A Strange Vision I Had of Pop-Pop a Few Nights Ago That I Still Don't Know What To Think Of

It was towards the end,
in the stillness,
before the business
and shuffling of nurses' feet.

His eyes suddenly flashed open
from their medicated coma
with urgent intensity,
like he had been gathering all his energy
for months
for this final surge of life.

He looked at me,
into me,
with such depth and clarity,
"Have you seen Him?"

Wide-eyed and breathless,
I felt the weight of his entire life
drop in my chest.
I couldn't speak.

He smiled knowingly at me,
and I was looking at a man
now fully alive.
I had never seen a man
fully alive.
He winked at me and said,
"I've seen Him."

My lips could only shiver,
"Who?"

I trembled in anticipation,
because this question
was suddenly
the only question that mattered.

He pulled me closer with a twinkle in his eye,
like a child who could not
conceal his excitement and wonder.

With awe and authority
he whispered his last words,
his only words,
shooting fire down my spine and
giving new meaning to capitalized letters:
"THE INVENTOR!"

Only Part of the Story

So, I overheard two women talking
the other day
as I crossed a busy street.

The frumpy, throaty
fifty-something
with pastor's-wife posture
said that she was
"annoyed with Sandy too."

The shifty-eyed,
mouse-cheeked
librarian-type
shook her round bird's nest head
and mumbled something
I couldn't quite hear
as they click-clicked along
in the opposite direction.

That's all.
I just thought you should know.

The Temple of Unholy Shrines

The thing I can't understand
about automatic toilets
is when there is still pee
sitting in the urinal when you approach.
What the heck?
The previous guy must have either
pissed in record time,
or from a long distance,
both of which baffle
and amaze me.

So I set a wide stance
and pretend like I'm peeing for a minute
just to activate the automatic flush
because I'm O.C.D. about my urine
mixing with someone else's urine.
I'm not biased or anything,
I just don't get into that kind of alchemy.

I back away quickly
to the sweet sound of flushing
with concerned vigilance
for any lingering yellow residue,
when I notice some guy waiting suspiciously,
and I know he's thinking,
"That guy better not pee twice."

So I make my fake escape
before dipping into a stall for slightly more privacy,
when the sight of that shiny bemis seat
goads my bowels into action,
regardless of whether it looks like
the previous participants
pissed everywhere except in the water.

I complete the first half of the term
"drop and flush"
when the absence of a lever
turns me into a strange contortionist,
trying to lean forward and to the side
far enough to trip the automatic sensor,
all the while trying to balance
on feet bound by undergarments
and still keep my sloppy joe buns
hanging safely over the rim.

With the flush conquered,
I can now move on to wiping,
which is made painstakingly tedious
because the 150-grit toilet paper is so thin
that no matter how slowly I pull,
I can only manage at most to keep 2 squares together
before it tears,
which is not nearly enough surface area
or absorption
to perform it's job properly,
all the while worrying that someone listening close by
is keeping tabs on how many squares I've ripped off,
and they are growing concerned that
I'm now nearing the acceptable limit of T.P. etiquette,
and maybe suffering the aftermath
of some absurd assplosion.

My impatient hand sanding begins to produce
a coarse finish
of inflamed soft-tissue areas,
when, leaping Lazarus,
my bowels start to move again
like a colicky baby
from what I thought was put down
for a comfortable nap.

So I try to bed my bowels back down again
grunting a nasally lullaby
with renewed gusto,
forcing premature labor
to a scared brown turtle head,
who nervously retreats back in his shell
when frightened by the impatient size fourteens
on the other side of my insufficient barrier,
who've suddenly come-a-knocking
like I'm not doing my best in here;
like maybe I accidentally dozed off
amidst the comfort of my surroundings.

So I give up on my fruitless efforts,
pull my trousers up from their bed of sticky soles
and beached urine,
and try to retreat from the rogue splashes
spitting at my exit from the
ever-swallowing throat.

I take refuge in washing away the sorrows
and residue from my hands,
which constitute only about 20% of my body parts
that really need a good scrubbing now.

