Another Poem about Death

(I swear I am quite happy these days)

I have never seen a badger. Now I must revise that statement. I have never seen a live badger. I infer from the proximity of the A316 that its death was the result of the weakness of flesh against the velocity of metal. Although no visible violence can be seen on the small animal’s body.
For weeks, on my daily commute, I have seen the process of its decomposition. The cold weather has shielded my senses from the vulgarity and revulsion of its decay. Instead I have watched the subtle dissolution from a seemingly sleeping creature to a dark mass hardly distinguishable from the earth around it. Its fur first expanded, filled with unsensed but fetid gases created by the expulsions of feeding bacteria. Then it deflated and its fur was picked by birds for nesting material. The exposed flesh blackened and shrivelled. The rain pushed it further into the soil and splattered mud to camouflage it further. Except for the glimpses of bones and teeth brightly seen. Everyday, I have a harder time satisfying my morbid sightseeing.

Three men tapping on the grave of an uncle. This tiny gesture. The men crouching and motionless except for their index fingers quickly tapping messages beyond their generation, through earth and coffin, to reverberate against the quiet bones laying in darkness. With soundless vibrations, they communicate love, duty and the painfulness of loss to the remains of the man. This tiny gesture. More striking than their previous laborious devotions of washing the grave from a plastic litre bottle of water and pulling the petals of yellow and orange flowers to frame the gravestone portrait. These three men and this tiny gesture filled me with love for humanity.

cultural observation number 453/i:

The stonework of Tuscany is littered with little black lizards very much like the southern United States. The difference is no generation of Italian children seemed to have recognised the entertainment value of getting the little creatures to bite your ears (it doesn’t hurt and they don’t let go) causing them to dangle like earrings. At this suggestion, each native I spoke to was surprised that this was a possibility. Upon my recollection of my own childhood, this was the immediate conclusion when I discovered the lizard’s nature to bite and hold on tenaciously.

The tube carriage was full but not to the point where the next pregnant woman boarding would have to stand in front of the seated businessman while he played video poker on his blackberry. Everyone was busy pretending to not examine their fellow passengers or reading their three-for-two novels. We pulled into a station and the doors opened. The theme song to the A-team sung acapella in duh-du-duhs entered the train from a raspy masculine voice. Immediately following it was a dishevelled man. Tall and thin dressed in aging, dirty and torn leathers. His ginger hair was slicked back tight against his skull by its own grease. He moved down the length of the carriage by means of a James Brown shuffle step, twisting and bobbing his head to accentuate the A-team’s tune. Occasionally he would point to a passenger and pause the song as a call for them to pick it up and make it a duet. No one obliged, and rarely did anyone make eye contact. As if the man singing the bar chord guitar parts to an 80’s American TV show could escape a person’s attention.

You know. The A-team theme song is pretty catchy and it was one of my favourite childhood shows. It’s the perfect song to prepare you for a half hour’s entertainment of men being thrown in slow motion and Mr. T’s witticisms. Maybe that explains why when the man cued me to join in his song; I did with equal gusto as him. I even pointed back and mimed his head nods. In return there was a knowing smile and we sang until the closing refrain. He started the song once again and continued his way along the carriage and into the next, pointing, singing, shuffling and nodding his head in time.

From the changed glances I received from my fellow commuters, it was collectively and tacitly decided I was not one of them. An appellation I hope for everyday when making the dull cattle cart trek to sup at the monetary feed trough of employment. Was this the point? Was the A-team serenader gloating? Was his pointing finger meant to shame? I certainly felt content by my tiny rebellion, too timid to make any greater sacrifice than the disapproval of strangers. It is worth noting that of all the people in that carriage, only man I accompanied and I were smiling.

When I think about it, the man showed no surprise when I joined in. He had gone past two dozen people without anyone acknowledging him, much less answering his call to sing along. Yet, when one of the suited herd did join, it was if he expected it. It was just a matter of finding which one of us was willing. Was that his purpose? To find that one or was it for that one, me, to come to the realisation I too am one of those.

