I Can Use You

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Do you feel as if everyone’s against you?

Do you feel thrown out as with the world’s trash?

Do you lay awake at night staring at the ceiling, though it’s not the ceiling you’re staring at, it’s what happened to you years ago, or what may happen to you tomorrow?

Do you stare at the mirror and silently say I hate you?

Do spiraling echoes of what you should have said or done or felt or thought or of all the mistakes you made by commission or omission crowd out your experience of the Now?

Do you wonder where your next meal’s coming from? Or if not, how ’bout the next mortgage payment?

Do you seek, desperately and with all your soul, for someone to believe in, some thing, something, or somecause to hitch that star of your’s to?

Believe me, my brother. You’re not alone.

Do you want to matter?

Do you want to leave behind a rock in some forgotten corner of the globe that says you were here? Or do you want it taught in textbooks?

Do you honestly believe you’re just marking time here?

Well, saddle up, man. I can use you.

...

Randomicity

I sit in front of a hissing and fluttering laptop, baby figure-eighting through my legs lobbying for attention. The hotheaded idiot on the radio’s screaming that the country’s coming to an end. Apocalypse Obama! Thunder grumbles in the near distance; high-frequency static says lightning’s in the air. Thoughts assault me. Should I turn on the teevee? Teacher, mother, secret lover … There may be the most awesomest show on right now, right this very minute, that I’m missing. Or there might be a documentary or a segment on that or this that will advance my career. That’ll make me see the big bright picture. You know, some talking head blah blah blah blah but suddenly that one thing – THAT ONE THING – that will all magically mystically make it click snap pop in my beaten and battered brain and All Things will fall into place. Oh, that baby’s now rifling through stacks of papers on the floor adjacent this wicker chair, but I’ll get to her later, when her mouth is black from paint that’s coming off some artwork-thing my oldest created at preschool. Books! Where are my books? I should not let the quiet and (wait: what quiet? I wonder as the dolt on the air is shouting that my tax dollars are funding all that’s evil and un-American) – I should not let the time go to waste – why not read a book? The Apollo book(s), the Catholic missionary book, or the diet books or the philosophy books or the books on UFOs and JFK theories and … wait, I’m thirsty. Perhaps a glass of cold water. Remember: need to spend $750 and get that valve on the hot water heater replaced ’cause the old one’s not up to code – AND THIS IS THE WATER GOING INTO MY CHILDREN’S BODIES! I pause and think: just how much of that water filter filters out the nasty stuff that laughs and spits on my town and state government’s “code”? Baby’s gnawing on a CD, and all I can hope is that she doesn’t catch my cold, if indeed it is a cold I have. Rain tip taps on the window behind me and four almost five years of fatigue wave over me, Schrodinger-like, tempting me with sweet whispered words to allow my eyes to close but there’s too much to do, too much to read, to assimilate, a great big cloud of curiosity that needs be sated, or else … or else … will this life have been worthwhile? What the hell caused me to even think such thoughts? Anyone? Bueller? Well, time to make the donuts. Hmm – how much more cultural cliches can I regurgitate? Regurgitato. Traffic on the radio, a baby rolling up a slip of paper (I hope it ain’t nothing important), head achy from too much chocolate and oh dear some frozen dinners in my near future and a dog in the woods …

Grandmother's Song

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Be courteous kind and forgiving,
Be gentle and peaceful each day.
Be warm and human and grateful,
And have a nice thing to say.

Be thoughtful and trustful and childlike,
Be witty and happy and wise.
Be honest and love all your neighbors,
Be obsequious, purple and clairvoyant.

Be pompous, obese and eat cactus,
Be dull and boring and omnipresent.
Criticize things you don't know about,
Be oblong and have your knees removed.

Be tasteless, rude and offensive,
Live in a swamp and be three dimensional.
Put a live chicken in your under pants,
Get all excited and go to a yawning festival.

alternative last line: Go into a closet and suck eggs!


From the comedy album “Let’s Get Small” (1977) by the mighty Steve Martin.