I quietly opened the door and slowly peeked inside. Squinting through the narrow opened crevice, I could see a smoking cigarette, half eaten sandwich and cat licking an unwrapped bar of butter. The side of an Ice tea glass was still wet with dripping condensing cool ice cube chill. He had made a quick escape. Good, I would have the house to myself.
OC
The foulness that proceeds us,
the stench, the smoke, the half life
the static noise of mistuned radios and burnt out street lights
blown out streets and broken water mains.
lost shoes line the paths
bent and burnt cars with missing hoods and cracked blocks
children playing with discarded green cans
and competing for food from skinny dogs
The foulness that proceeds us,
the wailing mothers and lost brothers
uncles and aunts now without nephews or nieces
no walls or roofs for their dirt floor gated homes
their minds without freedom left in them
without bread, meal or ovens to bake.
just to be left alone to make the new shoes and robes
and to pound tools from their new found scrap metal.
The foulness that proceeds us,
the despair and unleashed sorrow
and cautious walk of digital camo soldiers without cause or blame
only yearning to get home to a land more understood.
As the wind blown sand settles into drifts
across arched doorways and blocked rutted roads
we hear distant sounds of flying war iron always overhead
we hear the sounds of lost hope, life and future
the sound of the sad foulness that proceeds us.
OC
(This is rewind week, just blowing off the stench too many times, John)
Here we go again. The casual heroes are watching their 30000 foot drone views of the Middle East. They are collecting their pornographic troop pictures and war love stories. Loosening their mental belts and zippered mind flies. Preparing for the mental masturbation of imagined motorboats and fireworks.
Every two years or so they most have their violent but satisfying mental cum. Another old man arousal and circle jerk.
This was published first in 2003.
Casual Heroes
Old men feeling the foreplay of the sensuous tug of war
Old men that have forgotten or have never known the smell of the smoke of death
But with blustering words from their arm chairs and their long tables
they easily speak of sending the young Armies
who believe the words shouted from the podiums of these old casual heroes.
Casual heroes that now voyeur from hovering satellite views
and the green starlit 20,000 foot cameras of robot planes.
Old casual heroes with hard-ons and loose belts, craving their pornography of war.
DSS.
(Let’s keep our eyes on the ball, soon there could be a lot of unusual things happening outside of the U.S. to distract us from a lot of unusual things that will soon be revealed right here at home.)
When the green shot glass fell and bounced to the linoleum floor, the room grew sober and silent. He’d had enough of the shouting and swearing of the Alabama boys with their blustery threats and pigeon lies. It wasn’t their success that was being celebrated that night. Only by the aimless wandering bar hopping had they come upon this place, this place of stale smoke, spilled Jim Beam and soft skin perfumed women. Their loud mouths weren’t wanted, neither were their rolls of ill gotten money.
Gerald Watswigger had made a lot of ill-fated decisions in his short life but this one had irrevocable consequences. A 9 millimeter bullet at close range makes a perfect 9 millimeter size entrance wound in any part of the human body but on exit leaves a massive hole emptied of flesh, blood, pain and life. Gerald had placed one squarely between the eyes of the man who had threatened him with the heavy end of a snooker pool cue. Once again he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Gerald would pay for it the rest of his life down so deep in the Alabama State Prison that they would have to pipe daylight to him.
DSS
(This is of a series of the flash fiction life of Gerald Watswigger. The life of a troubled and unfortunate man. Search his name for more stories.)
I know, I know, December is the month of only Christmas expectations. But as we travel about from mall to store to online shopping literally and figuratively pushing our rattling, child pissed on, flat sided squeaking swivel wheeled shopping carts, we really need to pause and put life a little more into proper perspective.
Not only have there been “big deals” at Walmart, Macy’s, Best Buy and Amazon, there have been Real Big Deals that happened in the world between December 15th and December 25th in history that most forget about and fail to pay proper December homage to.
So put away the wallet, the credit card, Amazon Prime login password, your and your children’s selfish shopping list and pause a couple of minutes to remember what other things happened on these ten days approaching this holiday of whatever religious Christmas you celebrate. These are real human events, nothing mystical about them. Please just pause for a few minutes.
Remember:
December 15, 1791 – The Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution) became effective following ratification by Virginia.
December 16, 1944 – During World War II in Europe, the Battle of the Bulge began as the Germans launched a big counter-offensive in the Ardennes Forest along a 75-mile front, taking American troops by surprise. There were an estimated 77,000 Allied and 130,000 German casualties.
December 17, 1903 – After many years of experimentation, Orville and Wilbur Wright achieved the first powered, controlled airplane flights. They made four flights near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the longest lasting about a minute.
December 18, 1916 – During World War I, the Battle of Verdun concluded after ten months of fighting in which 543,000 French and 434,000 German soldiers were killed.
December 19, 1946 – War broke out in French Indochina as Ho Chi Minh attacked the French seeking to oust them from Vietnam. This marked the beginning of a thirty-year conflict which eventually led to heavy U.S. involvement and ended with a Communist victory in April 1975 after U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam.
December 20, 1956 – The Montgomery bus boycott ended after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling integrating the Montgomery bus system was implemented. The boycott by African Americans had begun on December 5, 1955, after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white man.
December 21st – Winter begins in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere today is the beginning of summer.
December 21, 1846 – Anesthesia was used for the first time in Britain during an operation at University College Hospital in London performed by Robert Liston who amputated the leg of a servant.