Life is mostly monotony and tedium. This is not news. For some lucky few they have obsessions and addictions to give purpose and distraction from this regretful banality. I have my loves and my passions but none so overwhelming to my senses and attention to save me from the contrite reflection of the totalling pointlessness that caused my teenage self to produce poetry using words like “scream” and “blood”. Melodrama that, I suppose, I still have not completely abandoned. That is why when I find some individual or the evidence that such a person has passed my way, I take childish delight. I mean individual in a very strict sense; someone who has still retained a unique perspective on our common existence or at the very least just saw one little thing just enough differently to momentarily amuse. My mood can be completely turned for the better by a simple act of graffiti that says something more intelligent that the advertisement that it defaces. I fall in love quickly with people who benignly ignore or reject all the pointless matters of etiquette. Invariably these people have a great sense of humour and if ever there is a motto for my family it is “We laugh, to save ourselves from crying”. One most wonderful human being whom I love dearly like a beloved aunt is my dearly beloved Aunt Rose. Aunt Rose is a handful and a half, but she is beautiful. In my mind’s eye I see her standing in her tiny kitchen crammed full of an elephant’s graveyard of bric-a-brac from the seventies. There’s the tiny glow of her halo as she makes grilled cheese sandwiches. She turns to me and asks, what do you think is wrong with Pigeon? Pigeon is one of her three enormous German shepherd mutts. I don’t know. What’s he been doing? Well he’s been watching price is right with me. We discuss and attempt to diagnose the odd behaviour of her dog. The final conclusion is that Pigeon has decided he is human. Far be it from Aunt Rose to tread on the ambitions of her pet. She now indulges the beast to the point where milkshakes and hamburgers are decided to be part of its diet. Nothing changes for the other animals, the remainder of the animals remained content not to watch Bob Barker or eat Chubby’s. Chubby’s was the local fast food restaurant around the corner from her house from which I was usually sent to retrieve Pigeon’s lunch.

Can anyone tell who this is? The photographer? Anything?

I didn’t see the accident itself. What I saw was an elderly woman lying prone with her feet still in the train carriage. Her teeth were bared in a grimace of distress and her lips articulated soundless words. She looked around her, attempting to see the faces above the gathering feet and legs. Before my view was obscured by the concerned, I saw the tiniest red spot on her cheekbone that dripped by heartbeats. I thought about the soft feel and the skin’s tissue paper thinness of my grannie’s cheek when pressed to mine to kiss me a greeting.
Her husband had continued to totter toward the station exit. “Excuse me, sir. Your wife.” I said. He looked at me without recognition. I pointed back toward where she still lay. She had touched the spot on her cheek. The blood rouged her, thick and exaggerated like a little girl who has played with mother’s makeup. The old man followed my finger and there was still a hesitation in his understanding. I left after that hesitation when that understanding brought with it a change in the man I could not bear. The fear and anxiety, the guilt, his helplessness scared me. As he turned back, I went toward the exit. Should I have stayed? What could I have done? The station staff was there and someone said an ambulance was on the way. I could have done nothing but I fled from cowardice, routed by the inevitability of old age, fragility and death from infirmity.

I love to read. I consume words like a chain smoker's cigarettes. I inhale them deeply and often. Occasionally I write. I scribble little messages to this web journal and write insignificant tales, which rest unseen on my computer. Sometimes when reading, I reflect on how easy it is to write. Oddly I am motivated by mediocracy. It's the I-can-do-that attitude that made American so rich and powerful.
Americans, not American'ts. Right, kids? So sometimes I write. Then there are the novels that make me want to Gogol everything I've written and never type again. I read some authors and wonder what else needs to be said. What has been said could not be improved by me, so why try?

For example, here's a cute little sentence I wrote in a story.

"The cicadas made their songs that ebbed and flowed like metallic ocean waves."

I've written better but it wasn't bad enough to make me remove it. It's got a verb which I sometimes forget to add. So, there it is. The problem is when you put that sentence next to this one by Saul Bellow my own words are exposed as the insignificant dawdlings of an amateur.

"...there was this sound of insects, continental and hemispheric, again and again, like surf, and continuous and dense as stars."

I understand this man. I understand what he is saying without knowing any of the context of this photo and I agree with him completely.

Here is a copy of my Christmas letter. I sent them to everyone I know. If you didn't get one that means I have never forgiven you for stealing Katie away from me in the Third grade and kissing her in the day care's supply closet amongst the tower of toilet paper rolls and that bucket of saw dust they used to soak up the children's vomit and pee. You know who you are!

