Published in mgv_88 Swan Song today.

 

mgv2_88 | swan song| 04_17

Departure Implicit

by Bruce Dodson

 

 

Loretta lives across the street

has cancer

both of us are long of tooth

it happens

but at least I don’t have cancer . . . yet

all of us carry the malicious cells within

waiting for weakness

less immune than yesterday

but she’s a tough old bird

from North Dakota

and offended doctors by refusing treatment costing thousands

hair loss

nausea.

Takes pills for pain

brain tumor headaches

while she waits.

“I’m ready to go,” she says.

Worked thirty years

same job

same place

small office manager/receptionist

eleven months ago she finally gave it up.

Sometimes I think

retirement has killed more of us than cancer.

 

Page 26

Herb Caen

 

From Writer’s Almanac and Wiki:

It’s the birthday of San Francisco columnist Herb Caen. Born in Sacramento, California (1916). He wrote his column six days a week from 1938 to 1991, and he had an established routine: he wrote in the morning, hung out in a bar or café in the afternoon, and attended A-list events in the evening. He wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle for his entire career – with the exception of four years during World War II and an eight-year stint with the San Francisco Examiner in the 1950s. In his inaugural column for the Examiner, he wrote of what he called “the Queen City”: “For years, it has been fun to Chronicle her . it will be even more fun, I know, to Examiner again, and again.”

During the week, he shared concise news items, usually separated by ellipses, which he called “three-dot journalism. “On Sundays, he dedicated his column inches to meditations on the city. From 1971: “The hookers are brazen, the abalone is frozen, and every night is Mugger’s Day. Yet, in spite of it all, San Francisco remains one of the great tourist cities. Most triumphantly, there is life in the streets – raw, raucous, roistering and real.”

Caen published two compilations of his columns in book form: Baghdad by the Bay (1949) and Don’t Call it Frisco (1953).

*     *     *

Part of a column from 1970:

Well, nobody said life would be easy, but for members of my generation, it’s becoming ridiculous. One is reminded of the joke about the psychiatrist’s secretary who says, “In my office, I can’t win. If I come to work early, I’m anxious, if I’m on time, I’m compulsive, and if I’m late, I’m hostile.”

Our group, the over 50s, is in the same boat, and it has sprung a leak. Most of us were born poor and are in danger of dying affluent, drowning in a sea of plastic, non-disposable luxuries none of us really wants or enjoys. Our pockets filled with inflated dollars to spend on junk, we look back on the Depression as a Golden Age: then, a dollar was round, shiny and heavy, and there was that vibrant, confident voice in the White House to give us hope.

 

Similes

Seems like I  can’t resist posting this every couple years. No idea where it came from. Eight or nine years old, at least.

Each year, English teachers submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors (similes?) found in high school essays.

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like…whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p. m. instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land  mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

 

 

Billy Collins Birthday

It’s the birthday of American poet Billy Collins (1941) who once said, “While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the window pane.” Collins is widely considered the most popular poet in America.

Billy Collins grew up in Queens. His mother was a nurse who could recite verse on numerous subjects, and his father was an electrician who used to bring home copies of Poetry Magazine. Collins was a focused and voracious reader, tackling Compton’s Encyclopedia at the age of four before moving on to books like Black Beauty, The Yearling, and the Lassie series. His mother read to him often, and, Collins says: “I have a secret theory that people who are addicted to reading are almost trying to re-create the joy, the comfortable joy of being read to as a child by a parent or a friendly uncle or an older sibling. Being read to as a child is one of the great experiences in life.”

Collins never attended a writing program, or took writing workshops, though he did meet poet Robert Frost when Frost visited his class at Holy Cross College. The students were shy, though, so Frost spent most of the evening talking to the Jesuits. Collins remembers mostly staring into his soup. He published his first poems in the back of Rolling Stone magazine. They paid $35.00 a poem. He didn’t publish his first book until he was 40 years old. He said, “I thought I would be completely content if I was recognized at some later point in my life as a third-rate Wallace Stevens.”

Billy Collins uses a Uni-Ball Onyx Micropoint pen in 9 x 7 notebooks to draft his poems before typing them out. When he thinks he might have enough for a book, he puts all the pages on the floor and walks on top of them in his stocking feet, trying to figure out the order. He revises his work carefully, he says, because, “Revision can grind a good impulse to dust.”

