it was I came over there for. But with me? Not so much ‘occasionally’ about it.

Fortunately, I’ve become big on The Philosophy of Acceptance over time. So the way I view it, a good portion of the trillions of gazillions of souls who’ve populated the planet between the time of the Neanderthals and the astronauts probably had to deal with memory loss too, so… it’s just my turn, right? They got through it. One way or another. So too then will I. Nothing I can do about it anyway.

However, and here’s the thing, FINALLY:

My actual problem is not the fact that I’m seriously plagued with short-term memory loss. Nope. The problem is something quite the opposite. Allow me to demonstrate with the following dramatic dialogue, depicting a true story (with close to 90% accuracy of the exact word-for-word dialogue recalled from memory [yes, my memory]):

Lights! Camera! ACTION!

Me: Hey, kiddo. Uhmmm… There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.

Wife: What’s that?

Me: Well… alright. I’ll tell you. But I gotta warn ya, it’s weird.

Wife: (sarcastically) With you? Huh. Who woulda thunk it? What?

Me: OK. see, I’m thinking here… alright, here it is: I think I may be dying.

Wife: …What? No, wait wait wait— what’re you talking about? Are you OK?

Me: Well, yeah. Sure. I’m. good. Fine. Basically. But I mean…OK, actually, I’m thinking might be I might be… I dunno. Drowning or something.

Wife: Dying? Drowning?

Me: Well, don’t panic. It’s OK.

Wife: Don’t panic. OK! What, the house is burning down but…don’t panic?

Me: No, it’s not like that…it’s…

Wife: Not LIKE that!? So what’s it like then. Talk!

Me: OK. OK.

Wife: You told me after your last check-up, everything was good, was fine!

Me: It was. It is. It’s just that… just that…

Wife: Just what?

Me: Yes. Yeah, I will! I am…fine. See, it’s just that… OK, you remember that old saying about how… just before a swimmer drowns, his whole life passes before him? You remember that? His whole frickin’ life?

Wife: Hey! Talk to me. Now. And make sense. I mean it!

Me: Well, see, that’s been happening to me lately. Only not in a flash like, you know, just before going down for the third and final time. But see, this has been going on for…. months.

Wife: You lost me. Your whole life…? In months?

Me: Well it seems like it anyway. Pretty much. Not in a blink of an eye, no. But still, that’s what this whole thing’s been reminding me of. Only like in slow motion…

Wife: Your life. Passing before you? Your life which you haven’t even… finished yet?

Me: I know. I get it.

Wife: And this has nothing to do with dying or swimming.

Me: That was… a metaphor

Wife: So, then…

Me: Look. I know it sounds stupid. It is stupid. But it’s happening to me. And I was just needing to tell you what’s been going on! To get it off my chest.

Wife: You’re not dying…

Me: Not in the forseeable future anyway…

Wife: So your health… it’s OK.

Me: For 77 anyway. You know how my health is. I haven’t kept anything from you.

Wife: Oh please.

Me: Hey…what can I say? My life is passing before me. Or so it seems, is all. So… it’s LIKE the drowning thing.

Wife: Even right now?

Me: Well, no. Not this minute. It’s not a constant thing. I do get breaks in between. Just…it’s on-going. This morning. Last night. Last week. Twenty minutes ago.

Wife: Twenty minutes ago.

Me: Yeah. Approximately. Pretty much.

Wife: Twenty minutes ago what?

Me: Another memory. Again. Clear as a bell.Which is why I’m bringing this up right now. Fresh on my mind. Just sitting there on the couch and it popped into my head in a flash. I didn’t ask for it. But when it happens, it’s just like I’m there, it’s like an industrial strength déjà vu. Almost like Virtual Reality. But not.

Wife: You said again. When was the last one before that?

Me: I dunno, sometimes when I’m lying in bed, almost asleep. Or… just lying awake in the morning, you know? Quite often it’s when I’m in the shower with all those little jets of hot water needling my scalp. Flash-backs from early childhood. My brain’s a regular amusement park these days.Very specific and detailed memories.

Wife: OK then. So? What was this one? This time.

Me: Oh. Something that happened back when I was, what… four? That big family reunion up north. Before Joyce and Bruce were even born, so just Ma, Dad, Denny, and me. This isn’t the first or only time I’ve ever reclled it. I’m not saying that. Actually, it’s a common remembrance for me. Part of my personal history. In fact, I think I’ve probably told you about it before.

Wife: Your mom’s family. Yeah…

Me: The rooster?

Wife: Oh. OK. Yeah. That definitely… sounds familiar.

Me: No idea what triggered it today though. It just came flooding back right out of the blue. With a vengeance. In the past, whenever I’d happen to think of it, it’s always been kind of a flat, ho-hum, standard, two-dimensional memory. No where near as vivid as it was today. A steamy hot, sunny summer afternoon. I only mention that because, God, I was conscious of the sun’s heat prickling the skin on my bare arms. See, that’s the thing. These recent remembrances are always so vivid now. The only way they could be moreso would be if they were in 3-D. They’re not. It’s just, most of the senses are all in play. Smells. Tastes. Touch, etc. But why it popped up today? Or when they pop up any day? No clue. They just…come.

Wife: What are some other memories for instance?

Me: God, such a slew of’em. Fight on the playground. Getting hopelessly lost in Bangor as a little kid. Fighting tooth and nail on the operating table, age seven, being anesthetized against my will. Plucking slimy night crawlers out of the wet grass late at night with a flashlight. Memories. I got a lifetime of’em. And all… saved up apparently. Because they’re all still there! Seemingly! Everything I’ve ever done, every minute of my life is… right there like an apple ripe for the picking. Coming back to wow me all this last year. Like watching, no, experiencing, a movie.

And sure, I’m not drowning, but honestly? It really seems like my whole life is passing before me, or will have before I’m through. Not in a flash, no, in real time. So odd. Gotta say, I kinda enjoy it actually.

Wife: Well, it’s good if you can enjoy it.

Me: But you know what? There’s an irony standing out like a sore thumb here. I mean here I am in the present, losing my short-term memory. Struggling to come up with acquaintances’ names for crying out loud, and even common everyday words? Our conversations have become games of charades, you guessing and supplying me with the words I’m fishing for, to finish my freakin’ sentences. So damn frustrating. Embarrassing. But then on the contrary, my long-term memory is kicking into over-drive, over-compensating off the charts.

Wife: Seems like you’re handling it…pre tty well.

Me: Yeah, I guess. I’m unable to answer the simple question, What’d you do this weekend? But on the other hand, I dare you to ask me about what I was doing at that Craig family reunion in Presque Isle as a three and a half foot tall little tyke back in the summer of 1950. I can describe the half ear of buttered corn-on-the-cob, peas, potato salad, hot dog, chips, and the brownie I’d already taken a bite out of, all lying right there on my paper plate… me, belly down in the grass, propped on my elbows. But man oh man, I can really paint you a detailed damn mug shot of that feathered, lizard-eyed, Godzilla Rogue Rooster that came lurching down over me suddenly from out of nowhere and landing right in my picnic plate! Red wattles a-flapping all herky-jerky, his hellish eye giving me the hairy eyeball! Me screaming and wailing bloody murder while he went to stabbing the hell out of the corncob with his killer beak, rolling peas overboard everywhere into the grass! I mean, I’d never even seen a goddamned rooster in my 4-year old life before that, let alone beak-to-nose!

But anyway, here I am today, a 77 year old retired English teacher who’s seemingly become “unstuck in time” like Billy Pilgrim, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s protagonist in SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, and also undergoing something similar to what Daniel Keyes’ character, Charlie Gordon, went through in the novel FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON. Charlie being the fictitious mentally challenged man who undergoes experimental brain procedures that stimulate his 5^th-grade-level intelligence into rapidly blossoming to the point of unparalleled genius, only to sadly lapse back into an even more severely handicapped condition than before as the effectiveness of the drugs dissipates at the end. And yes, here’s me, a guy who was never either mentally handicapped or anywhere near a genius, but who did rise from an embarrassingly mediocre high school student to earning a Bachelors in education, and then going on to teach high school composition, vocabulary, and English literature for 34 years. And guess what: now being reduced to the ignominy of having to rely on the kindness of strangers and loved ones to charitably drop the pittance of a common noun, verb, or an acquaintence’s name in my rusty tin beggar’s cup to keep me going in a conversation.

HOME

MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY

cousin to the copier
i commiserate with office machines

whose red warning lights flash
toner: low! (i know how this feels)

my warning lights have often flashed
serotonin: low!

the toner-deficient copier produces
mere spotty outlines of intended concepts

serotonin-deficient, my communication center outputs
only perfunctory monosyllables

but somebody from supply always
pops in the brand new cartridge

at the medicine cabinet
i always pop the capsule

the copier prints state-of-the-art graphics
i am gregarious

home

BUMMER II

USER GUIDE FOR TRANSITIONING MOTORCYCLE-GANG HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH STUDENTS FROM BADASS POETRY TO RELATIVELY GOODASS POETRY IN ONLY A FEW EASY STEPS…

Yes, in BUMMER I, I detailed how I played Pied Piper of Hamelin, nefariously luring my unsuspecting wannabe belligerents (aka the savage junior EXILES biker gang) into conforming to the strict tenets of the high school English curriculum (aka the poetry unit). And yes, it was touch and go there for a while. However, they don’t call me The Dudley Dooright of Poetry for nuthin’ (he always gets his…… men).

And once I had them somewhat “enjoying” my dark Harry Chapin songs, I obviously had to face the fact that there weren’t that many of them. So I had to line up some ammunition for our future 45-minute classes. I knew I would have to try to wean them off music eventually (but by all means gradually and imperceptibly). But in the meantime, an obvious middle step was protest songs. There are so many of those to choose from, and so that’s where I went next. Protest songs would the ideal buffer zone for moseying on over to real poems. The transition couldn’t be too abrupt.

Always I was re-enforcing the point that singer-songwriter’s song lyrics are POETRY. And so far, so good.

This next one, of course, was one of their favorites. OK, it was one of mine. Check it out on YouTube, too. It’s a hoot and a half. And like all protest songs, rather historical.

“I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag” by Country Joe and the Fish

Well, come on all of you, big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He’s got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We’re gonna have a whole lotta fun.

CHORUS

And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.

Well, come on generals, let’s move fast;
Your big chance has come at last.
Now you can go out and get those reds
‘Cause the only good commie is the one that’s dead
And you know that peace can only be won
When we’ve blown ’em all to kingdom come.

CHORUS
Come on Wall Street, don’t be slow,
Why man, this is war au-go-go
There’s plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of its trade,
But just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong.

CHORUS
Come on mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, and don’t hesitate
To send your sons off before it’s too late.
And you can be the first ones in your block
To have your boy come home in a box.