Hello all. Are you ready for another year’s review of my going ons? I would suggest you sit down before continuing on. I would feel a degree of responsibility if I didn’t warn you that there is a possibility that upon reading the shocking news that this year has wrought, you might temporarily lose consciousness which would cause you to fall upon cat who would then eat its way to freedom through your skull. It’s an ignoble death I wouldn’t wish on an advertising executive much less our loved ones.

Are you comfy and sitting? Is the cat fed and safely stowed away? Here come’s the news. I graduated. That’s right after thirty years I have finally run out of education. Although I am may enrol in a correspondence course on gun repair. You never know when this whole computer fad is going to run its course. When it does I want to have a useful trade to fall back on.

I returned to Edinburgh last month to take part in the conferment ceremony which included the tapping of my head with a cap cut from the ancient trousers of everybody’s favourite Calvinist, John Knox. With that odd but sacred blessing, I am now a doctor of Informatics. So if you have an inflammation of your informatic gland, I’m your man.

Since graduating I have joined the ranks of the respectable and got a job. I am a researcher at Royal Holloway College, University of London. Although London is in the name, the campus is in the county of Surrey in a town called Egham, which is just south of Windsor where Queen Elisabeth, my future monarch, resides. It’s a beautiful campus set amongst a forest on top of a hill that overlooks the town. Think of Dracula’s castle looming ominously over the cowering village of ignorant peasants. The founder of the school made his money selling ointments and salves of dubious medicinal benefit during the 19th century. He then used his fortune to found one of the first colleges in England to educate woman. I commute by train to this pleasant place most days and work in an office mostly populated by aged academics and mad Russian scientists on sabbatical.

Although this year has largely been a happy and successful one, there have been setbacks. In my never ceasing quest for a leisurely but profitable life, I endeavoured to make my fortune raising guinea pigs. Did you know that guinea pigs are neither pigs nor indigenous to Guinea. There are woeful tales of early Dutch settlers, having also heard the fiscal siren song of the guinea pig, chartered ships to guinea ready to make their fortunes based on the tales of these creatures only to find that the animal’s misnomer was their misfortune. Guinea pigs also cannot synthesise vitamin C and like humans must get it from their food, but I digress. My business plan included breeding these little creatures for the chain of Chilean restaurants that are becomingly increasingly popular in this fair metropolis. Things were going swimmingly as you could imagine. I was raising the little beasts free range. They had the run of our little back garden. They were happily going about their little guinea pig business. They had created little nests and paths. I saw the pound signs as my first litters were born and were growing quickly. As a female guinea pig is sexually mature in three weeks, I knew after the first litters were reared it would be as good as printing my own money, albeit squeaky furry money.

But. But my friends, disaster struck. My herd, actually ‘group’ is the correct collective word for guinea pigs, suffered a horrible decimation. No. It was worse than a decimation. It was a complete and total guinea pig holocaust wrought by the jowls and claws of an urban fox. The carnage was horrible. It was like a scene from star wars when the imperial forces of Darth Vader attacked the Ewok villages. It was surely the scene that fell to the cutting room floor because its graphic nature caused George Lucas to vomit into his own mouth, swallow hard and then choke out the words “good god! We can’t put that in the movie. It’s too too horrible.” This was a particularly sick minded fox as well as he did not kill to sate his animal hunger. He killed for the pleasure of it. His sadistic little canine mind took pleasure in separating the cute little guinea pig head from the chubby and equally cute guinea pig body. Funny enough these two cute parts of the animal are not so cute when separated and strewn across your garden lawn. There I was surveying the rodent carnage and trying to decide what to make of my misfortune. There was also the practical issue of what must be done with this fuzzy re-enactment of the Khmer Rouge’s Choeung Ek I now stood amongst.

It was truly heart breaking to see these little harmless creatures’ bodies defiled and discarded. Alive they are truly endearing little creatures. They squeak and scamper like little fat men in bear suits. I really mourned their en masse loss. I thought I would forget my fiscal woes and restore a little of their dignity, lost by the manner of their death, by a proper burial. I determined to match together each animal’s head with its corresponding body, tucking in any indiscrete viscera.

This was a harder task than I imagined and I must admit near the end I was less discerning about getting the matches exact. Ultimately I was left with three extra heads and a body of a creature I was sure was not one of my guinea pigs. Once the restored corpses were placed in the long trench grave I dug, I also placed the miscellaneous heads and body along with a few daisies. A few sombre words were said and I laid them to rest.

