Overread at Booth 4: Rain-drenched street

MR

Song of the Day for January 4, 2013 was:

Little Willie John
Need Your Love So Bad

 

Poem:

Nothing but raindrenched streets: the dreary acrid rain
rushing into stormdrains like it can’t get away fast enough.
You are completely alone with your streetlamp.

Overread at Table 2: 2013-0103

2013-0103

Song:

Gotan Porject “La Viguela”

 

Poem:

Shoes. Tap in tempo, to unshuttered resistance, the

pull is the stretch is the tension of the strap we use for each other,

to realize we are now all that we never were.

 

 

Overread at the Counter: Next Poem for Song of the Day

The song of the day for January 2, 2013 was

Led Zeppelin “Bron-Yr-Aur”

and the

Poem:

 

even in winter the moss caresses each stone of the cottage,

as a lover would recline across the bosom of her lover,
and mayhaps engender some sweet taste of a new spring.

 





 

Overread at the Counter: Poem for the Song of the Day #1

the poet, known only by the initials MR, has decided to write a 3 line poem for each one of Verble's choices for #songoftheday, which Verble posts to his Twitter account.

MR will do this for each song of the day for the year 2013, which will continue the process MR has started with his 360s . . . you have read these poems at the Zen and Tao Acoustic Cafe, as MR writes one poem a day.   Has for three years now.   During this year, the collections should be published in three separate tomes: 364, 365, and 366.

So, without further ado, MR presents the poem for the #songoftheday for


January 1, 2013:

Song:
Bob Schneider "Round and Round"

Poem:
Timothy Settee awoke on New Year's Day to find an outboard motor,
and empty bag of chips, and a shredded froggiepillow beside him in his bed.
He wondered who had been eating the chips.

Overheard at Table 2: Starbucks Blond Roast

Have you tried Starbucks new Blond?

No, not yet.   How is it?

More like Starbucks BLECH.

That bad?

Ever sucked a used tea bag?

Now that's a little TMI!

Poster on the Counter: Abstract Guitar

That is a very cool poster.  Where'd you get it?

Roommate moved out.   He left it behind.

Wow.  Can't believe someone would leave something this cool behind.

Well, he didn't know that I'd stuffed it in the top of my closet while he was packing up all his crap.

Overheard at Booth One: "Oooohs" for White Babies

Lucky Moran:  It just hit me the other day, at our church, we always have the baby dedication and we flash the babies faces up on the big screen as their names are read, and I just noticed that the congregation always goes "oooooh" over white babies, never black babies, never hispanic babies.  But whenever white babies are up there, they get a big "oooooh."

Otis Redwing:  That's because all you whities are racist.

Lucky:  "All you whities"?  Isn't that a racist thing to say?

Otis: Takes one to know one.

Lucky:  Yeah, but it doesn't explain why the girls with pink bows on their head get an "awwwww" instead of an "oooooh."

Overheard at Table 4: If she'd only had an assault weapon!

- I read in Time magazine today that this Republican Representative from Texas said, "I wish to God that principal from Newton had had an M-4 in her office, and then when she heard the shooting , she could have gone out and blown the head off that Lanza guy before he could kill those kids." 

- Wow.  This guy thinks we LIVE in Call of Duty?

- Probably does!  what a load of crap!  This guy is one of 435 guys who run this country!   Federal government!  Making laws!   What in the name of all that's sacred are we doing with a bunch of dipshits up there who think on such small tiny terms.

- I haven't thought like that since I was a kid.  pow pow!  cowboys and indians . . . bang bang, problem solved.   yay!  the town is saved!

- Exactly.  These guys act like they're still in the sandbox, only now they've got bombers missles and nukes!

- All I know is I'd hate to think of all gradeschools principals having to learn how to use M4s instead of being able to focus on making sure our teachers have a place to teach the kids.