Protest songs were pretty easy pickings, practically a dime a dozen. So I used the above song as a springboard. And since the subject of “Fixin’ to Die” is War, I turned to my vast collection of War Poetry. I wasn’t looking for gory blood and guts though. I wanted something with meaning, something with a little tad of philosophical thinking that even they could dig. Stealthy me.

Basically I told them to look at themselves. What follows is not word-for-word, only an approximation of how I chose to begin.

“Look at you guys. You’re so badass, you don’t put up with anything you don’t want. Honestly? I’m impressed. I even envy you with your commitment to defend your beliefs and your goals. You don’t put up with any crap at all, do you. And then if worst comes to worst, you’re willing to face whatever consequences there are. That’s ultra cool. I like that.

“But you’re also very lucky to have been born in an era where protest has become such a thing. It wasn’t always that way, you know. It wasn’t that way when I was your age. We were brought up to toe the line, to accept whatever your parents insisted on, and also of course whatever The Man told you to accept. You didn’t want trouble, you didn’t want to make any waves. How boring, right? I’m sure you look at my generation as a bunch of wimps compared to yourselves.

“Anyway, I’m not exactly certain when this protest spirit started to blossom, but it’s tied right in with the Draft and the Vietnam War. Young people started burning their draft cards. They began poking daisies and daffodils right down the National Guard’s rifle barrels pointed at them.

“Bob Dylan has an odd little song reflecting the early stages of the Big Change, where protestors were finding they had have a voice, they could just say NO to anything, even though it was officially mandated. He called it “Maggie’s Farm.” And whenever you hear “Maggie’s Farm” referred to in these lyrics, just think of it standing for The Parents, The School Principal, The Cop, The Draft, or whatever wannabe power was rubbing you the wrong way.”

Maggie’s Farm by Bob Dylan

Oh I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
Well, I wake in the morning
Fold my hands and pray for rain
I got a head full of ideas
That are drivin’ me insane
It’s a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more

No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more
Well, he hands you a nickel
He hands you a dime
He asks you with a grin
If you’re havin’ a good time
Then he fines you every time you slam the door
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more

No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more
Well, he puts his cigar
Out in your face just for kicks
His bedroom window
It is made out of bricks
The National Guard stands around his door
Ah, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more

No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more
Well, she talks to all the servants
About man and God and law
Everybody says
She’s the brains behind Pa
She’s sixty eight, but she says she’s fifty four
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more

No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
Well, I try my best
To be just like I am
But everybody wants you
To be just like them
They sing while you slave and I just get bored
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more

“Maggie’s Farm”went over fairly well with my little scholar-don’wannabes. It didn’t kill them, at any rate, but they weren’t really all that impressed. They’d all heard it before. But I did sense, after going over the individual lyrics as much as they allowed me to, that they were at least somewhat interested in the interpretation of Maggie’s Farm as a metaphor. Anyway, not bad for a biker gang. And I sensed by this point, they might also have begun to take a stand-offish interest in me, the Ichabod Crane at the front of the room, which couldn’t hurt. Collateral reward. I shamelessly like to think that they perhaps admired my spunk in taking them on in this nearly impossible task: me, a Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, LOL.

So the next step? Continuing on with… well, sucking up to them. And God forbid, trying to slip a pure, unadulterated, non-lyrical “poem” in right under their suspicious noses. And I had one all picked out though, yeah, I knew it was a real longshot. Especially when, as I was passing out the printed lines of the poem I heard one of my biker boys exclaim. “Oh Jesus, guys, this one’s written by somebody called Jack the Pervert! No shit!”

Oh well, what did I expect, really? (After that, things went something, but not exactly, like this.)

Me: “OK, guys. This one’s written by a guy who was your age around 1915 or so.”

Them: “What, they had perverts back then too?”

Me: “Oh believe me guys, they had them way long before this author was around.”

Them: “This guy sounds stupid.”

Me: “He was a Frenchman.”

Them: “Yeah? That too? Well that figures.”

Them: “Christ, I woulda changed my friggin’ name at least, that’s for sure!”

Me: “His last name was actually pronounced prayVARE. In French. Doesn’t mean pervert. He was a famous movie-maker, writer, and poet. Died in 1977.”

Them: “Of What? Embarrassment?”

Them: “Getting beat up by a motorcycle gang?”

Them: “Jack the famous French pervert. Good riddance.”

Me: “Hey, listen up guys. If you can politely put up with me for just the next fifteen minutes, as scary and tough as that might be, I swear to you the next poem after this one is going to be so raunchy it’ll shock even you. I swear it.” (I had a couple of Bukowskis up my sleeve as ammo.)

Them: “You wish.”

Me: “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. And I could be wrong. But. Are you willing to prove me wrong, though?”

Them: “How? You wanna make another deal? Like, unless we fall down and drop dead on the floor of fright, we won’t have to do no more poems?”

Me: “Something like that, yeah? Only not with this poem. The one after this is when we’ll deal.”

Them: “Bullshit.”

Me: “Come on, please, guys. You tried me once. Dare to try me again?”

Anyway, yadda, yadda, yadda, and after more back and forth, I eventually had me a tenuous deal. But they made it clear that I really had to put up, or shut up. I told them I could live with that. So: following is the print out of the poem I was placing on their desks. I insisted on them quietly listening to me read it to them very slowly… and yes, twice (because it was so short and because I believe any poem should usually be read at least twice, if not more), before they could jump in and tell me in no uncertain words what they really thought it, regardless.

THE FAMILY by Jacques Prevert

The mother knits
The son goes to the war
She finds this quite natural, the mother

And the father?
What does the father do?
He has his business

His wife knits
His son goes to the war
He has his business

He finds this quite natural, the father
And the son
What does the son find?

He finds absolutely nothing, the son
His mother does her knitting,
His father has his business

And he has the war
When the war is over
He’ll go into business with his father

The war continues
The mother continues knitting
The father continues with his business

The son is killed
He doesn’t continue
The father and mother visit the graveyard

They find this natural
The father and the mother
Life goes on

A life of knitting, war, business
Business, war, knitting, war
Business, business, business

Life with the graveyard

OK, truth? This experiment was pretty much an utter fiasco, as you can imagine. The common adjective they could all agree on was…STUPID! I bet I heardthe word STUPID! about seventy-five times in the follow-up. And when I asked what any of them thought about what the author was trying to put across with this one, they hooted and sneered. “Can’t you read?!” they asked me. “Jeez! It’s all right there right out in front of you, for cryin’ out loud. I mean, it says it over and over: the wife knits, the son goes to the war, and the father has his business! I mean, wow, isn’t that friggin’ interesting story! Hey, dude, if that’s what a poem is, and you like that stuff, then man, it royally sucks being you more than I thought.”

Ah well. You win some, you lose some, and some get rained out. I’d given it he old college try. I did manage to get a couple of sentences squeezed in afterward, despite all the uproar, but it’s pretty doubtful any of them paid much attention to my explanation of”The Family.” However, in the bigger sense, I had won… in that I had secured for myself a chance for another go-round in that rodeo. In the next class, I had three poems in mind that would zap them like a fully-charged cattle prod. And I couldn’t wait!

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BUMMER III

So after a not-so-successful attempt at instilling the beginning of a love of poetry in the hearts of my little motorcycle EXILES with the poem “The Family” by Jacques Prevert (yeah, Jack the Pervert from my previous BUMMER II episode), I had to reach deep down into the dark recesses of my Poetry Arsenal. And the lethal weapon I pulled out (heh) was as ticklish as nitroglycerin: Bukowski!

A movie based on Charles Bukowsi’s life was aptly titled Barfly. Apparently, that’s pretty much what he was. Mickey Rourke played Hank, “Hank” being Charles’ popular nickname. Most of the film takes place in sleazy barrooms and hotel rooms with his sleazy girlfriend, Wanda (Faye Dunaway). Guess why. Right.

Hank lived his adult life as a functioning alcoholic.

Despite that life, he was a prolific and surprisingly successful writer. According to Wikipedia, “Bukowski published extensively in small literary magazines and with small presses beginning in the early 1940s and continuing on through the early 1990s. He wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books during the course of his career. One of these works he titled Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8 Story Window,” (a title that hints at a darkness within the man). Songwriter Leonard Cohen once said of him, “He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”

The Wikipedia article further says, “Bukowski’s work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column Notes of a Dirty Old Man in the LA underground newspaper Open City… In 1986 Time magazine called Bukowski a ‘laureate of American lowlife.’ Regarding his enduring popular appeal, Adan Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote, ‘the secret of Bukowski’s appeal … [is that] he combines the confessional poet’s promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp fiction hero.’” So Bukowski, sleazy drunk that he was much of the time, enjoyed a global popularity, as the number of biographical texts dissecting the man will attest.

The first of his poems I selected for my EXILES (others were soon to follow) is “Me Against the World,” a seemingly appropriate motto for my boys. I’d discovered it serendipitously. One afternoon, browsing the Poetry Section of a Borders’ Book Store, I happened to pluck a random book from a display, flip it open to the middle like cutting a deck of cards and… Jesus, there it was. And it had already had me in its death grip after only the first six or seven lines. It felt as if I were to look into a mirror, I’d discover that I’d just suffered a metaphorical black eye! That was honestly a day I can’t forget.

Now I need to point out that this book was an anthology in the annual Best of American Poetry series, so “Me Against the World” wasn’t one of those elegant, cerebral pieces I apparently was expecting that day. I bought the book immediately. I’d become a Hank Bukowski fan immediately. I was taking my first step on a counterculturally sentimenal journey of a thousand Bukowski poems.

Back in the classroom, I opted to dramatically read the poem aloud first, before passing out the lyrics sheet. I wanted to grab their rapt attention the same way the poem had initially muckled onto mine in Borders. I began with the opening, “when I was a kid one of the questions asked was, would you rather eat a bucket of shit or drink a bucket of piss? I thought that was easy. ‘that’s easy,’ I said, ‘I’ll take the piss.’ ‘maybe we’ll make you do both,’ they told me.”

Now if you happen to be new to Bukowski, you are probably finding yourself as much in a state of shock as I was at first. Even nearly every one of those Exiles’ jaws had just landed in in their laps, not because the language came as a shock, but because the language had occurred spoken out loud by a high school English teacher in a public school classroom. It was an unusual moment indeed. But please, dear reader, please hold on and bear with me. You will be rewarded, I swear.

Back to the poem:

ME AGAINST THE WORLD

by Charles Bukowsky

when I was a kid one of the questions asked

was, would you rather eat a bucket of shit or

drink a bucket of piss? I thought that was easy.

“that’s easy,” I said, “I’ll take the piss.”

“maybe we’ll make you do both,” they told me.

I was the new kid in the neighborhood.

“oh yeah?” I said. “yeah!” they said. there were

four of them “yeah,” I said, “you and whose army?”