So this year like most has been one of happiness made more appreciated by the salting of misfortune.

Love and best wishes from us for this holiday season,

Me

Jimmy the drunk has ghosts. He’s one that has flown too close to the sun and brought back things which haunt him. His present addiction is merely there to keep his soul stanchioned to his body. Jimmy is good for light conversation to pass the time waiting for the bus or while you are keeping your toes warm in a pub. You spot him a pint and he’ll chat about what you like. He’ll listen to your gripes and punctuate them with ‘nae bother pal’ and ‘they’re all gadgee bastards’. His anecdotes are light and entertaining. He’s good for catching up on local gossip and the background of the various characters that wander the streets in the neighbourhood. He’s the one who told me that the mayor of Leith came here to work on the Forth rail bridge. The mayor of Leith is an enormous Jamaican who is either smoking cigarettes in the bus shelters or watching the football through the windows of pubs. He’s got an equally enormous mane of thick dreaded hair and beard and carries a serious looking length of wood which is employed as a cane, a tool for perusing the contents of bins and a deterrent for the drunks not cowed by his stature alone. His army green jacket is tattered and the wind blows the stuffing around him like dandelion seeds. Occasionally during these breezy chats with Jimmy, glimpses of his past peek out that explain his present condition. He has seen dark places and done dark things. Things I believe he needs to keep saturated in an alcohol haze to prevent those dark memories from gaining too sharp a focus before his attention. Sometimes his vigilance slips and he reveals those memories to me. As he speaks the words he gets a distant look in his face as if he is trying to see past them and move the topic of conversation along. Out of courtesy I have never pressed for details and obligingly joke away his revelations.

What I do know is he used to be a courier. He took suitcases and sometimes cars filled with cocaine. The men he worked for were the villains made for movies. His employer’s particular perversion was to mark his associates with a knife scar on the cheek. Sometimes Jimmy has told stories about the violence he has seen but more often the topic comes to the money he had and wasted. The other fact I know is that he also used the contents of his deliveries. These reveries are a mixed bag. Like the money, the drugs brought lots of fun stories of excess and excitement but they ultimately left him in his present state. I have heard the full spectrum of drugs, guns and girls stories. There is one that is probably the most poignant, sad and bizarre. I’ll try to compose the fragments I remember Jimmy telling me.

Jimmy’s employers tolerated a degree of usage of the product of their trade, but there were certain rules which had to be abided without exception. Obviously any adulteration of what you were meant to be delivering was frowned upon but most importantly you were strictly forbidden from smoking it. Cocaine was part of the business; crack was for the fuck ups. I suppose the outlaws of society must also have their mores. It was this particular condition of employment that Jimmy fell foul of. Jimmy knew the consequences of his transgression would not be palatable as seeing punishments being meted out were part of his training. He was on call at all times. Therefore it was risky to smoke in his flat as at any point a man could enter the house with a job. He carefully hid any evidence. He hid his pipes with paranoid care and when he indulged he would blow the smoke behind the curtain into the open window in his back bedroom. This went on until some event, the details of which Jimmy could never bear to recount, made him decide to leave the country and clean himself up. He only took nothing but a backpack with some clothes and a cat carrier with his Persian cat also named Jimmy.

He found a hotel room, filled it with food and drink, and bunkered down, prepared to endure the cold turkey cure. Jimmy had assessed the experience as, “Horrible. Absolutely Horrible. A pain nothing like it.” It was worsened considerably by the fact that during Jimmy’s using days, his cat was in the habit of sitting in the window sill sniffing at the open window that Jimmy would expel his crack smoke. As a consequence the cat also became addicted and equally suffered this horrible pain Jimmy described. I have never seen regret and anguish so deeply etched in another human’s expression when Jimmy describe the cat’s yowling from withdraws and the fits that wrecked its little body causing its tongue to loll and its mouth to foam. Of all the things Jimmy blames himself for; it was this innocent cat suffering that haunts him. I suppose it is easy to analyse this and say it was the animal’s vocal sufferings that trigger memories of his own withdraw experience or that the animal is just the token which stands for the summation of his crimes for which he feels culpable. I don’t know but I do know that a few days after he told me how he strangled the cat to end its misery I found Jimmy in the worst state I had seen him. It was so bad that I paid the costs for a room in a men’s shelter where I knew he would be safe until he regained his balance.

