Overheard at Table 5: My Dad and the Dishwasher

"So my dad was putting all the dishes in the dishwasher and they still had all this crap stuck to 'em and I says 'Dad you know you gotta clean 'em off first' and my dad says, 'Why the hell I gotta clean 'em off first it's a dishWASHER not a dishwasher-UPPER-AFTER' and I tell him, That's just the way it works you gotta clean 'em off first.'

"So he says 'Well then that just means it's not doing it just we oughta just fire the damn thing.'  and that's my dad's answer to everything - if it ain't working, fire it.  So that's why I just told mom that dad wants to fire the dishwasher."

Poem of the Day: When the earth holds nothing

When the earth holds nothing
for you,
Life is full of empty boxes
        left on dusty shelves
in detached garages with tilted doors.

Walk down these streets,
stricken with
the silence brought on
by the oppressive weight of indecision.

Your dreams have fled,
in search of someone else's
night sky.

The trees drop their limbs
in a sullen hush,
and not even the neighbor's
dogs have the
strength to bark at
strangers
these days.

Purple sky
bloated,

you turn and walk back
toward the garage.

Time to dust off those damn
shelves,
time to straighten up that tilted door,
time to fill those boxes

with your words.

If the world holds nothing for you,
let the world know that
at the very least,
you hold something for the world.



MR 2014-1202

Overread at the Counter: Section 1 of "Your Call Will Be Answered in the Order in which It Was Received"

1.

All agents are currently busy assisting other callers.

Your call is very important to us.

Please stay on the line.

Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.

Camelot.

Kennedy died generations ago,

and yet the breadth of his smile still ripples through our culture

like a wave of sound that

has become a low murmur, below

audibility,

and can only be felt,

                like the dull thud of the bass

                                from the box

                                                of the car

                                                                that slides beside,

driven by a whiteboy in a Red Sox cap,

wearing gold chains and a

mouth full of someone else’s attitude.

Ask not what you can do for your country,

ask what bell this country

will toll

for you.

                                                               







from "Your Call Will Be Answered in the Order in which It Was Received"
by MR 

Overheard at the Counter: Verble's Quick Guide to Tom Waits

Verble Gherulous’s Brief Introduction to the Mad Mad World of Tom Waits

First, one should know that there are two Tom Waits:

1)      Piano Blues Tom Waits

and

2) Pure Gravel Static Tom Waits. 

Both are absolute genius.

A start with the “transitional” albums (late 70’s/early 80s) between the two is probably the best way to get a true appreciation of the entire oeuvre.  Personally, I would suggest listening to the following albums in order:

Album #1) Blue Valentines.  My personal favourite.  Pure poetry, rainslicked streets, and whiskeysoaked vocals.

Album #2) Rain Dogs.  *THE* transitional album, although some may think that  actually is . . .

Album #3) Swordfishtrombones.   This album is suburbia seen through the eyes of Picasso.

Album #4) Foreign Affairs. Tight mysteries and midnight road movies.

Album #5) Bone Machine. Suffering madness, beautiful delusion.

Album #6) Small Change.  Punks, pimps, tramps, thieves, such beautiful tragedy.

Album #7) Mule Variations. Picture American Gothic drenched in sepia tones.

Album #8) Nighthawks at the Diner. An intimate evening with a brilliant magician at a piano.

With these albums tucked under your belt, you will have the essential Tom Waits.  All the rest is just gravy. Delicious gravy with a haunted aftertaste of blood and gin.

Overread at Booth 3: Economy in the Time of Ebola

Economy in the Time of Ebola


In a market in Monrovia a woman sits on a square carpet,
weaving multicoloured bands of beads into bracelets and necklaces,
which sit untouched throughout the long afternoon,
now that these are the days when no one wants to buy,
because to buy means

to touch something.

A young man, 19, owns his own art studio,
where he sells carvings of horses, paintings of streams and
of mountains.  Some days, he makes the two hour walk
from his house outside of the city, to do nothing more
than to sweep the floor of the shop that no one enters,
because to enter means

to breathe the same air.

A lawyer sits at his favourite table
in a bar.  He hasn't been here for weeks,
but he is glad to be back now.  Glad to be able
to get out of the house, to move around, to watch
his favourite football team, Arsenal, playing on the television
propped above the bar.  There is a dispenser
just outside the doors of the bar.  It dispenses a
cleansing solution of bleach and water.

It washes every hand clean.




MR

Overheard at Booth 3: Snakes and Earrings

Snakes and Earrings

Hitari Kanehewa




"Frankly, all I remember about this book is thinking how can someone make tongue-splitting so erotic?"

"Erotic?"

"Yeah, and why am I so interested in this girl who basically sounds like she just wants to become a snake, and I remember feeling that the snake tattoos were actually moving, slithering, and it was just like, should I be reading this on the bus, in the middle of all these people going to work?"

"You know they made a movie out the book, right?"

"Kick-in' . . . adding it to my Netflix queue!" 

Overread at Table Two: Rough Draft of Short Story

4:21

His feet fell hard along the path.  He thought to himself that maybe it was the running shoes.  Maybe he needed to check with someone to see if it was really true that there were special shoes just for jogging.  These that he also used to mow the lawn felt as though the sides of his feet were coming unsealed from the soles.

He slowed down, almost tripping over the lip of one concrete slab rising above another.  It was still dark, almost too dark to see.  Yet he knew it was there, and accounted for it.

As he breathed heavily, he put his hands to his sides and followed the path as it began to wind around the lake, off Peak Hill Road, into the neighbourhood.  He heard his breath, coming hard in expulsive gasps.  He felt the rolls above the seam of his gym shorts, and he tried to imagine if they were gradually lessening in size.  Were they smaller than yesterday?  Was that possible to gage?

The ducks floated on the like, immobile, like short, thick tree limbs.

He looked up at the sky, noticed the brilliance of the stars.  Orion was the only constellation he knew, and it stood as the centerpiece.   He knew there should be more stars, and he knew that there were no clouds, and he also knew (because he had read somewhere) that it is not so much smog that clouds the stars as light pollution.  As the city worked its way toward Cinco Hill, there would be many more light, and these stars, shining high above him, would be pushed out, further out, toward Sealing.  Or even to Toqueville.

So he decided to enjoy them now, at this moment, in this place, where the night was still inky black.  He realized then the wonderful blanket of silence that surrounded him.  He appreciated that.  He thought to himself that in one hour and a half, almost exactly, he would be in the middle of a sea of red lights, and a quick blink and a move over, and the sound of 18-wheelers belching air brakes and diesel, and with the radio on the news and then work would be nothing but a constant gravel crush of wall-to-wall noise

but now.  Here.  Nothing.  Beautiful nothing.

A duck quacked.  Flipped its feathers.  Some water spun off.   Then, it returned to floating motionless alongside the other ducks, all motionless in the inky waters of the black lake.

“Shake off that dream, duck,” he said, smiling.

Then, he started up again his jog.  His feet were heavy but he felt light.

Another jogger approached him from around the curve.

He never saw the knife.   Nor did he ever know how many times the blade jabbed deep into his belly.