“we won’t need no army,” the biggest one said.

I slammed my fist into his stomach. then all

five of us were down on the ground fighting.

they got in each other’s way but there were

still too many of them. I broke free and started

running. “sissy! sissy!” they yelled. “going

home to mama?” I kept running.

they were right. I ran all the way to my house,

up the driveway and onto the porch and

into the house where my father was beating

up my mother. she was screaming. things were

broken on the floor. I charged my father

and started swinging. I reached up but

he was too tall, all I could hit were his legs.

then there was a flash of red and purple

and green and I was on the floor.

“you little prick!” my father said, “you

stay out of this!” “don’t you hit my boy!”

my mother screamed. but I felt good

because my father was no longer hitting

my mother. to make sure, I got up and

charged him again, swinging. there was

another flash of colors and I was

on the floor again. when I got up again

my father was sitting in one chair and

my mother was sitting in another chair

and they both just sat there looking at me.

I walked down the hall and into

my bedroom and sat on the bed.

I listened to make sure there

weren’t any more sounds of

beating and screaming out there.

there weren’t. then I didn’t know

what to do. it wasn’t any good outside

and it wasn’t any good inside. so I

just sat there.

then I saw a spider making a web

across a window. I found a match,

walked over, lit it, and burned

the spider to death.

then I felt better.

much better.

This gut-wrenching piece of creative writing still affects me, to this day. And believe me, did we ever have a great discussion, or what!? A discussion on the significance of this one, on them, and on me; a discussion on poetry, on creative writing. God, I was clam-happy at the end of that class period. Stories were triggered and told. I felt myself really starting to bond with these yahoos. And once again, I was left with the distinct feeling I’d won implicit “permission” to try one more poem. As long as it was written by this dude, good ol’ Hank Bukowski. Or somebody very much like him. You know. No Daffodils, no clouds. But I had a number of them waiting in the wings.

Stay tuned for a few more of my fave Bukowski hits coming up in my next episode, “Bummer IV.”

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LYFORD ON LOVE

PART ONE

(I’m calling this one “Part One,” not because I have a specific Part Two in mind at all. It’s just that, knowing me, I’ll probably have a couple hundred Parts on this theme. I mean, who knows?)

We begin…

As a 34-year teacher (a career that came to an end over two decades ago), I was forever unearthing priceless little tidbits of poetry from the many literature anthologies I’d inherited in whatever classroom I was assigned. That was one of the big English teacher perks, for me. I collected any and all the ones that touched me in one way or another, and now I carry around a gazillion of them in my iPhone (well, technically they’re warehoused in the cloud). But… anyway, sometimes when I’m languishing in a doctor’s waiting room, manning the circulation desk during the quiet moments at the local library, or riding in the passenger seat while my wife, Phyllis, drives the car, I can simply pull out the phone and alter my mood with a poem, just like that. And I have so many genres: love poems, war poems, protest poems, sci-fi poems, beat poems, horror poems, anger poems, hilarious ones, short ones, endless ones… you name it. Strange little things, smart phones. You never really know who’s packing what.

Sometimes there have been these important-to-me poems in my life that I’ve somehow managed to lose and, consequently, I’ve ended up investing a great deal of my years tracking them back down. Which is next to impossible if they’re ancient and especially if you can’t for the life of you conjure up the title or the poet’s name. But if and when I ever do recapture one of those, there’s a little celebration that goes on down deep inside me that flutters my heart (somewhat like A Fib only more fun). I kid you not.

Here’s a true story. About three or four months ago, a TV commercial was advertising an upcoming boxing match featuring a boxer whose last name was Saavedra. I probably shocked my wife when I leapt up of the sofa and shouted, “That’s IT! THAT’S HIS NAME!” Then of course I had to explain to her what the hell I was yelling about.

Well, a little poem that I’d discovered way, way back when had somehow vanished from my collection. It was just a snippet of a thing, a little love poem only a few lines long. Wouldn’t be deemed important to most of the citizens of our planet but, as I often say, we’re all occupying our own little unique spaces on the social spectrum, aren’t we. And yes, it was a love poem. I’m a sucker for love poems if they’re well-and-creatively written. The main reason I was having no luck recovering this one is because of the hard-to-remember-let-alone-pronounce name of the poet: Guadalupe de Saavedra. Plus wrack my brain as much as I could, the title refused to leave the tip of my tongue. For years! And then…

Bingo! There was some unpoetic dumb-ass boxer named Saavedra going to box some other unpoetic dumbass palooka on TV. And finally (and serendipitously) gifted with the boxer’s name, I only had to seek the help of the Great God Google. Ding! Retrieved it in five minutes!

The poem is titled “If You Hear That a Thousand People Love You.” And today is the perfect day for me to share this love poem here, it being Phyllis’ and my 57^th anniversary today (7/30). So that’s got me feeling all warm and fuzzy here. Spoiler alert: I’m such a damn romantic. But now that I’ve talked about it and put it on a pedestal, I imagine you’ll look at this piece off fluff and say, “What the hell does he think is so special about this thing?!” And that’s OK because, right after this poem, I’m going to share two or three poems I’ve written to Phyllis over time and, yeah, sure, they’re bound to be deemed head and shoulders above this one, right?

IF YOU HEAR THAT A THOUSAND PEOPLE LOVE YOU

by Guadalupe de Saavedra

If you hear that a thousand people love you
remember… Saavedra is among them.

If you hear that a hundred people love you
remember… Saavedra is either in the first
or very last row

If you hear that seven people love you
remember… Saavedra is among them,
like a Wednesday in the middle of the week

If you hear that two people love you
remember…one of them is Saavedra

If you hear that only one person loves you
remember…he is Saavedra

And when you see no one else around you,
and you find out
that no one loves you anymore,
then you will know for certain
that… Saavedra is dead

Yeah, not really such a great poem perhaps. But when I first found it, I was smitten. My favorite line is Saavedra is among them, like a Wednesday in the middle of the week. I dunno. I can identify with a love like that.

Story of my life with Phyllis: since I was a high school junior and she my freshman sweetheart in 1962-63, I went crazy writing poems for her, about her, and about us. I was a rhyming fool, a creator of bad doggerel (poetry written by dogs, I was once told). I don’t know why, but I was madly driven to capture The Adventure of Our Old-fashion Crush with all its ups and downs on reams of notebook paper. Each verse was honestly a sonnet in itself. I get this feeling I might still have a few “chapters” of those maudlin verses lying around somewhere, in a box maybe, but I couldn’t find them. Just as well, I imagine. I’m pretty sure I’d be embarrassed by them today.

Funny, immature me, I’d go to the movies and hear how cool Clark Gable or Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart or Jimmy Stewart would speak to women, and then I’d try to model my own ‘lines’ after some of theirs. One time at Phyllis’ home, I was sitting at her kitchen table and watched her making me a cup of coffee. Then, as she brought it over to me, I dunno, the whole scene felt so domestic and she so wifely, that I Abruptly came out with this one: “Hey, you and me? Let’s grow old together.” Now how corny is that?

OK, I’ll tell you how corny it is. It’s laughingly as embarrassing as a Harrison Ford line in the 1973 film, American Grafitti. The year is 1962. Ford plays Bob Falfa, the reckless badass dude driving a hot, souped-up, black ’55 Chevy. Bob wants to prove his car is the fastest car in the valley. So, he’s itching to go up against Paul Le Mat’s character, John Milner, who drives the locally famous yellow 1932 Ford 5-window coupe, the hot rod that had long been the fastest car in the valley. Before the race, however, badass Falfa picks up Laurie (Cindy Williams) who’s virginal, vulnerable, and on the rebound from having just been dumped by her steady, Steve (Ron Howard). Unfortunately she’s about to become the lady-in-distress as Falfa has decided she will accompany him in the ill-advised speed race out on the outskirts of the city. But first, he tries to come on to her, in his way (who wouldn’t) but the way he attempts it is something that is so weird and awkward it caused me to cringe. First he grows all serious, then looks her straight in the eyes, and after a moment (what?) begins ridiculously singing “Some Enchanted Evening” from South Pacific. I know, right?! Don’t believe me? Stream the flick. It’s a wonderful film (with the exception of Ford’s musical come-on). But as awkward as that was, it’s a little bit too similar to my out-of-the-blue “Let’s grow old together” attempt. Oh well, it’s funny now. And of course it’s taken 60+ years, but Phyl and I eventually did succeed in accomplishing just that.

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE

you crossed the square heading west on main… we were the yang and the yin

i was the fire & you were the ice, the odds stacked against us had loaded the dice

but we didn’t know that then

i watched you walk with your new friend & talk, unaware i was being reeled in

that was the fateful momentous day in our tinytown lives so mundane

just a fall afternoon with the sun dropping down

autumn leaves underfoot, yelloworange&brown

on the corner of north street and main

i watched you walk with my cousin & talk

(through the drugstore display window pane)

the gambler in me told my heart & my soul: though opposite charges attract

i’d look you in the eye & retain full control…

our fate’s cosmic die rode the crapshooter’s roll

& rolled boxcars— the odds had been stacked

(magnetic north pole & magnetic south)

our futures were processed & packed

the bi-polar pull of our gravities’ force set our orbital paths for collision

inevitable contact… there was no recourse

our hormones alone were our single resource

the dice roll had made its decision

no time for reflection, no room for remorse

the outcome was nuclear fission

when matter and anti-material collide: cataclysmic, the chain reaction

its thunderclap echoes through all space and time

it alters the future’s & past’s paradigm—

twin suns, we were lock-stepped in traction

each destined to fall as the other would climb

the orbital dance of co-action…

you crossed the square heading west on main (we were the yang and the yin

i was the fire & you were the ice

we were starcrossed as soulmates—indelibly spliced

but we didn’t know that then)

i watched you walk with your new friend & talk

aware you were reeling me in

FETCHING

needling your quilt in your lamplight halo

you look over and catch me

your “RCA dog”

gazing into your eyes

my spiritual tail beginning to wag

and me growling some humorous

something or other—

this old dog’s old trick

for fetching me

the biscuit

of your sweet

laughter

THE BIG CHILL

“we got married in a fever hotter than a pepper sprout”

— johnny & june carter cash

you were the spark

that ignited the fuse

for the

big bang

of my hitherto

relatively uneventful

love life

it flashing incendiary

roman candles & rockets

molotov-cocktail love

flame-thrower love burning

magnesium hot

launching me in a straight trajectory

right over lover’s leap at

e=mc²

but that was in my callow youth

today

like the olympic flame

my love for you

still burns

patient now & serene

fireplace cozy

cup of cocoa hot

electric blanket warm

Happy 57th anniversary to us (7/30 /1966 -7/30/2023)

home

BUMMER

One of the all-time, proudest little moments of my high school English teaching career was the day I faced-off against a sophomore, all-boy classroom of the junior Exiles Motorcycle Club and announced that we were about to begin the required poetry unit. I’d been dreading the day since they and I first got the chance to look each other over back in September. I was a hell of a lot more intimidated by them than they were of me. Each wore the signature jean jacket with the sleeves torn off, leaving it pretty much a vest, with “EXILES” stenciled in an arc across the shoulder blades.. Despite the lack of the black leather jacket, which I’m guessing was above their pay grade, in my head I was quietly hearing the lyrics of a rousing 1950s song:

Click the YouTube link to enjoy the entire classic 50s ballad: https://youtu.be/TYFfgM78hJY

Black Denim Trousers (1955) by Vaughn Monroe

He wore black denim trousers and motorcycle boots
And a black leather jacket with an eagle on the back
He had a hopped-up ‘cicle that took off like a gun
That fool was the terror of Highway 101

Well, he never washed his face and he never combed his hair
He had axle grease imbedded underneath his fingernails
On the muscle of his arm was a red tattoo
A picture of a heart saying “Mother, I love you”

He had a pretty girlfriend by the name of Mary Lou
But he treated her just like he treated all the rest
And everybody pitied her and everybody knew
He loved that doggone motorcycle best…

from “Black Denim Trousers” –songwriters: Jerry Leiber / Mike Stoller

I was really nervous. However, by then I’d had a few weeks to better get to know the little badass wannabes as the unique and colorful individuals that in reality they were. And I’d been able to use that time to sweat over preparing possible strategies for this High Noon showdown. I’d come up with only one clever, albeit somewhat iffy, plan. It was a gamble. And if I lost, damn, I’d have to kiss my beloved poetry goodbye. Still, it was pretty clever. In the long run, it had been my jukebox brain that handed me the possible key: music! Because as Google tells us today (Google didn’t exist back then), “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast…” Yes, and one day, somewhere between September and November, the ghost of Harry Chapin had stepped forward to potentially save this English major’s ass.

Now, these dudes dwelled on believing (actually knowing) that they were the ones in charge, regardless of who was being paid to be. And in that they could often be very (gulp!) convincing. So when I unsteadily announced, “OK guys. Starting today we’re diving into poetry for a few weeks…” I wasn’t entirely surprised by the volley of snide laughter that interrupted me mid-sentence, though it left me standing on shaky ground.

After the merriment died down, one of the guys (apparently the leader and spokesperson of this little band) mansplained to me (and yes, I realize that the term “mansplain” wasn’t even coined back there in the 70s but, in retrospect, that’s what it was) that no, we wouldn’t be taking part in any… poetry unit. Whereupon I felt obliged as “their teacher” to mansplain back to them that, yeah, I understood how they felt and all yet, still, it was mandated by the curriculum and all so there was really nothing we could do about it. Another volley of laughter!

(OK. Now before I go on, let me mansplain to you, dear reader, the actual reality at play here. Honestly? The administration couldn’t have actually cared less about what went on in my classroom with those particular yahoos, as long as it didn’t bring down any bad publicity on the school district. In other words, the principal himself knew that even he wouldn’t try teaching the appreciation of poetry to this crowd so… if I‘d wanted to (and as long as no one set fire to the classroom, got killed, and we didn’t get found out), I probably could’ve kept them busy all year doing book reports on Playboy. But the truth is, I love poetry, always have, and what I was feeling was the dire need to do something (anything) to save my own my sanity in that particular classroom! Poetry would do that for me, if I could only pull it off.

“No, guys, I’m serious. We don’t have any choice.”

“OK, fine. Go ahead then. You do it. Just wake us back up when it’s over. Or not. See, we don’t care what you do up there at the front of the room, do we, guys. We won’t pay any attention. But hey, whatever floats your boat, man. Have fun.”

I purposely let our give and take play out for a minute or two longer. I wanted to allow their egos to be wallowing in their little victory over The Man, confident they had easily crushed my frilly little poetry plans like a cigarette butt beneath their collective steel-toed boot. I wanted them in a festive, patting-themselves-on-the-back mood similar to the Trojans, drinking it up to excess as they lay beneath the deadly shadow of the infamous Trojan horse. Hopefully all the better to unload my supposed, and-hopefully-not-a-dud “ace” up my sleeve, heh heh. So I hoped anyway. I dunno, perhaps I’m a student of the art of war.

But finally I laid the ace down on the table before them. “OK, men. Looks like you got me. However, if you’re not too chicken to…gamble, I have a little proposition for you.”

“Gamble? You wanna gamble with us? Sorry, homeboy. I mean come on, dude. Poetry? Get real.” Another volley of laughter.

“C’mon on. Hear me out. I mean, if I’m gonna lose my job thanks to you yahoos, the least you can do is listen.”

“Whatever.”

“So. Tell you what. How about this? You let me try one single poem on you. Alright, it’s actually a song. But the lyrics? Lyrics are poetry. So…”

“What kind of music? Lawrence Welk? No, don’t think so.”

“I can’t stand Lawrence Welk either, so no. Feel better?”

“No. Not really.”

“But here’s the deal. All you hafta do is give me one shot. But the stipulation is… a half-hour shot, a full half hour, because I do want you to wait till I’m finished with it, right? No interruptions. At the end of which I call for a vote. Thumbs up. Thumbs down. Totally up to you guys. And I guarantee I will abide by your decision. Guarantee it. And so think about this. A) By doing this I can, in all good conscience, report back to the principal that yeah, I did poetry with you guys. I just don’t need to mention it was just one poem, eh? So you’re saving my bacon,” I lied, “and I won’t forget that. And… well, this is just between you and me, OK? And B) You get to trade away what might’ve turned out to be a three- or four-week unit of the dreaded poetry for you (yeah, sure, I know, just hearing me do it all by myself at the front of the room, but still…) all for a lousy, stinkin’ thirty freakin’ minutes of it. What a deal, right?”

“Yeah, you say guaranteed and all, but what if it turns out afterwards you’re lyin’?”

“Well, the way I look at it is, you’re the fierce biker gang here, right? I’m the Ichabod Crane.”

“The… what?“

“I mean, if I stiff you on this, you guys’ll probably kill me, so…”

“Oh yeah. There is that.”

“’Course I’m one pretty rugged fella…” Another volley. “But remember, I want your attention throughout this. And considering what you’re likely to gain in the deal, I think that’s a fair trade, don’t you?”

The little man in charge looked over his shoulder. “Guys?” There were a number of silent, cautious, almost imperceptible nods. He swung back around. “All right. We’ll give you a shot. But I’m warning…”

“Thank you. For your vote of confidence.”

“We ain’t voted yet.”

“Fair enough. OK. So here’s how it’s gonna work.”

“What’s it called? This so-called song?”

“Bummer.” They all grinned a little. “Yeah, you were imagining “Clouds” or “Daffodils, right?.” But… here’s how this is gonna work. I’ve printed up copies of the words,” I said, holding up a stapled, two-page, two-sided, single-spaced document.

“Jeez. What’s that? A friggin’ book? It’s long enough! I thought you said a poem.”

“It’s long. Yeah. But I believe you agreed to the stipulation that you hafta pay attention…

“Oh, believe me. I’m paying attention all right.”

“Sarcasm is cool. OK. But this song, “Bummer,” has a fairly long instrumental introduction. Sorry about that. It’s kinda gonna sound like some cop show theme, Starsky and Hutch maybe. I’m gonna let that play for a couple of minutes to set the tone. And meanwhile, I’ll be coming around passing out these lyrics to you. I’m asking you to follow along carefully, word for word, OK?”

And when, a moment later, I dropped the needle into the vinyl groove, I heard somebody mutter “Christ!’

(Bythe way, dear reader, do us both a favor and click on this YouTube link to listen along while you read the lyrics. I’m betting you’ll be impressed by both the content and the very creative arrangement. Hopefully, you’ll feel like one of the Exiles, if you do.) https://youtu.be/mL3eXX-na64

And here are the lyrics:

Bummer

by Harry Chapin from Portrait Gallery

His mama was a midnight woman
His daddy was a drifter drummer
One night they put it together
Nine months later came the little black bummer

He was a laid back lump in the cradle
Chewing paint chips that fell from the ceiling
Whenever he cried he got a fist in his face
So he learned not to show his feelings

He was a pig-tail puller in grammar school
Left back twice by the seventh grade
Sniffing glue in Junior High
And the first one in school to get laid

He was a weed-speed pusher at fifteen
He was mainlining skag a year later
He’d started pimping when they put him in jail
He changed from a junkie to a hater

And just like the man from the precinct said:
“Put him away, you better kill him instead.
A bummer like that is better off dead
Someday they’re gonna have to put a bullet in his head.”

They threw him back on the street, he robbed an A & P
He didn’t blink at the buddy that he shafted
And just about the time they would have caught him too
He had the damn good fortune to get drafted

He was A-one bait for Vietnam
You see, they needed more bodies in a hurry
He was a cinch to train ‘cause all they had to do
Was to figure how to funnel his fury

They put him in a tank near the DMZ
To catch the gooks slipping over the border
They said his mission was to Search and Destroy
And for once he followed and order

One sweat-soaked day in the Yung-Po Valley
With the ground still steaming from the rain
There was a bloody little battle that didn’t mean nothing
Except to the few that remained

You see a couple hundred slants had trapped the other five tanks
And had started to pick off the crews
When he came on the scene and it really did seem
This is why he’d paid those dues

It was something like a butcher going berserk
Or a sane man acting like a fool
Or the bravest thing that a man had ever done
Or a madman blowing his cool

Well he came on through like a knife through butter
Or a scythe sweeping through the grass
Or to say it like the man would have said it himself:
“Just a big black bastard kicking ass!”

And just like the man from the precinct said:
“Put him away, you better kill him instead.
A bummer like that is better off dead
Someday they’re gonna have to put a bullet in his head.”

When it was over and the smoke had cleared
There were a lot of VC bodies in the mud
And when the medics came over for the very first time
They found him smiling as he lay in his blood

They picked up the pieces and they stitched him back together
He pulled through though they thought he was a goner
And it forced them to give him what they said they would
Six purple hearts and the Medal of Honor

Of course he slouched as the Chief White Honkey said:
“Service beyond the call of duty”
But the first soft thought was passing through his mind
“My medal is a Mother of a beauty!”

He got a couple of jobs with the ribbon on his chest
And though he tried he really couldn’t do ’em
There was only a couple of things that he was really trained for
And he found himself drifting back to ’em

Just about the time he was ready to break
The VA stopped sending him his checks
Just a matter of time ’cause there was no doubt
About what he was going to do next

It ended up one night in a grocery store
Gun in hand and nine cops at the door
And when his last battle was over
He lay crumpled and broken on the floor

And just like the man from the precinct said:
“Put him away, you better kill him instead.
A bummer like that is better off dead
Someday they’re gonna have to put a bullet in his head.”

