Au revoir

Forgo the embalming

Strike a match not a pose

Lay a blanket of flames

from my head to my toes

 

With industrial spray

wash the dust that remains

and say, Au revoir

as I head down the drain

 

No call for a digger

no stone there to be

just a tumbling spirit

heading far out to sea


In years yet to follow
when sunlight breaks through
A faint memory
could land upon you


May it spark up a smile
of one quite insane
whose last dying wish
was to ride through the drain.


 

 

Zobostic Corwin

 

 

NCC - 1701

For years we had an old canister vacuum cleaner.  It was well made but various parts would break now and then and I would doctor the thing up with home-made items and stuff I had laying around my workbench.  Eventually I began to add my own design improvements like little side shields that would deflect table legs and corners of walls, keeping dents and furniture scratches to a minimum.  The main drive mechanism over heated one day, so much so that the thing warped, I managed however to keep it very functional for a long time, maybe 5 years, which was great because we didn’t have to shell out money for a new one.  It had to be our favorite vacuum of all time.  It had a wand that would extend out and it was slightly angled so it would go where no other vacuum had gone before, like the deep space beneath the couch and up to the cold air returns along the ceiling where cobwebs always seem to thrive, and the bristled attachment easily got the cat hair – you know, from along the bottom of the curtains where it seemed to always cling on.

I didn’t intend to tell you all of this except I just ran across the history of it in my log and it somehow sounded so familiar, I’m not sure why…

 

Mushrooms

 

 

Tightly sealed in plastic.

 

 

 



Not to be opened until 3032

 



The bakery item in this box was very fresh when I purchased it and the lady had done an excellent job when tying the box closed. 

Driving home I couldn’t even smell it.  The tight string must have sealed in the wonderful fresh baked aroma. 

  Sometimes the anticipation of enjoying a great bakery item becomes too great and when the time finally arrives to bite into the amazing delight - disappointment oozes out, followed quickly by concern over the truthfulness of the baker who had assured you it was – “Fresh today.”
 

I cannot afford to risk all of that happening to this perfect pastry so I am refusing to ever open it. 

I kept it buckled in on the passenger seat during the ride home and now I will give it a place of honor in the fridge and there it will stay. 

Forever in my mind I will remember how it was when I first saw it sitting there in the display cabinet.  I don’t know how but I truly believe it was calling my name.
 

This will be my very own bakery time capsule. 

 

 

 

      



Life Should Make us Sneeze

          I have never been good at small talk.  I am, however, excellent at small listening.  It is as if the entire world is a sweater and I am a hangnail.  I catch key words, the odd phrase or facial expression and snag them into my mental web of comprehension.

          Conversations, for me anyway, lay captured as a fly tangled up in the spider’s web waiting for me to return - to dissect sentences, drain verbs of their action and leave passing clichés as empty, broken fragments, drying in the sun, eventually blowing away with the slightest punctuation.  

          I surround myself with words.  I’m soaking in them right now.  They are my fishing trip minus the flies and mosquitoes.  They are my golf game that I hope nobody ever captures on film.  My adventures span the distance from exclamation point to page down, and they are all adventures that remain relegated to this keyboard. 

          For the past several years I have checked books out of the library only to read two or three sentences and return them.  Captured by a clever title, like a raven to a shinny object, I pluck them from the shelf and cart them home.  Almost instantly upon reading I’m bored.  I’ve neither been hooked nor drawn into the story or character and so I close it and pick up the next in the pile.    This is not something I would recommend.  I am sure that I have missed some good stories by not hanging in long enough and I could not really tell you what I am hoping to one day discover by engaging in this behavior.

          My latest discovery is a small book entitled, Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar, written by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein.  

This book immediately captured my attention when I read the dedication page.  It contains a quote from Groucho Marx.  “These are my principles; if you don’t like them I have others.”  Any book that can make me laugh aloud in the library gets checked out and carried home.

          The problem with armchair adventure is its limitations with respect to life.  Life should be experienced outside, with wind, noise, and blinding Sunlight.  It needs to be breathed in and it should make us sweat, and shiver.  Even if we have to grab the big hand and let it drag us around the face of the clock, scraping our knees across the five and snagging our shoelaces on the eight we should never let go.  It is a journey taking us nowhere while simultaneously pulling us through time.

          It is the small listening that causes me to pay close attention to the dedication page of a book.  It is there that the author steps out of their author persona and stands facing the reading public.  He speaks from the heart, not just from the dust jacket and attempts to look regal.  The dedication page is the tree we ran to as children.  As long as you are touching the tree you can’t be tagged. 
 

 

      Someone else forever remains it.

 

         

         

           

 

            

Perchance to sleep...

A chloroformed intellect must rule my dreams.  Upon waking I can neither explain nor justify nocturnal occurrences.  It seems that an exaggerated form of word association threads unrelated events like a raft and allows them to drift out beyond safety markers. Although morning’s reflection shows no abnormalities suffered, a lingering irrationality permeates like stale gin.   

Void of contracts or rebuttals, today shall be spent in analytical review of things and events leading up to the evening’s slumber.  What could have possibly spurred such realistic and volatile dreams as to plunge me deep into the depths of my own familiarity?  Seeing myself as I truly am, stripped of the varnish of civilization, all the while presenting false arguments in a setting designed for nothing short of failure.

 Stifled and found in contempt I am tethered to a harsh reality and consigned to life.  There is nothing but life in all directions.  Each and every avenue filled with the diversities that life offers; while just there, in the shadows - the unknown consequence of choice.    

 

 

Thunder Road

I’m not sure why but at the time I was thinking about old movies and remembering some of my favorite actors; William Powell as the Thin Man, Jimmy Stewart with Harvey, and of course Ingrid Bergman, William Bendix, and Alan Ladd.   This was all back when the silver screen was magical and popcorn affordable.   A good story back then took precedence over special effects.  It seemed like all of life was in black & white.

Had I been thinking at all about color I would have noticed the reflection of the red brake lights on the tunnel wall.  I would have been paying closer attention to my speed.

 

 

 

 

Heaven

 

I'm in Heaven

 

and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak,

 

and I seem to find the happiness I seek