Wow. Since the decamping to London, I have really neglected this little journal of mine. I would like to believe it is because of my busy social calender that has keep me away from typing these epistles to the ether of the internet. But we all know that's a load of horseshit. Anyway. Happy Holidays

Outside Westminster Abbey

I've been busy lately with a real live grown up's day job. I really can't complain about that. As daily jobs go, it's good. The problem is it cuts into the things I personally find important such as: writing silly little stories which I sometimes accost this blog with, just taking walks as I am a wanderer by nature and my soul finds nourishment in being lost, and working on my projects like developing a plan to bring down western civilisation be assassinating its celebrities as I believe the west would lose all guidance and focus if the red carpets of the world were darken by their viscera. A culling this way must come. The impact would be far greater on society at large than if a G8 summit disappear into radioactive vapour. Our economies would become paralytic and our towns choked with commemorative fountains. Discord and chaos would drive our citizens to reflection and they would wake as if from a dream and recognise a new order of things. And I as the architect would become the first celebrity of this new age and as a consequence would be sacrificed at the new mount Golgotha, the scorched Hollywood hill, which would begin a new tradition of killing any person who sought fame for their actions. Or not, but at least I wouldn’t have to read about which celebrity was the first to adopt a child from every ethnicity found on Disney’s “it’s a small world after all” ride. It’s a win-win project either way.