Well he’d breathed his last, but ten minutes past
Before they dared to enter the place
And when they flipped his riddled body over they found
His second smile frozen on his face

They found his gun where he’d thrown it
There was something else clenched in his fist
They pried his fingers open— found the Medal of Honor
And the Sergeant said: “Where in the hell he get this?”

There was a stew about burying him in Arlington
So they shipped him in box to Fayette
And they kind of stashed him in a grave in the county plot
The kind we remember to forget

And just like the man from the precinct said:
“Put him away, you better kill him instead.
A bummer like that is better off dead
Someday they’re gonna have to put a bullet in his head.”

I’ve gotta say, it was fun watching their changing expressions as they pored over the handout, following along, and it was especially a real hoot when Mr. Chapin sang the line, “Sniffing glue in Junior High and the first one in school to get laid.” One kid’s head popped right up looking at me wide-eyed, and he almost gasped in wonder, “Can you say that? In school, I mean?” to which I responded, “I dunno. Probably not.” (Keep in mind this was the early 70s after all, years fifty some ago.) But it also gave me a rush of inner joy to witness my kids, already budding outliers in their world, become emotionally affected, probably the very first time, by something at once both so crude and artistic. It felt kinda like one of those To Sir, With Love moments, you know?

Anyway, that was the day I began to fall in love with this little badass biker class.

home

URBAN LEGENDS BLUES

“i saw the best minds of my generation destroyed

by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging

themselves through the negro streets at dawn

looking for an angry fix…”

— howl, by allen ginsberg

it was almost practically an honest-to-god fact …

(all the older cool guys confirmed it)

& we could all recite all those well-known anecdotes

seething with that rebel-without-a-cause wildness,

the same walk-on-the-wild-side jazz we’d seek out in

the breathless teen-angst movies like

joy ride… & party crashers:

“a single aspirin swigged down

with a mouthful of coca-cola

will render you staggeringly,

knocked-on-your-ass drunk”

one medicine show demonstration: a normally

“sober” & “respectable” older kid rapidly developing

outrageously slurred speech patterns & flopping with

histrionic helplessness on the playground lawn

where he was reduced to a giggling,

gravity-pinned, dying cockroach

impaled on its back: proof-positive!

so later, in the sanctuary of my room,

after surreptitiously gulping down the

deliciously-illicit white pill with a glass of Coke

(which, as anyone could tell you, can completely

dissolve a steel spike left in it over night!)

& waiting over an hour for the magic…

nothing… happened!

boy, was i ever pissed! it was just like that time

I swallowed the chokecherries & drank the

glass of milk, which everybody swore

would kill you… but it never did.

it just tasted bad.

i didn’t even get sick!

I thought, face it:

there’s no magic in this world—

only lies

back

FORTUNE’S FOOL SYNDROME

So once upon a time I found myself on a jumbo jet headed for something called Basic Training. I say found myself, not because I was just waking up from amnesia. And not because I’d been drafted, either. Nothing as exotic as that. And in case you’re wondering, I was stone cold sober. Oh, I could’ve listed off the steps that had placed me on that plane. It’s just that the Big Decisions in my life never seemed entirely real… until, that is, I’d end up landing on both feet in some rock-hard consequence that I might not be too happy with. That’s just the way most of my life was— always sort of discovering myself somewhere or other, involved in doing something I really hadn’t particularly chosen and didn’t necessarily want. Strange, huh. I was born without foresight.

Something other than me seemed to be the force that determined what I was to become, and when. Consequently, I’ve felt a strong kinship with Juliet’s Romeo when he cried out in anguish, “O, I am fortune’s fool!” (act 3, scene 1). Remember, he’d just accidentally executed Juliet’s favorite cousin Tybalt, something he hadn’t planned on doing at all. In fact, it was the last thing on earth he’d wanted to do. But nonetheless, there he was, stuck with the consequences. That was so me of him. Well, I’ve never killed anybody. Still, I see myself suffering from something close to acute Fortune’s Fool Syndrome.

My parents were loving parents. I know they loved me and my siblings dearly. We were blessed. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was me. See, they made the decisions. All the decisions period. And I guess I didn’t always like that so much. For some reason I’d been born downright contentious and I had a dark side. (I wasn’t all bad. Half of me was good… I swear). But as the black sheep of the family, I never saw much fun in practicing responsible-decision-making. There was just something off about me. Dad tried his darndest to teach me responsibility, but all of his lessons just seemed to drip off me like water off a duck’s feathers. My mind was always elsewhere. I dunno, was it my DNA? I often wondered. I really did.

For instance when Disney’s Pinocchio hit our local theater again, I know I identified with Pinocchio. The movie left me feeling guilty for some reason, and chewing on some probing questions about who and what I was, even at age ten…

ON FIRST WATCHING PINOCCHIO

Did the virgin-pure, see-no-evil hearts

of any of those other little boys in the

fllickery moviedark leap up (like mine?)

at all those all-night carnival-barker

come-ons amid the sparkleworks of

Pleasure Island?

Those free Big Rock Candy Mountain

Cigars, say?

That stained-glass church window just

begging you to pitch a brick through it?

The punch-somebody-in-the-face-&-

get-away-with-it “Rough House”?

And the mugs of free draft beer served at

The Pleasure Island Pool Hall Emporium?

Did the NO MORE CURFEWS concept set

their y-chromosomes a-resonating like

little tuning forks? Did Disney’s Pinocchio

arouse the snakes & snails and

puppy-dog tails in

those guys too?

Or (good lord!)

was I the only

donkey boy

in the

crowd?

Anyway, I know I never liked my parents’ lessons and rules, but it was made clear to me from the beginning that I didn’t have to like them. It just was what it was. I always fought against them, but pretty much all my rebellions were firmly and promptly squashed. Dad was military after all, served as an NCO who, a few years prior, saw extreme combat in World War II. So… obedience, and all.

But Ma’s rules were crazy. Her being a fundamental evangelist, she was always on guard and ready to exorcise the devil in me. Would you believe she once made me swear not to get a girl pregnant, simply because some high school girl right up the street had gotten in the family way? And would you believe I was in third grade at the time; knew ZILCH about how to, or how not to, do that particular thing but swore up and down and crossed my heart anyway that I would never do it? Poor Ma. She also made me pledge that I would never fall in love with a Catholic girl. And then one day, my sophomore biology lab partner (a year older than me) said she’d like to meet me at the hometown basketball game that night. With a fluttery heart, you bet I showed up. We sat with our backs against the wall in the top tier of the bleachers and… before I knew what was going on, I found myself lip-locked in a make-out embrace! I know! I came back home from the game later that evening just in time to hear the tail-end of my older brother squealing on me, “…and she’s Catholic too, Ma!” Yep. That was every bit as shameful as when Jerry Seinfeld’s “parents” found out their son had been spotted making out in the movie theater during Schindler’s List! But what the hell. Later in life, yeah, I married myself a good Catholic girl.

So anyway, I ended up just floating down river of my life through the puberty years and beyond like some youthful Long John Silver on The Good Ship Lollipop. I lived only for the moment, totally oblivious to any real decisions and future planning that I needed to be making. They’d take care of themselves when the time came, right? They always had. Somehow. The only gnawing problem was, as time went by, I began feeling this ominous, not-so-far-off-and-getting-nearer metaphoric roar of Niagara Falls up ahead, that drop-off where I’d someday find myself deep-sixed down in Adultsville and on my own..

Back through fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, our teachers would subject us to The Annual Career Planning Unit. Each year the student must select a career that he/she might possibly to pursue for consideration in her/his possible future. The assignment: a three or four week project wherein an encyclopedia entry on the selected career might be painstakingly copied down verbatim (no computers, no Google back then), a worker in the selected field might be contacted for a personal Q&A interview, informative pamphlets might be sent away for, etc. I was excited about this project. If you’d asked me back then I’d say, “I can tell you exactly what I’m going to be when I grow up.” It was gonna be the same thing I’d always wanted to be since giving up being a singing cowboy movie star like Roy Rogers: a bona fide United States Air Force jet pilot ace. So yeah, I hit the old library encyclopedia, sent for some packets, talked to the flyboy down at the local recruiting office, and presented my report to the class as glowingly as the infamous Ralphie of The Christmas Story movie ever delivered his eloquent plea for his Red Ryder BB rifle. But…right off the bat, I had luckily stumbled upon the two most critical keys to becoming America’s next flying ace: simply a minimum height requirement (I wasn’t there yet, but it was still early), and a vision score of 20/20. Bingo! I already had 20/20 vision! Simply grow a few more inches and I’d be in like flint! So there. I was practically flying my Sabre jet already.

By the time I got to high school I had only another inch to grow, so things were looking up. I loved talking about my future in the wild blue yonder. Actually I talked about it too much because as my junior year rolled around, I was abruptly sat down at the dinner table to have the talk with Ma and Dad. (No, not that talk. I never got that talk, actually.) It was a rather grim family meeting. The topic was that my future beyond high school was not up to me. (What?)It was up to them. ( I said, What?!)And it didn’t involve the service. It involved college. (Wait a minute. As Cool Hand Luke was once informed, What we had there was a failure to communicate.) I didn’t want to go to college, I informed them. It was gonna be the Air Force for me. No, I was informed, it was going to be college for me. “We’ve thought about this, your mom and me, and what we’ve decided is… well… you’re going to be the first one in our family ever to graduate with a college degree.”

I was dumbfounded! “Oh. You’ve thought about it, have you? How nice! Funny, I can’t remember me thinking about it. Now why’s that? Oh yeah, now I ‘member: it’s ‘cause: That’s. Not. What. I. Want. Let somebody else do it!” It was for my own good, I was told. No, I argued, it was for my own bad. It would be a waste of my time. Because maybe they didn’t realize it, but (and oh boy, here came my two aces in the hole!) I had just that year met my height requirement (barely) and plus, I already had 20/20 vision.

“What, you think that’s all it takes to be a pilot. I’ll tell you what it takes. It takes a good solid math background for one thing. And your grades in trigonometry aren’t too stellar right now, are they. Listen, I had to take calculus.” Hell, I didn’t even know what calculus was. Whatever it was, it sounded awful. But anyway, long story short— ever hear that song, “I Fought the Law and the Law Won”? I was destined to lose. It couldn’t have gone any other way. Why? Because my whole little lifetime, I’d been brainwashed into knowing that I was under their thumb. Stockholm Syndrome. Losing was all I knew.

Growing up, Dad was “my agent.” He was always getting me jobs I didn’t want. I remember one beautiful, sunny, summer afternoon. I was just sitting on our front steps staring blissfully up at the clouds, chewing on a stalk of grass. Suddenly, dad’s pick-up stormed into the driveway. He rolled his window down and called out, “Get in.”

I was confused. “What’s going on?”