On an iPad at Booth 2: Why Don't You Dance

Why Don't You Dance?
by Raymond Carver

---

---

---

In the kitchen, he poured another drink and looked at the bedroom suite in his front yard. The mattress was stripped and the candy-striped sheets lay beside two pillows on the chiffonier. Except for that, things looked much the way they had in the bedroom - nightstand and reading lamp on his side of the bed, nightstand and reading lamp on her side.
His side, her side.
He considered this as he sipped the whiskey.
The chiffonier stood a few feet from the foot of the bed. He had emptied the drawers into cartons that morning, and the cartons were in the living room. A portable heater was next to the chiffonier. A rattan chair with a decorator pillow stood at the foot of the bed. The buffed aluminum kitchen set took up a part of the driveway. A yellow muslin cloth, much too large, a gift, covered the table and hung down over the sides. A potted fern was on the table, along with a box of silverware and a record player, also gifts. A big console-model television rested on a coffee table, and a few feet away from this stood a sofa and chair and a floor lamp. The desk was pushed against the garage door. a few utensils were on the desk, along with a wall clock and two framed prints. There was also in the driveway a carton with cups, glasses, and plates, each object wrapped in newspaper. That morning he had cleared out the closets, and except for the three cartons in the living room, all the stuff was out of the house. He had run an extension cord on out there and everything was connected. Things worked, no different from how it was when they were inside.
Now and then a car slowed and people stared. But no one stopped.
It occurred to him that he wouldn't, either.

"It must be a yard sale," the girl said to the boy.
This girl and this boy were furnishing a little apartment.
"Let's see what they want for the bed," the girl said.
"And for the TV," the boy said.
The boy pulled into the driveway and stopped in front of the kitchen table.
They got out of the car and began to examine things, the girl touching the muslin cloth, the boy plugging in the blender and turning the dial to MINCE, the girl picking up a chafing dish, the boy turning on the television set and making little adjustments.
He sat down on the sofa to watch. He lit a cigarette, looked around, flipped the match into the grass.
The girl sat on the bed. She pushed off her shoes and lay back. She thought she could see a star.
"Come here, Jack. Try this bed. Bring one of those pillows," she said.
"How is it?" he said.
"Try it," she said.
He looked around. The house was dark.
"I feel funny," he said. "Better see if anybody's home."
She bounced on the bed.
"Try it first," she said.
He lay down on the bed and put the pillow under his head.
"How does it feel?" she said.
"It feels firm," he said.
She turned on her side and put her hand to his face.
"Kiss me," she said.
She closed her eyes. She held him.
He said, "I'll see if anybody's home."
But he just sat up and stayed were he was, making believe he was watching the television.
Lights came on in houses up and down the street.
"Wouldn't it be funny if," the girl said and grinned and didn't finish.
The boy laughed, but for no good reason. For no good reason, he switched the reading lamp on.
The girl brushed away a mosquito, whereupon the boy stood up and tucked in his shirt.
"I'll see if anybody's home," he said. "I don't think anybody's home. But if anybody is, I'll see what things are going for."
"Whatever they ask, offer ten dollars less. It's always a good idea," she said. "And besides, they must be desperate or something."
"It's a pretty good TV," the boy said.
"Ask them how much," the girl said.

The man came down the sidewalk with a sack from the market. He had sandwiches, beer, whiskey. He saw the car in the driveway and the girl on the bed. He saw the television set going and the boy on the porch.
"Hello," the man said to the girl. "You found the bed. That's good."
"Hello," the girl said. "I was just trying it out." She patted the bed. "It's a pretty good bed."
"It's a good bed," the man said, and put down the sack and took out the beer and the whiskey.
"We thought nobody was here," the boy said. "We're interested in the bed and maybe in the TV. Also maybe the desk. How much do you want for the bed?"
"I was thinking fifty dollars for the bed," the man said.
"Would you take forty?" the girl asked.
"I'll take forty," the man said.
He took a glass out of the carton. He took the newspaper off the glass. He broke the seal on the whiskey.
"How about the TV?" the boy said.
"Twenty-five."
"Would you take fifteen?" the girl said.
"Fifteen's okay. I could take fifteen," the man said.
The girl looked at the boy.
"You kids, you'll want a drink," the man said. "Glasses in that box. I'm going to sit down. I'm going to sit down on that sofa."
The man sat on the sofa, leaned back, and stared at the boy and the girl.

The boy found two glasses and poured whiskey.
"That's enough," the girl said. "I think I want water in mine."
She pulled out a chair and sat at the kitchen table.
"There's water in that spigot over there," the man said. "Turn on that spigot."
The boy came back with the watered whiskey. He cleared his throat and sat down at the kitchen table. He grinned. But he didn't drink anything from his glass.
The man gazed at the television. He finished his drink and started another. He reached to turn on the floor lamp. It was then that his cigarette dropped from his fingers and fell between the cushions.
The girl got up to help him find it.
"So what do you want?" the boy said to the girl.
The boy took out the checkbook and held it to his lips as if thinking.
"I want the desk," the girl said. "How much money is the desk?"
The man waved his hand at this preposterous question.
"Name a figure," he said.
He looked at them as they sat at the table. In the lamplight, there was something about their faces. It was nice or it was nasty. There was no telling.

