Just whatever

Mr D., good point but try to get a decent Yakburger in Jersy

I forgot to post this for you .... the poem you posted reminded me of Sandburg, a personal fave.


JACK

JACK was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun.
He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a day,
and his hands were tougher than sole leather.
He married a tough woman and they had eight children
and the woman died and the children grew up and
went away and wrote the old man every two years.
He died in the poorhouse sitting on a bench in the sun
telling reminiscences to other old men whose women
were dead and children scattered.
There was joy on his face when he died as there was joy
on his face when he lived--he was a swarthy, swaggering
son-of-a-gun.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

JOY

LET a joy keep you.
Reach out your hands
And take it when it runs by,
As the Apache dancer
Clutches his woman.
I have seen them
Live long and laugh loud,
Sent on singing, singing,
Smashed to the heart
Under the ribs
With a terrible love.
Joy always,
Joy everywhere--
Let joy kill you!
Keep away from the little deaths.
----------------------------------------------

Manitoba Childe Roland


LAST night a January wind was ripping at the shingles over our house and whistling a wolf song under the eaves.

I sat in a leather rocker and read to a six-year-old girl the Browning poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.

And her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful to her and she could not understand.

A man is crossing a big prairie, says the poem, and nothing happens?-and he goes on and on?-and it's all lonesome and empty and nobody home.

And he goes on and on?-and nothing happens?-and he comes on a horse's skull, dry bones of a dead horse?-and you know more than ever it's all lonesome and empty and nobody home.

And the man raises a horn to his lips and blows?-he fixes a proud neck and forehead toward the empty sky and the empty land?-and blows one last wonder-cry.

And as the shuttling automatic memory of man clicks off its results willy-nilly and inevitable as the snick of a mouse-trap or the trajectory of a 42-centimeter projectile,

I flash to the form of a man to his hips in snow drifts of Manitoba and Minnesota?-in the sled derby run from Winnipeg to Minneapolis.

He is beaten in the race the first day out of Winnipeg?-the lead dog is eaten by four team mates?-and the man goes on and on?-running while the other racers ride?-running while the other racers sleep?-

Lost in a blizzard twenty-four hours, repeating a circle of travel hour after hour?-fighting the dogs who dig holes in the snow and whimper for sleep?-pushing on?-running and walking five hundred miles to the end of the race?-almost a winner?-one toe frozen, feet blistered and frost-bitten.

And I know why a thousand young men of the Northwest meet him in the finishing miles and yell cheers?-I know why judges of the race call him a winner and give him a special prize even though he is a loser.

I know he kept under his shirt and around his thudding heart amid the blizzards of five hundred miles that one last wonder-cry of Childe Roland?-and I told the six-year-old girl all about it.

And while the January wind was ripping at the shingles and whistling a wolf song under the eaves, her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful to her and she could not understand.

Wondrous poetry, Ge ... many thanks.

About the other, there's an outside chance this might work: om, ma-ni, pe-me, hung yakburger, por favor ... but I wouldn't want tibet on it.

Don' tibet your tabooli, Mr. Debacle...

(osso drops in to say hi...)

Okay, people. I did the first flush. Your turn.
http://www.bathroomjokes.com/bathroom/flush.htm

I googled that and it came back 'hold the pickle hold the lettuce' ????

Hi Oss

Hi Ge...

What exactly does whatever mean? Anything? What does it exactly mean when someone tells you "Whatever."

Only limited by your imagination.

Can be broken down into what and ever... I think of it as a shorthand for use when energy flags or vocabulary fails, that is, a lazy way of avoiding commenting at length.

As used in the title of this topic, I suspect it was typed tongue-in-cheek to mean that conversation was welcome on diverse subjects.

So I got to my store this morning at 7:30, the usual time. I did my early morning paperwork while listening to NPR's Bob Edwards.
Most folks come in through the side entrance, because that's where the parking lot is. But there is a front entrance, facing Main Street. The side walk in front is 20' deep by 50' wide. There are two large raised planters there, topped with 2" x 8" wood so people can sit while they wait for their bus.
At 8:30 I unlocked that door. The crocus bulbs were blooming. The periwinkle and azalea looked healthy.
But in the middle of the larger bed was (and remained when I left this afternoon) a pair or crutches. Shiny aluminum crutches, adult sized.