“You’re gonna be mowing lawns at the local cemeteries this summer.” Hey, I didn’t even like having to mow our lawn, let alone somebody else’s, but cemetery plots? Alas, within minutes I found myself a fresh-fish kidnap-ee among a rag-tag brigade of whiskered old scarecrows trundling behind lawn mowers. Another summer he got me two wretched custodial jobs which I thought way too demeaning for the likes of me, as the last thing I wanted to be known as was a friggin’ toilet-cleaning, garbage-hauling “janitor.” But the topper was that evening he came home from work grinning and told me I was now an employee at the local ESSO station. “What!? Hey, I… no offense but see, I don’t know the first thing about working at a gas station! I’m…not even qualified.” That seemed to tickle his funny bone as he assured me that the proprietor had personally assured him that, not to worry, he’d turn me into a grease monkey in no time flat. “A grease monkey?”

OK. But before I go on here, allow me to pause and come clean about something. Me wanting to be a flyboy ace? That was stupid. An irresponsible childish fantasy, just as stupid as my once wanting to be a singing cowboy movie star. Very likely I would have washed out of flight school in the first day but of course, I couldn’t see that then. A) I was oh so immature, B) a drama queen, C) a spoiled little brat, and D) a wuss to boot. Ma and Dad were right much more often that I was wrong. It’s true. I was the problem. I’m embarrassed right now traveling back there in my mind and witnessing, in retrospect, my childish behavior. All my whining and complaining would’ve fit right into some black and white 1950s sit-com like Father Knows Best or My Three Sons. Shame on me. OK? OK. There. I feel better now. Young Tom, drama queen extraordinaire.

That being said, my immaturity didn’t do me any favors in my actual young adulthood. Sure, I ended up enjoying a 34-year career in education, but how did that happen? Answer: by default. I’ve said that a thousand times. By default. (I’m smiling to myself now because that just reminded me of a comical quote from Homer Simpson: “Dee Fault Dee Fault!! My two favorite words in the English language!”)

And the fact that I became a teacher by default points right back to that very time I was having the spat with my parents about Air Force vs. College.

When I‘d finally caved on the issue (I always caved), and when it was obvious to all three of us that I’d really caved, Ma and Dad were excited. Me? I was left feeling sad, powerless, bruised, and happily wallowing in self-pity. So when the prodding started as to what I might want for a career and where I might like to apply for school… my martyr’s answer: “I don’t care. Why don’t you pick.” And when they started really pushing it, I’d get passively aggressively sarcastic. “Oh I dunno. Brain surgeon? Maybe a rocket scientist? I figure with my grades, I might as well go to Harvard. Or if I can’t get in there, then Yale is a shoo-in.” Then my Guidance Counselor got into the act of course. Pick a card. Any card. So I ended up picking the Joker, the least expensive card in the deck, which just so happened to be a state teachers’ college. Maine residents like myself were gifted with a seriously much reduced cost of tuition at state colleges. Did it matter to me that it was a teachers’ college? Not in the least. Because who cared? What difference did it make? Bring it on. Oh, pity-party me… So the die was cast by default.

So, off to college I went. And you ask, How was college? Great. I loved being off on my own, away from the parents. I loved living in a dorm. I loved making new friends. Hell, along the way I accidentally fell in love with the courses I was taking, not that I meant to. And of course as time went on I also fell in love with learning to drink and being quite utterly irresponsible. Goes with the territory. But when it was over, boy didn’t it ever used to piss me off when I’d catch Ma proudly telling her friends, “Oh, you know I’ll never forget that exact moment when Tommy announced that he had a calling to be a teacher!” Jeez, Ma. Gimme a friggin’ break.

The first two years passed in those ivy-covered halls. And then, on the second week of my junior year, something life-altering happened. During an educational class on Classroom Management, the professor herded us across the street to the local junior high school (think middle school) where we got to sit in the back of a classroom to watch a real live teacher in action. Two things happened to me. A) I was utterly knocked out by the (wow!) unbelievable mastery in action of that teacher, and B) I was (oh shit!) hit over the head with an epiphany that, once again, I’d ‘found’ myself somewhere. Only this time found myself strapped like a saw mill log on a conveyor belt that was barreling me toward the Big Buzz Saw straight ahead : an actual teaching job! An actual life-long career of teaching, oh my! I was suddenly terrified.

You’ll no doubt find it strange that I’d just lived through two whole years taking classes in a four-years teachers’ college and hadn’t realized, what… the obvious? I know. I get it. So do I, I still find it strange, not to mention embarrassing. I dunno, maybe I have ADHD or something. But the truth is, never in my wildest imagination had I consciously comprehended the cold, hard reality of what the academic motions I was robotically going through actually meant. In my mind, I was still in high school and going to nowheresville. Don’t forget, pity-party me had left high school in a real dark zombie funk, and I’d entered that college feeling like nothing more than a wooden pawn in somebody else’s chess game. And then following that, I’d become way too distracted by the joys and opportunities of campus life to even focus on the fact that my non-decisions carried actual responsibilities.

See? Romeo’s Fortune’s Fool Syndrome.

But long story short, sure enough, I became a teacher. Didn’t like it much that first year. Felt I wasn’t cut out for it. So instead of hanging in for a second year, I joined the Army National Guard instead. Why? Because my best friend had just done that. But then BASIC Training sucked so bad, I took the path of least resistance again and sort of allowed myself to fall back into a second teaching job. Which turned out to be a great thing because… well, I fell in love with teaching there. And then I worked very hard at becoming good at it. So many great memories from the various classrooms…

You know, I’ve heard a lot of people repeat the old adage, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” The ironic thing is…they say it like it’s a bad thing.

home

A MAN OF SUBSTANCE

One of the great perks of being the septuagenarian today is that I get to be that guy who harps on and on ad nauseum about the horrors of growing up way back there in the 1940s and 50s…

However, it requires being able to walk a fine line: teetering on the tightrope between being seen as an interesting and entertaining informer (like a Ted Talk guy), and unwittingly coming across as a throwback to the violent caveman days (especially to you of the much younger and more recent generations). In fact, I could be in grave danger of being judged pariah material in these political correctness years. Because let’s face it, a lot of aspects of life in “the good old days” can’t help but be perceived as behaviors shamefully barbaric by today’s standards. I mean, (especially speaking as a male), we really were (shudder) the sexist, wolf-whistling, cancer-stick smoking, firetruck-and-ambulance-chasing, no seatbelt kids of the mid-twentieth century.

And what do I have to offer in the way of a defense? Only this pathetic little bouquet of pathetic, wet-limp-noodle, looking-down-at-our-toes-in-shame alibis. Hey you know, we were just kids—not grown-ups! It wasn’t our fault! We didn’t make the rules. It was the times, you dig? And like… when in Rome, daddy-O, do as the Romans do, right? OK, ya jus’… ya jus’ hadda be there, man!

Perhaps it would be a great idea if, before you read my following, autobiographical poem, you’d try looking objectively back on my decades as one might look upon an ancient anthropology museum diorama. And don’t you worry, I do feel dutifully guilty about having been alive during such a Neanderthal past. Hell, I’m still looking back and apologizing for the hip-hugging bell-bottoms and leisure suits of the disco 70s too. But it’s easy to play armchair quarterback after the game is over. Nevertheless, the times just are what they are, and were what they were.

Anyway, moving right along… and without further ado, allow me share with you this little autobiographical piece of creative writing I penned back around 2001.

rhymes with ‘euphoric’

once upon a time

way back there in the 50’s…

the very minute we started teething

the nursery crib became

baby’s first opium den

mom still marvels

how i’d stop crying & drop right off to sleep

just like that!

after she’d massaged a dollop of her favorite

over-the-counter opiate

into the tender & swollen teething sores of my

poor little five-month-old

gummy-gum-gums

paregoric:

the mom’s best friend

a product that really worked for once—

& my brain

(no dummy, even as early as that)

was as eager to learn as any pavlovian dog

& the old messages started flashing in & among

the axons & dendrites:

brain to gums, brain to gums, come in please

roger, brain, this is gums, go ahead

10-4 gums, that last dose was a beaut.

whatever you do, just keep’em coming. you copy?

roger wilco that, brain. Over & out…

yes, message received:

laugh & the world laughs with you

cry & you cry & get stoned

i try to imagine my cunning little self

in my powder-blue security blanket…

jonesing for my next fix—

bet i did a lot of gratuitous ‘crying’…

wonder if i snored like a banshee

as a swaddled little babe coked to the gills…

hell, i’d have cut excess teeth if i’d known how

True story, I swear. An odd one for sure unless, like me, you were born in 1946 into a generation of “considered-very-respectful-moms-and-dads” who happened to believe in the application of that magic, over-the-counter, no-prescription-required opiate known as Paregoric (yeah, think about what you’ve learned about today’s oxycodone) to the sore gums of toddlers in the throes of teething.

It was the conventional thing to do then, and the humane thing to do, right? I mean, it allowed the child to have a much needed respite from the constant pain, didn’t it. And what parent wouldn’t want that? The baby would stop yowling almost immediately. And the big added plus was: it usually knocked the little twerp right off to sleep in some playpen la-la land. And again, what parents don’t love it when their beautiful baby takes a needed nap, especially one they’ll blissfully be very unlikely to wake up from for perhaps an hour or two?

And yet… it was an opiate. Just think: a pre-rugrat, and I was on the receiving end! Who remembers how often?

Take a look at these two illustrations (with a thumb and finger pinch you can zoom in). Read the labels if you dare. These are the same labels our parents gave the cursory glance at when innocently hauling the little bottle out of the medicine cabinet, from its place among the Vicks Vaporub, mercurochrome, aspirin, and the other wonder drugs of the decade. Check the suggested ages. Check the dosages. How powerful were those doses?

Well, I have a memory of six hyperactive little Connecticut cousins of mine arriving in the dead of night after their long, cramped ride up here to Maine for a week-long visit. I was about nine. They ranged from one to eight and were wound tight as drums after being packed like sardines in their station wagon for so long. A wild and joyous scene immediately ensued, with yelling and laughing and wrestling and telling stories. But 45 minutes later their mom lined them up like little soldiers in a row, had each step forward one by one, and spooned (eye-droppered for the baby) Paregoric into each dutifully opened mouth. Fifteen minutes later there was a dead silence. Every last one of them had fallen sound asleep and was being carried off and away to bed.

And… has it affected me? Well, quite obviously it did at the time I was dosed. I mean I was (to borrow the title of one of my Bob Dylan albums) “Knocked Out Loaded.” Yes, but that was the immediate effect. Did it have a long-term effect on my life? My later life?