I've heard it said that there is an actual chemical
in the hand blowers
that makes you forget any negative thoughts of your experience,
but I have never met a hand blower
that stayed on long enough
to erase those memories,
or completely dry my dripping hands.

I don't know if my hands get unusually wetter
than other guys' hands,
but I am always left with the cruel choice of either
announcing my wetness problem
to every guy in the bathroom
by pressing the button again in defeat,
or wiping the excess water on my jeans
that were just lying at the base
of an unholy shrine.

Hi?

I met Fred P. on a mid-afternoon
elevator ride.
I know because of his nametag...
"Hello, my name is ________!"
His name was Fred P.

I didn't mind his style.
That name tag got to the point quicker
than any amount of bumper stickers
or clever license plates ever could.

I don't blame him either,
his name did have a nice ring to it.
I figured he was either just proud
or really friendly.
At any rate, he was already
one-up on me,
and I didn't know whether it was still a
hand-shaking situation,
or if a hug would now be required,
so I decided to just pretend
like I hadn't heard the introduction
stuck to his left breast pocket.

My biggest struggle now was that
I had to fight off his introduction alone
because everyone else in the building
decided that it would suddenly be a good time
not to use the elevator.

But, inevitably, when you skip
the second half of an introduction,
one person is left open and vulnerable,
and the other gets to
disturb the pulsing silence
with a 12-story attempt
at looking for something important in their
empty backpack;
which I did end up finding,
along with a Tic Tac container and paper clips,
by secretly peeking up at him
through my dark sunglasses.

And this is what I found out...

I could tell that he liked shoes
because he was wearing 2 of them,
and he also liked briefcases and clothes,
and probably socks.

I could tell that his audible voice,
not similar to the
messy upper case bold sharpie strokes he flaunted,
would be more like a
300 lb cat-loving widow
falling down a long flight of stairs.

He looked like a man of undistinguished tastes
and a bland palette,
to whom the term "Haute Couture" was French.
His hobbies probably included
driving in traffic
and blending into very small crowds.

The lines on his face revealed a life of
facial muscles working,
but not too hard.
He did seem to always be thinking,
at least while I knew him,
on the elevator,
long and hard,
mainly because he had to,
like a bored secretary
rummaging through an endless stack
of un-alphabetized index cards.

This was Fred P.
Most people don't know him like I do.
Most people aren't so scared of small talk.

Hot Tub

I was sitting in my hot tub the other night
drinking a cold root beer,
watching the stars peek in and out
between wisps of stretched cotton clouds
like some mother-baby peek-a-boo game,
trying not to giggle
as the jets spit water between my toes.

I closed my eyes and began to ponder...
"Hmm, I wonder what I'd be doing right now
if I was sitting in this hot tub without my cold
draft of sassafras?"

I sat there for a while
pondering this conundrum
when it suddenly dawned on me...
I would be doing just that,
just sitting in that hot tub,
without a root beer!

It was so simple!
So simple, in fact, that it occurred to me
that I had been soaking
in what now felt like a lukewarm bath
for a few hours too long,
and that I was now bordering on the edge
of thought
of that
of a 3 year old,
floating dangerously close
to insanity,
and what used to be a perfectly crisp
Slim Jim.

Till We Have Faces

It's a puppet show!
Try on the different faces.
Discard the ones you're jealous of,
the ones that remind you of your old self.
Find the ones that stand out,
the unique ones,
the ones that make you someone
in the eyes of someone else.
Let the masks meld into an unholy deity,
a two-faced, three-faced,
many-faced monster
disguised in botox and cover-up.

A marionette given false hope
of invisible strings.

All the unique individuals
dancing the same dance
not noticing the choreography.

All lies of poets and priests
till we cut the strings
till we give ourselves a good scrubbing
till we have faces.

Echoes

All I’ve known
I now know no longer.
I long for the
Whispering hints of remnants
Creaking through these old bones,
The clarity fading with decaying memories
While the only monuments
That haven’t crumbled
Are the weathered lines
Etched on my face
Branching out like dried up streams;
A winding open grave of sun-scorched limestone
Lying lifeless
Listening to the withered roots below
Tell tales of old
Of melting snow
Flowing from distant storms.

The thunder rumbles in the distance,
But even the echoes are welcome now.