I play around in the Orginal Writing category on A2K. All day long I tried to think up a story about the person who apparently needed them at some point but didn't need them anymore. But I couldn't come up with anything.
So I leave this here as anecdote. -johnboy-

My office-gallery is two doors down from our local St. Vincent de Paul's outfit. They have a selection of crutches available at less than retail rate. I can picture someone buying a pair for uncle whosis, for x dollars, and then not wanting to carry them to wherever they were walking at the time... Not a guess of sentiment, but about what happens on our Main Street...

realjohn, Create a poem or short story; and post it here.

The end of the story... I played around with something about uncle Whosis but couldn't make it work. I'll tuck the image of the crutches amongst the crocuses away. Perhaps I can use it later.

The crutches were still there this morning, covered with the light dusting of snow that came in at dawn.

Around about noon a man, perhaps in his late 60's, came in. His baseball hat read "Vietnam Vet-US Navy." He was wearing a jacket with the emblem of the local American Legion post.

"I seen those crutches out front. We collect old medical stuff like wheelchairs and walkers and..."

"Take the crutches," I said.

He did. -rjb-

I bet that Vietnam vet could have told you stories that could fill a whole book.

Sì, non abbiamo tabooli oggi, osso.


Enjoyed the anecdote, johnboy. Just an errant thought, but you may apprehend your muse in Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent. Sorta popped in mind from the details of your early morning opening routine.

Ge, is "Joy" Sandburg?

Mr. D., liked the Billy Collins. Good to be reminded of Steinbeck's Winter. Must read that again.

Man in Space

All you have to do is listen to the way a man
sometimes talks to his wife at a table of people
and notice how intent he is on making his point
even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver,

and you will know why the women in science
fiction movies who inhabit a planet of their own
are not pictured making a salad or reading a magazine
when the men from earth arrive in their rocket,

why they are always standing in a semicircle
with their arms folded, their bare legs set apart,
their breasts protected by hard metal disks.


................Billy Collins

Kara, That's a great scene......

Ah well, K., I s'pose there could be scarier scenes ... like, e.g., their wearing full metal jackets. :wink:

So, it's Billy Collins, is it? Then here's yet another; this one for a Caprice Italienne ...

Osso Buco

I love the sound of the bone against the plate
and the fortress-like look of it
lying before me in a moat of risotto,
the meat soft as the leg of an angel
who has lived a purely airborne existence.
And best of all, the secret marrow,
the invaded privacy of the animal
prized out with a knife and swallowed down
with cold, exhilarating wine.

I am swaying now in the hour after dinner,
a citizen tilted back on his chair,
a creature with a full stomach--
something you don't hear much about in poetry,
that sanctuary of hunger and deprivation.
You know: the driving rain, the boots by the door,
small birds searching for berries in winter.

But tonight, the lion of contentment
has placed a warm, heavy paw on my chest,
and I can only close my eyes and listen
to the drums of woe throbbing in the distance
and the sound of my wife's laughter
on the telephone in the next room,
the woman who cooked the savory osso buco,
who pointed to show the butcher the ones she wanted.
She who talks to her faraway friend
while I linger here at the table
with a hot, companionable cup of tea,
feeling like one of the friendly natives,
a reliable guide, maybe even the chief's favorite son.

Somewhere, a man is crawling up a rock hillside
on bleeding knees and palms, an Irish penitent
carrying the stone of the world in his stomach;
and elsewhere people of all nations stare
at one another across a long, empty table.

But here, the candles give off their warm glow,
the same light that Shakespeare and Izaak Walton wrote by,
the light that lit and shadowed the faces of history.
Only now it plays on the blue plates,
the crumpled napkins, the crossed knife and fork.

In a while, one of us will go up to bed
and the other one will follow.
Then we will slip below the surface of the night
into miles of water, drifting down and down
to the dark, soundless bottom
until the weight of dreams pulls us lower still,
below the shale and layered rock,
beneath the strata of hunger and pleasure,
into the broken bones of the earth itself,
into the marrow of the only place we know.

Well, he can write, can he not? Thinking of our Kara squirming at the feeding on the animal marrow, still I see
piquance now of meals of pleasured fulgence.

Looks like I'm late .... got a dvd burner and have been smokin all de liv long day ...
Yes B tis Carl... here you go, enjoy.

http://carl-sandburg.com/POEMS.htm