Well, first of all, I think we’ll all agree that it’s unreasonable to give an opiate to a 6-month old baby, and it’s hard to imagine there would be no long-term changes. Of course we didn’t have Google (let alone computers). If we had, we might have been interested in this assessment from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov: “The risk of addiction to opium smoking appears to be somewhat less than to parenteral use of heroin, but appreciably greater than to alcohol. Even in countries where its use is traditional, opium smoking carries substantial risks of harm to health and social functioning…“ And speaking of alcohol by the way, when I related the story of my 1950s infantile brushes with Paregoric to my high school English classes of the 1970s, they confessed to me that many of their parents had dipped the tip of a rag into a glass of whiskey and allowed them to chew on it for gums relief. But I digress.

Who can say what long-term effects this practice has had on my life? I believe that I can argue very convincingly that there have been some direct long-term effects. But how much of that was brought on by DNA? Nature or nurture?

Let me say this, though: my little poem, “Rhymed with ‘Euphoric,’” is the one I chose to be the introductory piece in the last of five poetry chapbooks:

As a whole, the book pretty much stunk. But there are a few winners within, in my opinion. More about this later perhaps, perhaps not.

BACK

KILROY WAS HERE

“Every time something comes into contact with another thing it either takes, or leaves, something of itself.” —Locard’s Basic Forensic Theory

Like that famous Life Magazine photo

the astronaut’s footprint on the moon

I left my name and initials carved into

school deskstops and tree trunks

I was here

I left a paper trail of Polaroids

tax forms and dental records

blazed with the connect-the-dots

breadcrumbs of trace evidence:

Fibers and fingernails

and follicles

blood and sweat

and tears stains

So, you cosmic CSI guys, go ahead

and lift my prints from all those

steering wheels and door knobs,

extract my DNA from licked envelopes

And process the data—

let the results proclaim

my presence here

in the dust:

I too was here

home

BRAINS ON BOARD

VECTOR ANALYSIS

Sometimes when I spy the chevron of a Jumbo

Jet crawling like a Windows desktop cursor

across the sky, I go a little weak in the knees

at the thought of all that hurtling, ass-over-

teakettle humanity suspended way up

there in the middle of the air

thundering that winged rollercoaster, all those

Nike soles pressing down white-knuckled and

toe-curled tight upon the aluminum skin of their

winged boogie board… hundreds of front-facing

souls, sardine-parceled and honeycombed

kernels on a cob…

brains-on-board with their videocam eyes

contemplating the claustrophobic a isle,

the overhead carry-on compartments,

a forward passenger’s ear, of course

the ubiquitous barf-bag…rather than

the vectors of their very lives…

yes, hundreds of me’s way up there

turning the pages of the latest best

seller whodunit, and ho-humming

their lives away… right up to

the final page…

way up there in the middle of the air

BRAINS ON BOARD

Have you ever been safety-belted way up there in the middle of the air and paused momentarily in your reading, pressed your forehead up against the Plexiglas, peered down at the patchwork diorama of rivers and men, and wondered if anybody down there just might be following the path of this Jumbo Jet crawling (like a Windows desktop cursor) across the sky and wondering your about your Nikes and your barf-bag? I have. It’s the damnest thing, the things I wonder about.

More than half of the time, though, I’m normal. And by normal I mean, you know, just minding my own business, going about the Eight Functions of Life… plus reading, working, watching Netflix, sleeping, remembering things, having meaningless conversations about the weather, etc. But then there’s this other, philosophical me. And no, I’m no philosophy snob. I took some courses in college that basically covered some of the Great Ones, and yeah, I did get hung up for a while on Existentialism like college freshmen everywhere back then. And I’ve done some classical reading over the course of my life. But honestly? At my age, Socrates and Plato don’t carry a lot of relevance for me anymore.

However, my personal investigation into The Meaning of Life is ongoing. It’s not so much that I want it to be. It’s just that I can’t help it. Get a load of this:

According to my brain, I am the center of the universe. I’m not God. I didn’t create me. Or you. But, see, my brain’s got this bright idea that there was only a vacuous void before I came along on that Sunday, Bastille Day, July 14^th, 1946 (a.k.a., the Year Zero). But then, come along I did, with a vengeance, and lo, the universe didst begin to take shape. (By the way, the exact center of the universe was 97 Pleasant Street, located in a little hamlet that called itself Dover-Foxcroft (which was not only the center of the universe, but also happened to be the geographical center of the state of Maine in the U.S. of A.). But I’m sure as far as your brain is concerned, the big C of U is more than likely yourself. So it goes. And what are the odds, the two of us in this conversation both happening to be centers of the universe. I know. Of course, we’ve all grown up now and learned that academically (academically, mind you)this cannot be, and is not the case, but nonetheless…

Let’s imagine for a moment that I’m looking east out my window and spy a girl pedaling her bicycle south up South Street. I’m viewing her right profile. She doesn’t know that, of course, because (A) her brain’s not gazing over here toward me, 90⁰west of her position, and (B) we’ve never met anyway so as far as her brain is concerned, I don’t exist. There is no me. And you can say that about anyone she hasn’t met, or read about yet, or seen on TV. We’re all just ghostly non-entities.

Ooops, wait! Here comes a car this time, tooling down South Street Hill, heading north. Again, from the west, I’m viewing the driver’s side of her/his car. His/her brain is piloting the vehicle. My brain is piloting this HP PC. (What’s your brain piloting?) Her/his brain is the center of his/her universe. He/she knows right where she/he is going. I don’t. It’s not important of the world I’m the center of. He/she knows everything she/he has ever done, known, and learned. (I don’t, and I couldn’t care less). The knowledge is archived in her/his brain on The Complete Neural Map of His/Her World, a unique map that no one else has ever laid eyes on. Just like mine. Like yours.

OK, so where am I going with all this baby talk mumbo jumbo? (See, my brain has intuited that your brain is becoming rather annoyed. And I get it.) So, all right. Here we go.

All I’m saying is that it’s a point of view thing, isn’t it. And we’re stuck with that. It’s like we’re all centers of the big U.

So my small hometown has a population of about 3500. Think about that. Small and insignificant as it is, right now some 3500 ‘centers of the universe’ are out there futzing about at the same time like electrons. But never too preoccupied about it as we’re mostly living in Normal Mode, taking everything for granted, out of sight out of mind. Some pedaling their bicycles, some roaring through town on badass Harleys or rice rockets. Some hauling lumber through town on 22-wheeler pulp trucks. Some are dribbling basketballs, while other are peeking in other people’s windows. Some are going in, as some are going out. Some are just staring up airplanes, wondering, while some are peering down from them. More than a few are smoking weed. It’s a jungle out there. There goes a little old lady walking a beagle. (Is the beagle also a C of U? Well, it’s got a brain so…probably yes.) 3500 individual brains, the center of 3500 universes all in the same tiny town. It’s a point of view thing, sure, but it’s a little mind blowing.

And jeez, consider the bigger picture. Just stream a replay of Woodstock or the Live Aid Concert of 1985 and try to fathom the sheer power and size of those screaming, shoulder-to-shoulder, brain-to-brain, WE WILL, WE WILL ROCK YOU audiences. If you or I were in attendance at either, sure, we’d be overwhelmed but… our individual points of view would still be in charge, wouldn’t they. And the same holds true whether you’re stuck in my little town of Dover-Foxcroft or living among the big city populations: New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Cape Town. Regardless of where you are, the person sitting or standing next to you is the Center of the Universe.

See what I mean? Didn’t I warn you that it’s the damnest thing, the things I wonder about? The fault lies in the fact that Poetry ambushed me at an early age. Nursery rhymes at first. Lots of doggerel. Then Bennet Cerf and Ogden Nash. Mad Magazine had something to do with it. But one day back in the early 1970s, and this day is etched in my mind, I was captured as helplessly as a fly in a Venus Fly Trap. A case of the deer in the head lights. I discovered Leonard Cohen. He was just a random page in one of my high school English anthologies. The poem that rat-trapped my brain is…

I Wonder How Many People in This City

I wonder how many people in this city
live in furnished rooms.
Late at night when I look out at the buildings
I swear I see a face in every window
looking back at me,
and when I turn away
I wonder how many go back to their desks
and write this down.

Unlike him, I wasn’t staying at The Chelsea Hotel but… did I drift over to a window and look out? Yes. I did. There were windows out there. And I wondered a bit at the souls living behind the panes. And something began happening to my vision. Everything was becoming just a tad… refracted… like the ray of light passing through a clear glass of water. Like a prism.

To me, that kind of poetry was heavy, heady stuff. I was permanently bent.

And the rest is history.

Home

NANNY’S LITTLE ELEPHANT MAN

Mom sometimes talked about when she’d proudly

promenade me down the sidewalk in my little pram

(the only float in a one-little-man parade) how

Nanny would bunch the blankets up all around my

Humpty Dumpty head, leaving only a cherubic face

exposed, like the top of a tempting but imperfect cordial

nestled in a pleated, open-topped paper wrapper…because

conformity iron-ruled our twentieth century middle class

values back then, any hint of deviance (a.k.a. peculiarity)

threatening to upset the applecart of the much sought after

white-picket-fence American Dream of Perfection might

elicit frowns perhaps, or a tendency to look askance from the

unspoken discomfort of viewing a slightly misshapen head

on an otherwise miracle of perfection lying there

me, too ingenuous to realize amid the cooings and the oh isn’t

he cutes that I was, in fact, Nanny’s little elephant man—and a

head like that is an unsettling cross to bear, so Nanny

would go to work on me in the same way some shyster of a

used car salesman might shine and polish up the worst clunker

on the lot… eventually Mom breaks down and gives me the

low-down on my interrupted journey, lodged in the birth canal

the old forceps coming out of the operating room drawer to tug

and taffy-pull my skull (a blimp now with bruise-tattoo forceps

marks on the temples) head first out into the blinding lights

but when she sees that that explanation bombs at cheering me

up, she consoles me with a biology Ted Talk on how it’s such

a common thing, nothing to be ashamed of… that everyone

knows a newborn’s head is as pliable at birth as a glass-blower’s

bottle and hey, they just naturally pop back into shape and

harden later on (oh, yay!) but see… years later I go out for

high school football and, whoa! none of the helmets fit me, so

Coach has the team pig-pile me and screw a too small helmet

down around my skull, leaving me pop-eyed with puckered fish-lips…

and OK, much later when I enlist in the National Guard, it turns out

that those spiffy, round, black-visored formal dress caps aren’t right for

my E.T. head either… and in fact (pop!) would launch themselves airborne after

a few minutes of wearing … so OK now, much much later I go badass biker

but biker helmets don’t fit either and, jeez, I can’t even manage to get a

damn doo-rag tied all the way around my head, so I ride helmetless…

at long last though, I drop the macho macho man scene and become the

gentle bohemian poet without the beret that (duh!) doesn’t sit quite right… BUT

hah! finally (and fortunately) I’ve discovered the great all–American soft baseball cap

so yeah, I’m good now, I’ve gotten on with my life despite that somewhat

extraterrestrial je ne c’est quoi about me… Anyway, I guess you’ll find me a little more

hard-headed these days,

still a little thin-skinned

and… in the opinion of

some, just a little prone

to wild exaggeration…

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OPEN HOUSE

My Brain, and Welcome to It

“What goes on…in your heart? What goes on…in your mind?” –The Beatles

By first grade, I was pretty convinced that whenever I climbed into bed at night and closed my eyes, whatever I was secretly thinking would appear in a cartoon word balloon right above my forehead for my mom to “read,” just like a Beetle Bailey or Dennis the Menace comic strip. And honestly? Some of my thoughts tended to border on being a tad naughty by definition. Spooky how she seemed to always have a pretty good idea what might be going on in my head. She’d often ambush me in the act of some evil family felony, like pilfering one of Uncle Sherman’s left over cigar butts from the guest ashtray. So when she’d slip into my bedroom to say goodnight, I’d surreptitiously tighten all my muscles, ball up my little fists, and strive for only LOUD Sunday school thoughts until she’d leave. Acute Guilt Paranoia.