December 22, 1783 – Following a triumphant journey from New York to Annapolis, Maryland, George Washington, victorious Commander-in-Chief of the American Revolutionary Army, appeared before Congress and voluntarily resigned his commission.
December 23, 1888 – Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh cut off his left ear during a fit of depression.
December 23, 1947 – The transistor was invented at Bell Laboratories by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley, who shared the Nobel Prize for their invention which sparked a worldwide revolution in electronics.
December 23, 1987 – Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager set a new world record of 216 hours of continuous flight around the world without refueling. Their aircraft Voyager traveled 24,986 miles at a speed of about 115 miles per hour. They were in the air without landing for nine days of these ten days before Xmas.
December 24, 1968 – Astronauts Frank Borman, James A. Lovell Jr., and William A. Anders orbited the moon during the Apollo 8 mission, becoming the first humans to do so. They performed 10 orbits, and the live TV broadcast became one of the most-watched programs in history.
Now do ya get it?
E.
( Merry Christmas from all the Gang, even E. He sometimes slumps to a seasonal low this time of year. John )
My “first”, we have all had our “first”. Just name it and hopefully you have had it. Nothing better than getting our “first” done and over with, no matter what or who it was. Which “first” immediately came to your mind when you first read this? Now just because something was your “first” doesn’t mean it was a pleasant experience. I remember my first beer with my old man.
On a very hot July afternoon, I was cutting weeds on my grandmother’s farm with my father. I came upon a very thick elm tree sprout along the fence line that the hand scythe wouldn’t cleanly cut, so I began to use a small hand saw. On my first stroke, the saw bounced across the limb and landed squarely on my finger at the base of my thumb nail. It cut deeply into the flesh and nail. The pain on my thumb and the sight of white bone made me a little sick and woozy. I asked for a drink of water, which we had just ran out of, so my father gave me the last cold can of beer in our cooler.
On that hot, humid day, I remember the coolness of the can and the sound of the crunch of making the two triangular holes in its top with the beer can opener. (Yes, before “pop-top” cans) I took a long, long cool swig of the Hamms and immediately got light-headed, sicker at my stomach and threw up. That was my first beer with my father at the age of 12.
Not as good of an experience that you would dream, of a young man’s first sharing of a beer with the old man, but I do remember it distinctly and perhaps a little fondly. As I stood there, bent over, spewing and ridding my stomach of my over accumulation of the contents of that day’s water jug and its first introduction of beer on a hot day, my old man says “well it is too hot to waste it that way, if you aren’t going to finish that beer, I will sure as hell finish it for ya”. He threw me another rag to wrap around my thumb and we left for town to get the stitches put in.
And yes, after he evidently smelled my breath, the doctor asked , “have you been drinking?”. I belched. The Doc looked at the sheepish grin on my old man’s face and only smiled and shook his head.
OC
It is not that the events of the past few months are not interesting, bazaar and in the words of others, “totally unbelievable – unbelievable”. It is just me writing about them that would probably just make them a boor, or is it a bore?
It reminds me of an experience I had while an electronic communications specialist. I received a formal “squawk” via email, from a dispatcher, that many management names were also copied, informing me and they that a vital communications receiver’s audio was at an “unbelievably loud level“. And he was requesting that the equipment be repaired immediately. Since so many “higher-ups” were copied I responded promptly assuming that there was something very wrong with this very expensive piece of gear. After “repairing” the receiver, I replied-to-all this short report of the fix.
“Turned the radio’s volume control knob down to a more “believable” level”.
I received the most replies and accolades and chuckles from management on that single “repair” than any other that I’d done in my entire career.
I guess the point I’m making here is, we could use a lot less “unbelievable” adjectives and adverbs these days spewed from the Administration. And it would probably do the Country much more good if before a lot of huge adjectives are used and unnecessary squawking is done, perhaps things should first just be turned down to a more believable level.
E.
I was walking down the street last Thursday
and a dog with bright white teeth and a big smile
approached me from the right.
He said he enjoyed walking with humans and asked if he could join me.
I, a man of great tolerance, said OK, glad to have ya!
We had walked only a block or two and he starts sniffing the street light poles and fire hydrants.
And with that big smile on his face he raises his leg and pisses on one of the posts.
Shocked…. I said, “look, that is very embarrassing to me, to be walking with you and then
having you do that. people will think you are my dog and blame me for messing up the sidewalk.
And how can you do that with such a big smile on your face?”
He said, “Smile on my face? I’m not smiling, dogs don’t smile! I have an urinary infection!” Then he gave me the finger!
OC
Deep down in Louisiana *
close to New Orleans,
Way back up in the woods
among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin
made of earth and wood,
Where lived a country boy
named Johnny B. Goode
Who never ever learned
to read or write so well,
But he could play a guitar
just like a ringing a bell. *
“Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry
My name is John. I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s. So when the music “Johnny B. Goode” came out, I instantly had a new name.
February third ’59 may have been the day the music died in Clear Lake, Iowa but in St. Louis, MO, they were still singing about “Memphis” Tennessee and still playin’ “Rock and Roll Music”. And things were just fine “Back in the USA”.
If there is a Heaven, “Roll Over Beethoven” and listen, you’re going to meet one hell of a Rock ‘n Roll Man! And Ludwig, I guess even if you aren’t ready for this yet, your kids are gonna love it. **
We are going to miss you Chuck.
John
* Lyrics from the Music “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry
** Words roughly quoted from movie “Back to the Future”
DistantShipSmoke 