"I'm going to turn off this TV and put on a record," the man said. "This record-player is going, too. Cheap. Make me an offer."
He poured more whiskey and opened a beer.
"Everything goes," said the man.
The girl held out her glass and the man poured.
"Thank you," she said. "You're very nice," she said.
"It goes to your head," the boy said. "I'm getting it in the head." He held up his glass and jiggled it.
The man finished his drink and poured another, and then he found the box with the records.
"Pick something," the man said to the girl, and he held the records out to her.
The boy was writing the check.
"Here," the girl said, picking something, picking anything, for she did not know the names on these labels. She got up from the table and sat down again. She did not want to sit still.
"I'm making it out to cash," the boy said.
"Sure," the man said.
They drank. They listened to the record. And then the man put on another.
Why don't you kids dance? he decided to say, and then he said it. "Why don't you dance?"
"I don't think so," the boy said.
"Go ahead," the man said. "It's my yard. You can dance if you want to."

Arms about each other, their bodies pressed together, the boy and the girl moved up and down the driveway. They were dancing. And when the record was over, they did it again, and when that one ended, the boy said, "I'm drunk."
The girl said, "You're not drunk."
"Well I'm drunk," the boy said.
The man turned the record over and the boy said, "I am."
"Dance with me," the girl said to the boy and then to the man, and when the man stood up, she came to him with her arms wide open.

"Those people over there, they're watching," she said.
"It's okay," the man said. "It's my place," he said.
"Let them watch," the girl said.
"That's right," the man said. "They thought they'd seen everything over here. But they haven't seen this, have they?" he said.
He felt her breath on his neck.
"I hope you like your bed," he said.
The girl closed and then opened her eyes. She pushed her face into the man's shoulder. She pulled the man closer.
"You must be desperate or something," she said.

Weeks later, she said: "The guy was about middle-aged. All his things right there in his yard. No lie. We got real pissed and danced. In the driveway. Oh, my God. Don't laugh. He played us these records. Look at this record-player. The old guy gave it to us. And all these crappy records. Will you look at this shit?"
She kept talking. She told everyone. there was more to it, and she was trying to get it talked out. After a time, she quit trying.





from the link http://www2.gsu.edu/~libcla/carver.htm
This short story inspired the film Everything Must Go

Left at Table 3: A Fable

some teenager, an obvious leftie from the looks of this writing, left this paper at Table #3.  it appears to be some fable, possibly for a class assignment.  it's very rough, could use a lot of polish, but it has a fairly sound idea:



THE ZOO

Once upon a time, there was a zoo, and all the animals who lived in the zoo lived under rules that guaranteed each zoo animal would be treated fairly.

 

One day, though, the lions thought their ideas made them better able to run the zoo.  The lions were bigger and stronger and liked to fight.   In fact, they often went into the zebra cages and the giraffes enclosures in order to take their food.

 

The lions also joined forces with the tigers, who were very religious, and formed a unity that made them feel as though they were better than the other animals.

 

The chimps didn’t like the tigers always talking about their religion.  The chimps thought that all animals had come from chimps and therefore should all be able to just hang out in trees and sling their poo whenever they wanted.

 

The tigers thought that the chimps were nasty poo-slingers and should be restrained from being able to sling poo.

 

So the tigers and the lions put up posters all over the zoo talking about how nasty the chimps were.  Their posters and their calls to action enraged a lot of the animals.   So much so that the snakes would go into the chimp cages and bite the chimps, poisoning them so they would die.

 

All of the zoo animals were scared of the poisonous snakes, and of the religious tigers and of the proud rich lions.  So they never did anything to stop the innocent chimps from being killed.

 

The moral of this story is this:

You can claim that everybody is equal in one big zoo, but that quickly falls apart when you identify yourselves by separate cages.

 

 

The symbols:

The chimps are the liberals.
The lions are the wealthy
The tigers are the so-called “religious right”
The snakes are the insane mass murderers driven to violence by Fox News.

The other animals: are all the rest of us who always stand by and never do anything.

Overheard at Table Two: Marriages and Miniskirts

Sometimes even the hardiest marriages can't stand up to a little black miniskirt wrapped around an hourglass ass as it squeezes by you in the cookingware aisle at Marshalls.

Overread at the Counter: May You Always

typed by a manual typewriter on a thinskinned, somewhat yellowing piece of paper, the woodgrains in the paper and the slight offset type indicates probably late-sixties, possible even seventies, when this poem was written.