I went to college and became a high school English teacher, teaching English and American literature and tons of grammar and composition. However, teaching creative writing was my specialty and my passion. I’ve dabbled at becoming a writer myself and, even though my literary output is “small potatoes,” I get a lot of enjoyment out of the pastime.

In my grades 9-12 short story units, I’d get really pumped when we’d work on characterization. “Invent a character,” I’d begin, “in a single 5-sentence paragraph. But in your paragraph, no including your character’s name, height, weight, eye or hair color because… a preacher, a serial killer, and a rock star could share all of those identical attributes. The idea here is to bring out something that really distinguishes the person. So what can you include? What are some observations that reveal something that those stats don’t?” I’d might get corny and sing a line “Getting to know you, getting to know all about you…” or the chorus of the Beatles “What Goes On?” Then, for a springboard… I’d offer up myself as the artist’s model.

“OK. All of you, look at me. Check me out. Who can pin point something personal about me that reveals something, anything that goes beyond the yadda yadda mugshot stats. Don’t be afraid of offending me. I guarantee immunity.”

I’ll never forget the very first time I started with that prompt. Despite my assurances that that there would be no repercussions, it of course took a while to get a response. Then finally, after a tense silence, a mousey girl who almost never let us hear her voice during class discussions surprised me. She had raised her hand. “Tell me whatcha got. Lay it on me…” I said.

“You… have… a dog.”

Whoa! Did I ever do a double take! Totally flummoxed, it took me a few moments to gather my thoughts. before I could respond. (A) I did not own a dog, (B) I had never owned a dog, so (C) how she’d come up with that out of the blue I couldn’t imagine. But there she sat.. Waiting. Smiling brightly. Smiling hopefully. And I immediately realized something about her. She was a dog person.

“I’m guessing a white dog? Or at least partially white.”

“Uhhhmmmm…wow. I mean, well, see… that’s… that’s pretty interesting. I’m totally… surprised. Never in a million years would I have expected that. So… I really hafta ask. What made you say I have a dog?”

Continuing to beam at me, she bravely replied “All those little hairs on your shoulders. And down the front of your shirt.”

“What?”I automatically eyeballed those areas she had identified. Oh crap! Yep. There they were. Busted. How embarrassing! I could sense the class really getting interested in our dialogue. Apparently this quiet mouse of a girl was turning out to be a little Ms. Sherlock Holmes.

My face must have been showing some consternation because she worriedly asked, “What?”

Humbled, trying not to gag too noticeably on my pride, I had to say something. “Man! Man oh man. First of all… relax. You did really well here at zeroing right in on something… very specific. Perfect in fact. Exactly as I asked. Which, I guess, makes you an A+ student for today. Yeah. And I… have a confession I need to make now. No, make that two confessions. One, no, I don’t own a dog. Never have.” I could see I was confusing her. “And two, I’m a little embarrassed. Because…well, I have to own up what this i…”

“You trimmed your beard this morning!” She was right in her TV-quiz-show-contestant-mode glory.

“Bingo,” I conceded lifelessly. “Yeah. The white hairs. In my beard. So, yeah, it appears… I guess… I’m a little vain, aren’t I. Trying to ward off old age with a pair of scissors. Sheesh. But you know… you, youdid a great job here. Spotting something really telling. About me. More than I expected. Or realized. That was… wonderful really.” Yeah. (heh heh) Right.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sometimes, since I had no budget, I would take the kids out to the school parking lot on a “poor man’s field trip.” I’d send us all wandering around, checking out all the cars and pick-ups, both students’ and teachers’. The assignment was to take notes on the automobiles’ little give-aways, things that were revealing about the owners or drivers. Bumper stickers. Vanity license plates. Decals. Rust. The kinds of trash littering the car seats and floors, etc. Any way to tell if they were male or female, old or young, wealthy or not so much. They had a field day with my old rust bucket. But it was a fun assignment, I think. Got us out of the classroom anyway.

Back in the classroom I enjoyed creeping them out a little by having them contemplate the proposition that had intrigued me so much as a kid. “Imagine for a moment that there’s this… way to look into a people’s brains and see everything going on inside them. Everything they’re thinking, or have ever thought. Their hopes and dreams. Their fears. Their pain. Their guilt. Who they have their eye on right now (elbow-elbow, nudge-nudge). Could be a some kind of technology… or just ESP. Or…” And then I would confess to them my early childhood fear of Mom knowing my every single naughty thought or idea, and the crazy little cartoon balloons I imagined filled with give-away readable text appearing above my forehead. They’d get a big kick out of that… until I left my desk and slowly began approaching them, getting up close and personal…

“Imagine for minute if you will that each of us has one of those cartoon balloons floating over our heads right now. No wait, instead of cartoon balloons, let’s make that our own personal little Goodyear Blimps, electronically reading out everything that’s going on in those private little vaults we call our brains, OK? And we have no control over what it’s revealing. It’s spilling our guts, on everything we’re thinking. Every thought hanging right out there, front and center for everyone to see, just like clothes drying on an old clotheslines. Imagine! You can look left, you can look right, turn around and look behind you and guess what: no more secrets! Wouldn’t that be fun?”

And by then I’d be standing right in front of the front row, looking down upon all of them… with the Dreaded (oh no…) Personal (oh no!) Eye-Contact. “So, look around at your neighbors. What are we going to learn about Johnny or Roberta? Hmmm? Or… what are we going to learn about…” and here I’d let my eyes travel around the room like the little silver ball on a spinning roulette wheel “…you, Betty!?” The response would be a terrified spastic jerk, a look of shocked embarrassment, and an ‘Eeek! No way!’ “And how about we all take a look at Fred back there. What’ll we find, Freddy? What are you secretly up to these days, eh? (Fred: ‘Jesus!’) Class laughter. Nervous laughter. All fearing it might be them in the spotlight next). After a bit more of the sweaty palms fun, I would add, “Or what about… me?”

And then I’d end by restating my thesis. “People are interesting, not boring, folks. Every single one of us, every face in the crowd. We’re not cookie-cutter cardboard cut-outs here, are we. Not just height, weight, and hair color. When you create your characters, try to imagine what their Goodyear Blimps are hiding. Have fun with them.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

All right. Enough of this reminiscing bullpucky (“bullpucky” being a much-used Colonel Potter word on the TV sitcom M*A*S*H). Time to get on with my intended purpose in creating this blog (which does, by the way, actually relate to the above ramblings).

Quite a few years ago, I was invited to spend two whole days in a second grade classroom, getting to sport an officious little badge that read, “GUEST.” Having garnered a modest reputation as a local writer who had published a number of poems in different magazines, I was there to entertain the little rugrats who were ankle deep in a creative writing unit. What a challenge for a teacher who had spent 34 years dealing only with teenagers. But what fun it was, a really positive adventure for me. At the end of the second and final day, the regular class teacher assigned her students to each write me a personal note, thanking me for visiting and telling me what they had learned as a result of our time together. What a sweet thing. When I got home, I read them all. They were all nice, as you would expect. However one stood out from all the others. It read, “Dear Mister Lyford, What I learned from your visit is that old people can be interesting.” How about that!?

In my 77 years, I’ve self-published 7 books of poetry, 2 memoirs, and a few episodes of a podcast (and yes, self-published, I know. So, not bragging here.) Basically I’m a long-in-the-tooth story-teller who’s gotten tired of his own stories, all of which have been non-fiction by the way. That’s what I was doing in my podcasts too, telling anecdotal stories of my earlier past. The podcast never went anywhere and I do understand why. Primarily it was just another one of my little “adventures,” or hobbies I’ve dabbled in all my life to ward off boredom. The podcasts comprised stories of my long Charlie Brown life.

With podcast publishing, you receive daily viewership counts. Like a lot of hacks, mine were miniscule. Once again, I’d turned out to be just that same old same old, peculiar, local non-phenomenon. My last podcast episode, however, did surprisingly much better. The reason, I believe, is that I’d said to hell with the stories, and instead tried simply taking a “walk” in my own head, to capitalize on what was going on in there. My mind has forever been a behive of thoughts and conversations buzzing so loudly it’s a wonder I can sleep at night. So for that last podcast, I finally ended up with a piece titled I, Robot, an odd philosophical patchwork inspired by many of my favorite artists from Rod Serling to Cole Porter. I’m somewhat proud of that little effort. It was a lot more of a challenge because I didn’t really have a whole plan to begin with. I only knew I wanted to begin by rehashing the plot of one of my favorite old Twilight Zone episodes. After accomplishing that, I just sort of wandered off into the words looking for my path. It felt adventurous to do it that way.

In this effort right here I’m planning to capitalize on being 77, an age I’m amazed I’ve actually reached. Seems unbelievable. And just as I described in my very first blog post, “Unstuck in Time with Billy Pilgrim,” (this one is number 2) I really am being overrun by mini-flashbacks of my escapades in the time-space continuum. And I’ve been feeling a real need to share what I’m “receiving,” from this freight train overloaded with time travel memories, roaring up the tracks from yesteryear. So I want to dedicate this blog to being that guy with the revealing cartoon word balloons floating up and out of his brain like chimney smoke, that vain guy with the sprinkles of tell-tale beard whiskers down the front of his shirt. I want to tattoo “OPEN HOUSE” on my forehead. “MY BRAIN AND WELCOME TO IT.” As Bob Dylan once quipped, “I got a head full of ideas and it’s driving me insane.”Not so many “stories” with beginnings, middles, and ends this time, but…story bytes. Topics and impressions. Remembrances that reflect my brushes with music, literature, poetry, sports, and visual arts, and how they affected me emotionally and helped me grow. Foods? Personalities? Fears? Superstitions? Danger? Evil? All of the above and more. Who knows? The possibilities are endless. But it’s open house…

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