ALAS THE POOR CLICHÉ
Once a cliché was all there was
In the land of milk and honey 
If the cat’s got your tongue,
A frog’s in your throat,
Down in the dumps
While crying out loud
With the screaming meemies
You’re really in a pickle.
While he’s sleeping like a log
Drunk as a skunk,
Seeing stars,
A pain in the neck,
Low man on the totem pole
Who speaks with a forked tongue,
He’s the one wearing pants,
The big man on campus.
Nan may re-work this some day.
I don’t ration trips to the stores.
I don’t know my neighbors and
they don’t know me. But
Hey, I’m shy, that’s why.
I’ve unanswered letters galore–
don’t dish up food for the poor.
I fail to keep promises
and tend to run late
In my heart I know that
I am a cheapskate.
My dark side holds sway
Even during the day–
A non-vegetarian
Unitarian, a retired lady
Of leisure but hey,
I’m sorry. Okay?
nm 2011
I’m trying to purchase a book online and it’s difficult and they make you pay for the phone call for help. Are they trying to separate the wealthy wheat from the poor chaff? I go surfing for the book instead.
On my fifth birthday, riding on the swinging garage doors, I wondered about life. I wondered about the essence of awareness of conscious existence. Why was there no connection between my awareness and that of others? What did existing entail? My first five years had only served to confuse.
I saw two sets of worlds: the world of myself as against all others, and the world of children as against adults. I never believed I would grow up. Not really. One thing worried me especially: would I essentially change as I grew up, or would the me of myself remain constant?
That afternoon by the garage on my fifth birthday I resolved to keep in contact with myself. From birthday to birthday. I promised myself on my fifth birthday. I promised myself to keep in touch with myself on every proceeding birthday. More times than not, I keep the faith. I re-familiarize myself with the five year old and touch base.
Not long ago I came across a letter written five years after that fifth birthday. It was addressed to the me of the future. It read:
Hello, How are you? What do you think? Have you changed?
Of course I’ve changed, and for the worse, as do all people growing up. Childhood is the age of innocence and wonder and faith in the infallibility of adults. Since my childhood my innocence has been tainted by knowledge, my wonder has been dulled by complacency, and my faith in mankind has been demoralized by observation. I can still remember the jarring shock I received when I saw an adult act in childish temper.
I feel somehow guilty that I have changed. It seems I should have kept the girl of five alive to a greater extent than I have. I make compensation to some degree on my birthdays, when I remember.
She lies upon clean cotton sheets, a cocoon
curled into itself inside this benevolent
holding cell, mesmerized by the soft
click clicking of the overhead fan
whispering that she is still alive. During the
split second as she is siphoned away with
no warning, will she realize why the sound has stopped?
nm circa 2014
Bo’s heart is beating loudly and
pain shoots through his head.
The red-eyed drooling dog is mad
and we all wish him dead
except for little Willie B.
who still loves his old pet
and runs to embrace him
and hug him round the neck.
A shot rings out and Bo goes down.
The boy stumbles to the ground.
Why oh why did he have to die?
Only a sigh is his reply.
nm circa 2014
I’ve changed my mind (and not for the first time). I’ve decided not to get completely organized by the time of my surgery in February, but to work on it for 15 minutes a day and the rest of the day continue finishing my new (just started) book. Earlier I had sworn never to write another non-fiction book, and I changed my mind about that, too. I wonder if changing one’s mind is a sign of old age or renewal or no sign at all?
I decided this last night and decided to follow my advice in Stepping Stones to the Depths, which I am just beginning and whose contents I can’t publish if I or my literary executor try to get it published–following my own advice as I go. This journey of my experience in writing the book will appear on my page on Dreams on this blog. I still haven’t gotten clear about entering on pages and/or blog proper, but I’m sure I’ll be finding out soon.
Anyway, for two days now I’ve been a vegetarian, and last night’s long dream brought me several new/old ideas about my topic (different ways to visit the unconscious).
The current This Week magazine reports that in Argentina 144,000 women have gone off the pill this year because they can no longer afford it, and condom sales have shrunk 20 percent in recent months….
William Carlos Williams Wrote “The Red Wheelbarrow” in 1923:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel barrow 
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
ooooooooooooo
Nan wrote “The Black Chalkboard” circa 2015:
so much
depends
upon a black
chalk board
covered with equations
beside the gray
waste basket.
If I were a penguin–
my life a carpet rolled
out for me to follow
from beginning to end–
I would want to rebel.
What is the use of us,
I’d ask, Why are we here?
No free will for penguins?
I’d want to rebel if
Fate and instinct were one
and the same. But if I
really were a penguin,
then I would never know.
nm circa 2016
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