May You Always

 

May you always be safe
May you always be strong
May you always find footholds
When the path is so long
 
May you always be free
May you always find love
May you always find sleep
With clear stars above
 
May you always be brave
May you always have friends
Who will stand right beside you
In cold winter winds

May you always be meek
May you always be mild
May your imagination
Always run wild
 
May you always be brave
May you always be true
May you always be sure of
My love for you
 
May you always be sure of
My love for you.

Overheard at Table 5: Total Recall

New version of the movie.  The old one had a better story, but the new one has killer special effects, but then, it has the advantage of  twenty years of technological advancement.

But story, well a good story is ageless.   So all on all, I'd have to tilt toward the first version.

But then, Kate Beckinsale plays a major badass in this movie.  I swear, she was harder to kill than Michael Myers or Freddie Kruger.

Overheard at Booth 1: The Notebook

My wife and i had a disagreement, because i thought rachel mcadams was totally hot in that movie, my wife she thought that she was just crazy.  I said yeah, crazy is hot.   My wife then asked me what, do you think im still crazy?  I says, baby, you were steaming hot crazy when i met you, and youve been driving me all kinds of crazy ever since.

Overheard at Table 4: Pogues

I was playing Red Roses for Me in the house this afternoon.   The kids said it sounded like leprechaun music.   My children are now homeless.
Table 4

Lying on the Counter: centered

right between the eyes, the catalyst, the trucker mother rears her oblivious head and shouts something into the four winds, but the four winds are in conflux, conflagration, and generally busying themselves in an intercourse of intersection, and as such, what she has shouted has been lost in the climax, the conflux, the conflagration.

generally speaking, it has been consumed.

then, subsumed, she slinks off the stool and wanders toward the bathroom in arrears and finds herself in a body wandering through a blue field, call it lucille, some night party down, as the sun has long sat down, playing dice between the sun and the moon, yes, they throw dice, splitting the price of the garments on the sky, which they have ripped apart and scattered in the fields, where she lays down now

now, now, old she is.  old old old.  She has spent so many years dreaming of sailing across the water.  Sailing into some now sun.   Dreaming of getting rich.  Rich off of old people, and then to sail a way in a row row row boat.

gold people, gold cold gold, she sought, she snuck, she sung my precious to the no one who was there, and she is dancing now, dancing without a partner any more, all the partners have gone, they've all left down, they pulled the last shades down on the frontpiecs and the churches were no different, the bells no longer ring, and she slowly stops singing

old people, old old old old old.



from Salinghetti Chronicles Vol. 53 Smoke and Ashes tk3: Tracy Chapman "Cold Feet"

Overread at the Counter: America's Lost YAWP!

America's Lost YAWP!

America where is your gigantic YAWP!

you seem much diminished now, more like
a timid squawk, peeping out from
behind the blinds, like a frightened gradeschooler
waiting for the 11 rounds to be split into your brain.
 

Yes, America, I’m talking to you, hiding there behind the sofa,

pissing your pants while you let your dogs
ravage your cabinets, looking for 30round clips, while they
throw your grandmother out into the rising ocean
that just removed the beach, what was that?
America?
Did you just let your slipper squeak against the hardwood?

 

Better watch out now.

Here comes the gas canister, courtesty of Combined Systems Inc.,
with the words MADE IN USA
so proudly imprinted on the side.

Overheard at Table 4: Ted Cruz Demembered

Billy: Ted Cruz

Joe: Putz.  Plain and Simple.

Jim: Some more party in your tea, dahlin?

Bob: Sworn in on his daddy's Bible.

Billy: Says they spent many a night around the fireplace, sitting at his daddy's knee, while he read to them from that Bible.

Joe: Seems like daddy might have skipped a few passages.

Jim:  Such as the one about healing the sick.

Bob: All the ones about healing the sick.

Billy: Jesus, the Great Physician.

Joe: Give them shelter.

Jim: Succor.

Bob: Suffer the children.

Billy: Not 'let the children suffer.'

Joe: Maybe it lost a little in translation.

Jim: Wonder what version of the Bible daddy was readin to little Teddy.

Bob: ASHV: The American Standard Hate Version.

Billy: . . . and a very sad 'Amen.'

Joe: Dolorous.

Jim: *shakes head sadly*

Bob: Well, here's a prayer that Ted will one day grow up.

Overheard at Booth 3: Women and their shoes

I will never understand my wife and her shoes.  She buys the ugliest shoes in the world, and always asks me what I think.  Great!  If I tell her what I think I won't get none for a week.  No WAY am I going to tell her that she buys the most godawful ugliest shoes ever.