the reader

'It's a terrible thing'.
The other nodded, not caring. Outside the pub, in the street above the rising half circle of thirty-nine steps, a woman carrying a crying baby ducked as a speeding car hurled water from a puddle ponding at the curb, drenching both, the baby no longer wailing. She was mad, but made note of the method. Throw The Bath Water On The Baby.

'Yeah. Terrible. I heard before he started smoking he sounded like Capote on helium'.
'He did it for her, that's what they say'. He poured another whiskey, held the bottle in both hands momentarily trying to read the fine-print black on gold label as though a desperate lifesaving message in a bottle.
'Does she phone him up then'?
'What'?
'Does she dial a long number overseas, reading the poem slowly, him scrawling red-eyed letter by letter by candlelight?'
'They don't do things like that anymore, George. Speaking of red eyes..'.
'..She pays him with a carton of mentholated. And then he puts the film canister in a package and sends by airmail express...'
'Stop it, George. This isn't the thirties'.
It was raining harder now. These last two in the Basement Pub hunched over the table, lips nearly kissing the oilcloth as they spoke.
'Grotty, I say. If a surgeon sawed him open he'd have to chip the charcoal away with a sculptor's tooth chisel. Clink clink'.
'You know, if she sent him Zip-a-Dee-Du-Dah, he'd read it like a campfire ghost story.'
'No need to scare small children. It's terrible.'
It was quiet. Rainwater was snaking down eaves troughs in a deep, soulful, hollowing-out sound first, punctuated in uneven drips from the ceiling, spittoon drops captured in a metal bucket.
'Does she send him dry matches too then, George?'

image: by R.A.D. Stainforth

the fallen leaf haiku

Solitary leaf
Hearty fair weather pearl
Autumn ember song






Year End Haikus
await you across town at
recuerda mi corazon,
exclusive home of
Haiku My Heart
photo courtesy Rebecca.

Merry Christmas

Hug From Santa
JC Leyendecker, 1925

this is the best

in the pudding

Christmas Pudding
JC Leyendecker, 1904

greetings

the innocents

Sheets of rain let up, quieting along the narrow road, halting to a mist, the wary old jeep's wipers struggling in slow out-of-sync mode as though hopeless and despondent. The thermometer hovered a shade above freezing.
The little girl pretended the halting motion of wiper blades were arms of a confused person directing traffic. Struggling to make a left, or stay all the way to the right? She became annoyed, exhaled deeply as kids sometimes do, bouncing back deep into the seat. Indecision was making her feel kind of sad. She stretched her pink sweater like she wasn't suppose to.
"Mom"?
"Hmmm"?, she responded lamely.
"Those kids were little...like me", she stated half questioningly, hoping for quick parental approval, her violet eyes focused on the flower in her mom's hair, identical to her own small bloom she petted in the lap of her blue denims. Her mother turned the wipers off. She reached to turn the radio off, but she snapped that off a half hour before.
"Yes they were, Honey", she nodded, slowing the vehicle as she sipped coffee gone cold. And then in a whisper, "So sad", she shivered. Glancing at her daughter, those small pink fingers tickled flower petals gently, and she imagined the seven year-old experiencing her very first adult thoughts.
"They'll miss Santa", the child said to herself, worried and unspoiled, looking straight ahead at the silver button on the glove compartment, the portal of her secret tunnel to her friendly giant plush animals. She pushed the button hard all the way in but nothing happened. Leaning against her mother now, she felt the loving caress of that motherly hand cradle her head. The mother felt her right arm quiver, the sobbing of the innocent commenced.

photo by Andy Magee

jolly old fellow

jolly old fellow
sweeping past barren chimney
last cookie exit

Star lit haikus
await you across town at
recuerda mi corazon,
exclusive home of
Haiku My Heart

directions

Point A to Point B may be quickest following along the path of straight line, but folks in an unabashed search for the secret of life may find the road is best wandered upon like two side-by-side trails of a pasture lane upon a rolling field of purple clover, previously traversed by wayward ancestors, sometimes lost in the grey morning fog, then brilliant like an undisturbed brushed masterpiece in a clearing, and beyond that, hidden in a vale, a white church needing a coat of paint, with a crumbling wishing well echoing deep tonal notes of falling pebbles into cool green water below, and the gravitational force of slow circling of one another, the pulse quickens, at last arm in arm up the three steps to the heavy wooden black doors. And you're there.

rated G in the key of B flat

Doctor Schlepheimer, his framed Certificate of The School Of Two Dimensional Psychiatry, reading three squiggly lines of accomplishment, fastened crooked with a big gold push-pin, and clear in line over his right shoulder behind his deep-cushioned chair, crossed his legs and peered at his esteemed visitor over the top of his thick black glasses.
"Would you mind repeating that a third time, Mr. Fudd? I almost understand now, but I. Just. Don't. Quite. Have. It."
The patient sat up from the couch, sitting two inches off the floor, whirled and shakily replied.
"This is so tewwable, doctew. You have to see this wabbit", he drawed. "I was pwoudly conducting The Gweat Flammish Symphony, in ouw beautiful rendition of.."
"Rendition, Mr. Fudd"?
"Sowwy. Hehehe". He blushed scarlet. "Wendition! of The Blue Danube, in thwee quawtew time, mind you, when I see this cwazy wabbit, its giant wight eye bulging out the end of the scope of this enowwwwmus wifle!"
The doctor leaned forward, whipping off his glasses dramatically.
"And what, my dear Mr. Fudd, did you do again?"
"What could I do, Dr. Schlepheimer? He was aiming it wight at Mistew Lincoln up in the Guest Of Honow's box", he said weakly, covering both his eyes with white-gloved hands. "I went back to conducting, that's what I did." He dropped his hands to his sides. "Aftew all, I always do what the diwector says. I wanted to take my watew pistol and shoot the annoying wabbit, but Mistew Spielbewg, although a vewy vewy nice man, mind you, is wathew humowless, so I just tooned back to the owchwesta and moved my awms, only fastew and fastew to twick the wabbit to dwop his gun and dance. And doctew," he brightly and proudly grinned, "I did!"
Dr. Schlepheimer sunk back into his chair and closed his eyes. It was quiet. A white cloud appeared above his head. In that cloud a floating faucet dripped slowly and thunderously in three quarter time as dollar signs mamboed out of step around the silver-sparkling faucet.
"Tell me a little more about this crazy director".
Dr. Schlepheimer opened his eyes. Mr. Fudd was gone, having pulled down his ear flaps and squeezing through a miniature door marked 'The End'.

Object: Object to be Destroyed (1923)
by Man Ray