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(March 5, 2023) g-nats always will win even if you poison them they will infect flies

“Gnats Will Win Always” — Commentary, Outrages, Prose and Poetry

(March 5, 2023)

gnats always will win

even if you poison them

they will inflect flies

(March 5, 2023)

“Who, being God on Monday wakes on Tuesday to entertain Ba’al

)March 2023)

does America

really think our leadership

wants world peace and love

‘The Vig’* is in the conflict

not in the salad dressing

*(Smart-alecky way to say “Vigorish” which is thug-speack for the interest a loanshark charges, sometimes by the day or even the hour. As an historical comparison, ask how much in profits went to cannon-manufacturing enterprises just before and during The War Between The States. And which congressional districts such enterprises thrived. Has anything changed since? Perhaps the district identifrier5s.)

(January 30, 2023)

there it was yelling: “quick, fool, buy me. This is not an old boring bit of 19th century charm

and has no library’s ownership stamp or another’s ex libris ownership pen-knifed on its no-longer bark

but the complete poems of Emily Dickinson, with whom Cat Nap Revue owner and operator Bruce Clay (“Juice”) Jewett claims kinship of the pen and keyboard

So I shoveled it off its quiet and forlorn shelf and mused: ha! bet Juice will at last be vindicated: he got me to read Em…

And damme I keep so doing and it’s all that leprechaun who smokes his one cigmo a year like Arte Shaw playing a fake nutsonazi all so inscruited after a few bars of Lili Marlene on his jew’s harp by horner

Instead of doing as I did – and failed because I was too eager to get to buffalo bill’s defunct and jumped ahead on edward estlin cummings’ collected poetry, not just a door-stopper but a home-wrecker I have promised to fifteen young ladies over the course of several decades of artful lies

I have flopped open and read Mizz Dickinson’s toil at random…until

at last I opened section V of her collected works, the one entitled after a Hound

I hope “Juice” has found his own copy so I do not have to undergo seppuku in order to pass it on to his sagacious eyes – which would not count as a lie entirely since no favors would be exchanged as with the dozen-plus lagniapped ladies re: eecummings. Besides, I have yet to acquire The Enormous Room and thus fulfill that ancient desire to own all his published words.

And, knowing now there are Miss Emily’s letters and writings also separately envolumed yet to hold I will soldier on and hope hell has abeyance enow for me to find yet another trillion quests to go fill up yet another room with books and notebooks and scraps of random brain-to-finger-waves-with-pen-and-yes-sometimes-pencil. paper.

I may even go find a dram or nine by which I celebrate. Or not.

A final confession: I stole the book and paid not the dollar for a hardback but treasured the guilt of theft. The book published by Barnes & Noble just at the cusp of last century was donated and thus unmarked and I roiled in guilt over the infraction. Perhaps I shall stuff in a five-spot next time I see one so to assuage.

(January27, 2023)

the cheerful insults’

rejoinder rejoined: “And so’s your mom!”

a way some pals greet

“And they both charge me two bucks less!” –

sometimes for the very first time*

*(Happened just after I was amazed to see two kids crossing the street into Fairmont Park in Philadelphia: one black and one white, both about five years old and skipping unselfconsciously in friendship. Had to beat my grin off with a small sledgehammer. Later that day at the cusp of Black and White 52nd Street running through the Irish-German-Polish side of West Philly and the almost all black side, I crossed unknowingly to an interesting looking bar and encountered one guy with a crew. Hey, motherfukker, don’t you know you Chucks ain’t welcome here, the man asked. I raised both eyebrows below my Dress Blues barracks cover, my hand not even near my NCO sword – I had just dismissed the burial detail honor guard to Murphy’s Tavern a few blocks east of 52nd to go deplete a couple hundred in the family’s donative for the firing squad and pall bearers. I had added another c-note. So I responded to the challenge: “Hey, pal: neither my own mom or yours charges me more than they charge you! Last time it was two bucks less!” His crew broke up. When the laughter subsided the guy grabbed my arm and marched me into the bar. The only pale face in sight. Grabbed a table and kicked out the opposing chair for me. “Draft?” he asked. I said sure. He held up two fingers and the bartender – not a waitress = came over with the suds. “One of your pards?” he asked. “I knew you are a Marine,” I said low enough only he could hear. “Saw the hair on your knuckles was all rubbed off/” Turned out he was A/1/1 and I admitted I was a REMF – though combat correspondent and photographer mostly with squads and platoons in every battalion of the 5th and 7th Marines. At the same time as him. We spent the next two hours buying each other beers. We stood up to say out goodbyes, white handshake and a black dap. Never went back. 52nd Street in West Philthydelphia just was not crossed.)