Friday Fun

This won’t be much of a Friday non-dissertational, I’m afraid, ’cause it wasn’t much of a Friday night. Wound up having to go down to the hospital — nothing dire, don’t worry, but I originally thought it was, which is why I went — and, well, it was Halloween at the hospital. I looked kinda like Frankenstein having a bunch of wires hooked up to my chest and arms and legs, but that wasn’t the worst of it. I did a double-take when the tech came in to take my blood, since he was completely done up like a pirate: the frilly-sleeved lace-up white shirt open to show the chest hair, the tricorn hat, the eyepatch, the facial scar and sunburn makeup, the cutlass, the scarf, you name it. And he was carrying his little chest of syringes and vials. The only thing that could have made it better woulda been if he’d said “Trick or treat!” before taking my blood.

Then they gave me some drugs and sent me on my way. And my wonderful, kind friend who came to keep me company at the hospital took me out to dinner in Fat City afterwards.

I’m a lucky man.

Because I’m putting off doing more work tonight, because Zeugma just clawed her way up my back, because I haven’t heard a good, wicked dirty joke in way too long: some Kenneth Koch for your enjoyment.
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I’m kinda proud of the concept here, but I think the idea is better than the execution, and wish I could figure out how to more effectively pull off the conceit. Suggestions welcome.

(With sincere apologies to Will S.)

I’ll take my ease by grain and milligram
Until such slight matter turns my scale’s beam.
There’s Dalmane, that’s for remembrance: pray, Love,
Remember: and there’s Paxil. That’s for thoughts.
There’s Luvox, and Zoloft; there’s Ativan,
Though it compels the colic in many
Who’ll take it: I must weigh my
Wants with a difference. There’s Halcion: I’d
Ask for Tegretol, hey non nonny, to
Set fast the sense and virtue of mine eye
But it makes in me a distaste for sex
And bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.

Long day and a tired evening. The moon’s out and bright without a cloud in the sky tonight. I’m reading poetry, putting off writing a letter to my brother, listening to Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic playing Sibelius. I had an idea for something new and original I was going to work on tonight, something goofy and high-concept, like an office comedy about temping for lobbying organizations in D.C. (yes, based on some of my own experiences) filtered through Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos (I said it was goofy, OK, and it’s been a long week and I’ve been feeling like my brain needs some candy), but I don’t have the energy. Put in on the shelf and save it for another time, I suppose.

Here’s some Mark Strand instead. I’ve got maples out back, too, and I think it’s a fine goodnight poem for tonight’s sort of night.
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I’ve realized I’m not going to be able to write something new every Friday, even if I take Clancy’s suggestion and talk about the girls. (Speaking of whom, Tink likes my new alarm clock very much: when it goes off in the morning, she hops up on top of the dresser and sits next to it and cries along. Time for breakfast, Dad. Time for breakfast, Dad. Time for breakfast, Dad.) So, as the first of a sometime substitute, and following Amanda’s occasional example (and I’ll say, Amanda, I really enjoyed the recent Winter’s poem: thanks for posting something so fine), I’ll offer some of my favorite things, things that I wish were known more widely.

Here’s one of my favorite stories by the best teacher I ever had. Catherine, if you’re out there — drop me a line?
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I don’t have a finished piece of writing to put up here for today’s Friday Non-Dissertational. There are a few ideas I’ve had floating around, none of which I’ve begun to flesh out, and there are a few old pieces I’ve been meaning to revise but haven’t. The thing that’s most got my interest these days is stolen from a guy I knew when I was working on my MFA, a good guy named Bill Kirchner. Bill wrote a story I wish I’d written, where the protagonist sits in his car in the parking lot outside a diner, or maybe it was a bar, imagining himself in the place of the teenage chauffeur who drove Hank Williams on his last ride. I’d like to steal Bill’s idea, but change it a little. My version’s probably a lot more trite than Bill’s, but I’d like to actually put together a fictional account of that last ride and that last moment where the teenager sat in the parking lot knowing he had Hank Williams dead in his back seat, knowing he had to do something, tell someone.
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For my friend Daniel Anderson, who saw the Field of Blackbirds.

Some said it began with what happened at the checkpoint.

Others of us said the old man had nothing to do with it. They said he had only made the old man into some kind of fear, a bogeyman, and what happened was nothing more than a long chain of bad luck in a cold, broken country.

We all knew the end was him leaving his post. The incident report says that last contact was at 0235 hours. His weapon and gear were left behind the sandbags.

They listed him as missing. We never heard about a body.
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Full title:

We Are in the Bathroom with Larry Hagman

The fluorescence flickers into illumination with our fingers on the switch: argon is a noble gas, aloof. It will not make friends.

The brush startles Mr. Hagman when he opens the medicine cabinet. All alone in the harsh light on its glass shelf. Up top where she would only reach every six months or never if she was not able. Handle wrapped in pink tissue paper but he can still see one or two long red hairs twined in its translucent spines. Mr. Hagman stands there in the bathroom, before the mirror, before the cabinet, looking up at its stubby aqua length. His arms slack at his sides. O yes she was gone quickly and there is still her extra bar of Neutrogena on the second shelf as well and her tube of almond oil facial lotion. There is the faintest smell of bubblegum. Mr. Hagman makes up his mind and turns and leaves the bathroom.
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This is the usual Friday non-dissertational. It’s a really short one this time, but I’ll offer the caveat that it’s gross in a way that I find rather more disturbing that the story I posted last week, like primal scene stuff gone badly wrong. I don’t know where this came from.
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For John F. Eisenberg, Zoologist, 1935-2003.

So it’s like ten thirty on a Saturday morning and I’m in my room, in bed, sleeping like I’ve got every right to. I knew Sarn’t Major would call anyway, though, I knew when he was coming back, and I’d seen his yard which I couldn’t not see, and my phone rings and I pick it up and there’s his voice, like that thing people always say about sounding like gravel or whatever, all raspy, yelling Kim! sharp and loud, I mean when you’ve been in the Army long as he has I think you forget how to talk like normal people talk, he’s like Kim! You sleeping Sergeant Kim? and I just groaned and rubbed the crap out the corners of my eyes, tried to not sound like I was still in bed, and I’m all, Not anymore, Sarn’t Major, and I ask, even though I know, I ask him if he’s back.

Hell yes he’s back, he tells me, he tells me I’m lucky he didn’t have me pick him up at the airport, which wouldn’t have happened with where I’d been, and so I just rubbed my face some more and coughed and told him yes and told him I counted my blessings every day, counted how lucky I was.
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