This is a good one.

Carl Hiaasen

It’s the birthday of American crime novelist and journalist Carl Hiaasen (1953), best known for novels like Tourist Season (1986), Strip Tease (1993), and Sick Puppy (2000), which feature Floridian eco-warriors, corrupt politicians, and shady ladies. About his cavalcade of morally bankrupt characters, Hiaasen once said, “Sometimes people are attracted to the wrong kind of people for the right kind of reasons.” He’s particularly fond of the character of Skink, who shows up in several books, and whom Hiaasen once described as “a totally unhinged, roadkill-eating ex-governor.”

Hiaasen was born in Plantation, Florida. When he was six, his father bought him a typewriter, and he hasn’t stopped writing ever since. He spent two years as a reporter at Cocoa Today in Florida (1976), before moving to the Miami Herald, where he found a lot of inspiration for his novels while working the city desk and on investigative teams. His newspaper columns are collected in Kick Ass (1999) and Dance of the Reptiles (2014). Hiaasen used to play guitar in Stephen King’s band Rock Bottom Remainders, and even wrote and recorded songs with the late musician Warren Zevon.

Carl Hiaasen’s latest novel is Razor Girl (2016), which opens with car accident caused by a female driver who becomes distracted while grooming her bikini line. Hiaasen based it on a true Florida story.

Dan Rather Writes

 

 Just Posted DEVASTATING Warning About Trump, “We Have An Administration In Free Fall”

Written by Truth Examiner (4 days ago)

Rather writes:

At some points words fail, or they are starting to fail me. We have an Administration in freefall. Have we passed through the circle of chaos? Are we at the circle of havoc?

The real Donald Trump has stood up, once again. Let no one ever be fooled. Let there be no doubt. The man who sends out a twitter tirade accusing a former President of crimes for which he provides no evidence, the man who doubles down when everyone with any sense pushes back, that man is our Commander in Chief. Everyone who normalizes Mr. Trump now, or has in the past, will have to answer to future generations for their acquiescence, silence or sophistry—if, indeed, not outright cowardice.

How hollow do all those pundit plaudits (including from many progressives) sound now for an average and disingenuous speech of someone else’s words read from a teleprompter to Congress and the nation a week ago? A “presidential” Trump is a punchline to a joke no one wants to have told. Conspiracy theories are corrosive in society at large. When they dictate national policy, they can be lethal.

This is a man who challenged the citizenship of President Obama, with lies, innuendo, and no evidence. This is a man who claimed widespread voter fraud with lies, innuendo, and no evidence. This is a man who has taken a rhetorical blowtorch to our Constitutional principles with lies, innuendo, and no evidence. Those who rose in Congress to applaud his turns of phrase bear responsibility. Those who cynically use his presidency to push forward unpopular giveaways to the rich and well connected bear responsibility. Those in the press who meet insults with explanations bear responsibility.

Even the most grounded of presidents must fight to keep themselves moored to the real world. The Oval Office can be a bubble. Power attracts sycophants and cynics. But I have never seen anything like this. The sheer level of paranoia that is radiating out of the White House is untenable to the workings of a republic. I have a real question if President Trump actually believes what he is saying. Even Richard Nixon, the most paranoid president to date, ruled for years with a relatively calm hand. This Administration has been an off kilter whirlwind since the inauguration, and news reports suggest that seething anger from Mr. Trump is only getting worse. There is a growing consensus that the President may be “unhinged.” It’s a serious allegation, but even if it is not the case, Mr. Trump only has himself to blame.

To call a drama Shakespearean or operatic is usually an overreach. But I imagine artists of the future, and even the present, will find ample inspiration in our moment in history. Doesn’t Steve Bannon strike you as an Iago whispering in the ear of an Othello-like Trump, consumed by jealousy and paranoia?

As the questions mount around Russia, as the circles of defense begin to falter, the determination to create diversions will escalate. But if the President hoped he could create a distraction, I think he misjudged the will of the American people. We have woken. We are paying attention. And we love our country too much to let it falter without a fight.