Overread at Table 4: Things You Can Never Take Back.

They say there are things you can never take back.

Missed opportunities are one of those things.

More than the open hand slap.

More than the harsh word.

More than the overturned table or the broken window.

It is the path not taken.

It is the word never said.

It is the kindness never expressed.

It was the chance to grab the tail end of that shirt

Just before watching it disappear forever

into the endless

abyss.

MR

2016-0123

Overheard at Table 1: Interviews are like Dating . . . or Naww.

Lucky Moran: Interviews are a lot like dating.

Otis Redwing: How so?

Lucky Moran: Well, they’re all about getting to know each other.  And if you like each other, it can lead to a relationship.  A relationship where this person gives you a 5 or 6 figure salary, health coverage, possible IRA, maybe stock options.   And dating, you get someone who might make you laugh, might give you sex, maybe both, maybe neither.  So . . .  maybe interviews aren’t really like dating at all!

Otis Redwing: I dunno.  I’ve had interviews where they made me laugh.

Lucky Moran: Oh wow!  I swear I thought you were gonna say you had interviews where they gave you sex.

Otis Redwing: Those too.

Overheard at Table 3: Interview Today

I've got an interview today and even though I'm not seriously looking there is still this pressure and this - I don't know - "gloom" for lack of a better word.

Gloom?

Yeah.  Like there is really no point.  Like I'm not going to get it because I'll be sitting there, trying to answer their questions and they'll be asking me things I can't answer, like "why is there a two month gap between your last employment" and I can't say "because that company canned me because the COO was out to get me from day one" and I can't say "because I screwed up and couldn't do my job right" and I REALLY can't say the truth which was "I shouldn't have been there, my staff hated me, my peers didn't respect me, and I was too stubborn to quit and look for another job, until God finally gave them the power to CAN my butt, so that then I would find the job I have right now, which is pretty decent, it pays the bills, it's a crazy place to work for but they generally seem to like me."  Now that's the truth but you can't tell a prospective employer that, now can you?

No.  Not really.  But it'd be pretty cool if you could.

Scribblings in Booth 3: Unfinished Poem of the Day "Harold Malone and the Weather Machine"

Harold Malone and the Weather Machine

There was a man called Harold Malone

We never knew where he called his home,

But he rolled into town in a Cadillac

And a strange contraption strapped to the back,

He set up shop in the middle of the square,

Put levers and parts together with care,

Within an hour, he was done

And a tall tower standing 8 foot 1

Pointed toward the sky, a weather vane spinning,

And Harold looked at the gathered crowed, grinning

And, arms wide, said, “Come and see!

This great new day for friends and family!

What you see before you will change the way

You plan your nights and start your day

No more will you be unprepared

For all the Mother Nature brings to bear

For you see, this machine can predict the rain!”

Well, none of us could believe our eyes,

A farming community, with such a device,

Could survive, and thrive,

And grow to four times the size!

We were amazed, enchanted, stunned

We knew that our day had come,

We all crowded around Harold Malone,

Thanking him for what he had done ...

I know where I want it to go and frankly I have the last line, which I don't want to add here, because it will just seem so out of place.    This is based loosely on a story I heard once about a man who predicted the weather - a sort of snake-oil salesman.  Needless to say, it didn't go well for him.   Don't know if the story had historical truth or was complete fiction.  This poem is what you might consider a folk-retelling.  However, I know I won't be able to finish today, but since I promised a poem-a-day I'm gonna let Verble publish it here and see if I come back to it at some point before the year is out. 

Knowing how I work, I'll probably come back upon it again in August 2019 and say "Hey I remember I was gonna finish that!" 

MR

2016-0113

Overheard at Table 2: A Comment from Cryptograms.com

"Hey check this out, I thought this was so cool.  When I finished this cryptogram today, something from Gertrude Stein about like 'What is the answer?  There ain't no answer, THAT's the answer!' and there's always a comment section and this one from one of the players was so cool, check it out:

Andy451 on 2015-04-20 12:24:57

Here was a writer who refuted the hippie quest to find "the answer" to the meaning of life, and all the large and small riddles of existence, in the roaring twenties with her ex pat friends in Paris, forty years before there were hippies. After the Beatles went to India to seek "the answer" from the Maharishi, hippies everywhere sought out gurus to find the answer to life's persistent questions. Some people used drugs, some went on pilgrimages, some lived on communes, some joined Vista or the Peace Corps, some practiced meditation, or attempted to live closer to nature in order to find "the answer." They went to Yasgur's farm in Woodstock, New York for example. Wittgenstein and Nietzsche would agree with Gertrude Stein, being philosophical boyos who hated rigid and orthodox systems of thinking or feeling. Voltaire would disagree. And his answer? No, it was not to go on a wild goose chase for the Holy Grail like the brave and bold knights of Monty Python. A friend of mine saw Voltaire once at a Whole Foods market in Queens one time. He was hurling pesticide free Gala apples, free range chickens, and locally grown heirloom tomatoes and corn on the cob picked that day at upper management types and ordinary customers. "Plant your own garden!", he yelled at the people in a jaunty French. Of course, it could be that he was just swearing at people, and this platitude is only a polite malapropism for what he really said.

"Now I don't know what all he's really talking about because Stein died just after WW2 and never saw no hippies, but I think he was talking metaphorically, but I love that bit about Voltaire in the grocery store - wasn't there some poem by Ginsberg about talking to Walt Whitman in a grocery store?  I think there was.  I need to Google that."

Overread at Booth 2: Poem of the Day "Too Many Days"

-------------------------------------------------------------

Too many days we have spent

muted by our own shouting.

The colour rises to the cheeks

and the fire in the eyes

desires nothing more

than that quiet silence that we deny

ourselves in these disparate moments:

The gulf between the world which we

Desired,

And the world which we have designed.

I was thinking about fights between spouses.  Some spouses fight all the time, some a bit more rarely, but I was thinking about those times when I fight with my spouse and it seems like the entire world is crashing down, even though I know in my heart we'll have made peace by the next day, and by the following week we'll have forgotten what the hell it was we were even fighting about.  

But in that moment, it seems as though everything we worked for, or dreamed of what a marriage should be, suddenly belongs to somebody's else's life, not our own.

I tried to capture that feeling.  Hope I got close to it, at least.  I rather like the sonic alliteration that arose in the last few lines as well.

MR

2016-0112

Overread at the Counter: Poem of the Day "Don't Forget the Fries!"

As with most of my poems, it starts one place, ends at another place where I never expected to go, and I can only hope that at one some level it all makes some sort of sense.   Makes sense to me during the writing; sometimes it makes no sense upon re-reading.  Those that still do I can consider a half-way success.

The inundation of images of the beautiful and the wealthy

And the ever-persistent news about their bold indiscretions,

How does that tickly the average brain?

The clerks at the municipal courthouse, taking payments

For tickets and warrants, the cashiers at the local grocery store,

The phone banker trying to keep each call to no more than two minutes

So that they won’t get their pay docked, the Accounts Payable

Clerk at the mid-size concrete company: each one, each

One:

Told that they, too, can have a rock-hard ass at the age of 46,

Abs like each of the 300 Spartans, hair that flows like honey,

skin to airbrushed flawlessness:

This is what we read on breaks, in between customers at the windows,

In between calls, we thumb through these pages, imprinting

Imprinting,

While we suck down our fourth Big Gulp Cherry Coke of the day,

Swallow double mouthfuls of Whataburger Chop House Cheddar Burger,

And the fries, ah,

Don’t forget the fries!

About the Poem:

I got the idea for this one from the latest cover of some magazine that showed Jennifer Lopez's back and quite lovely derriere with the caption "How does she still look so amazing at 46?"  My wife and I were standing in line at the grocery store when we saw this, and we agreed that 1) Jennifer Lopez does NOT look as amazing as that cover did, because she's been airbrushed beyond humanity (heck, even the water of the pool looks like an oil painting!), and 2) how does she do it?  Answer: an army of personal trainers, nutritionists, hair stylists, makeup artists, and personal assistants.   Things that nobody, and I mean NO-BODY, outside of this fantasy world will ever have.

When seeing these magazines, I always think of the real women - the working moms - who make up the majority of this country, and personally I think it's damned unfair, almost cruel, to drown them in these images and ask these women to raise children, have careers, try to keep the bills paid, and oh yes, find a time to have the sexy ass that Jennifer Lopez has.

While I do not deny that Jennifer Lopez is extremely beautiful, I find true beauty in real women. Lopez, and every other star like her, are merely figments of our imagination.

MR

2016-0111