One day, I bought a train ticket

I slept well. No better or worse than usual. I went to sleep after an average day, and dreamt average dreams. It was the waking that was unusual. I usually spend these mornings skipping between wakefulness and sleep until hunger or bladder draws me from the warmth of the duvet. This morning I awoke like a switch had been flipped between the two states of consciousness. flip. sleep. flip. awake. Yet, I was certainly still dreaming. Wasn’t I? My room was unfamiliar. Strange hues of light came from the open window, pushed aside the curtains with the breeze and painted the opposite wall. The duvet wrapped around me ceased its metaphoric similarity with a womb. Its fabric indeed held the warmth and feel of flesh. My ear pressed to the pillow heard a heart beat. Was it in time with my own? Was it mine I heard? Sensing sacrilege to leave my bed so early on a weekend, I wriggled in bed to find a position to better fight the growing compulsion to jump out of bed and greet this strange new day. My hand brushed against something. I brought it up from the depths of the covers like a treasure hunter’s first doubloon. I held it close for examination. It resembled an elongated sun-dried tomato. Its black-red paper skin was shiny and thin. Giving it a pinch between my two fingers revealed a spongy springiness to the mass within. I set it aside on the nightstand and surrendered to the fate of waking up early. I threw the duvet to the side and the morning’s chill hit me. Sitting up I rubbed the sleep away from my eyes. Each step tickled my bare feet. I raised a foot and felt the sole. Nothing unusual was found. I stood there wiggling my toes into the carpet like a barefoot child in freshly cut grass. I felt the individual fibres pressed against my feet. I brushed along the carpet with my foot in an arc before me. The disturbed fibres caught the light from another angle and shimmered like beach sand. The newness of everything around me was captivating. I had to touch everything on my way to the bathroom. Picture frames with their cold glass faces, and the finger prints left on the pictures of moments past, frozen faces of familiar people striking unnatural poses. Plastic light switches that felt like a single loose tooth wiggling in its socket. Latex painted walls with their dusty and chemical taste. The smell of last night’s burnt dinner still lingered to tease my nostrils. Everything was beautiful and right and perfect. But. But, I was not prepared for the newness that met my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I stood there lost at the stranger who stared at me from behind the sink. The features were the same. The same blue eyes tucked in snug under heavy and puffy lids. The same quick wrinkles came running from the corners of the eyes towards the protection of the thick growth of hair, which still only showed the occasional grey wisps. The same thin lips which revealed only the slightest line pink, but it was certainly someone else’s reflection. Fear rushed through my nerves and turned my empty stomach. The movement was wrong. The stranger aped me perfectly but something was wrong. I tried to ignore it. I turned on the hot water and got ready to take a shower. Occasionally, I peeked at the strange version of me going through the same motions. Is this what I look like? I am distracted by the whisper of the water pouring into the tub. Swirls of water slipped down the drain. Individual drops leapt onto the inside of the tub. They cling for a moment and then are bumped from above as another drop slides down. I dropped my pyjamas to the floor and am about to step into the tub when I see my reflection from the corner of my eye. I paused, not wanting to confirm this new discovery. Timidly, I looked down at my own body, and reflection was not lying. My breath rushed out of me and I leapt back like I had been burnt.
completely smooth. completely hairless. completely sexless. like a little girl’s doll. nothing but a Môn pubis bump. There was no mark, no injury, no pain. No sign that there was ever anything. I sunk to the bathroom floor staring at the unblemished skin where my cock was last perched like the ridiculous proboscis of some pubic beast. Had I abused myself the night before? Surely no bout of self love could inflict such an injury. Such absurd thoughts ran through my mind. I tried to calm myself. Things could be worse, but I had a hard time thinking of examples or supporting arguments. I felt the spot and cupped what was not there to be cupped. I leaned back against the wall, stared at the ceiling, and watched the steam cloud race toward extinction. What had I eaten? What had I done? Should I call a doctor? What do I say? What specialist do you call for such a complaint? The bizarreness and absurdity of the situation made it difficult to appreciate its tragedy. Is there a lost and found department for such incidents? Would I have to sift through a half full box of forgotten umbrellas, eye glasses, and other men’s members? What am I going to do?
Articulate thoughts slowly were clouded over as I watched the steam materialize on the bathroom mirror. It slowly gained ground on the unfogged portions of the mirror like the rising tide drowning more and more beach with each breaking wave. After, what I learnt was several hours, I returned attention to my missing penis, but with an unexpected serenity, my sexless fate no longer concerned me. The bathroom was in a complete fog with occasional strands slipping guiltily away under the door. I got into the shower and felt each drop hit my skin.
That was two days ago. Things are so different now. A caterpillar gains two wings in its metamorphosis. I lost a cock. I constantly drifted into a meditative mindset about the blandest of thing. Huge amounts of time would escape while I stood staring at rain drops under a street lamp or listening to the timber of a deep-voiced barista whose confirmation of orders and statement of prices vibrated in my chest. Yet, the strange looks or occasional impatience I encountered never troubled me. The world was lost to me in that I ceased being a participant, but the world was found by constantly seeing it for the first time. One day, I bought a train ticket.
I bought a train ticket and left everything I knew. I took my seat, tickets still in hand and waited for the train to leave the station.
The train window showed me blurry pictures of the rows of cardboard houses perched along the rusty rail tracks, and blank green canvases dotted with ewes and their spring lambs. Running east, the train turned to follow the coast. Tears instantly blinded me. They chased each other towards my chin without sobs. There was no sadness, but a beauty so intense my chest felt compressed. A heavy weight constricted my breath to shallow sips of air. I wiped my face and closed my eyes to ease the pressure. When, I opened them again, the sensation was no less intense. I continued to watch the calm dark green for as long as I could until the ache made me short of breath. Right before I felt I would lose consciousness, I would close my eyes tight and hold my head. The pain would subside, and I would look once more. Moths willingly burn themselves upon the candle’s light and now I know why.

Today is a day for poetry. Years ago a poet died. It doesn’t matter too much which one. Poets die. This one was dying for years until the job was finished properly in a Florida hospital. His death day is a marker for poets of his breed who too have died or will. I believe . . . yes . . . I believe it is a day for sentimentality and not for such dark tones of loss.

How about this from another dead poet:

Sonnet V – Pablo Neruda

I did not hold your night, or your air, or the dawn:
only the earth, the truth of the fruit in clusters,
the apples that swell as they drink the sweet water,
the clay and resins of your sweet smelling land.

From Quinchamali where your eyes began
to the Frontera where your feet were made for me,
you are my dark familiar clay:
holding your hips, I hold the wheat in its field again.

Woman from Arauco, maybe you didn't know
how before I loved you I forgot your kisses.
But my heart went on, rememebering your mouth - and I went on

and on through the streets like a man wounded,
until I understood, Love: I had found
my place, a land of kisses and volcanoes.

--translation by Stephen Tapscott

I am a fretter, one who frets. I don’t know how this happened. I am a bookish softy, but somewhere my genes are the makings of a right tough son-of-a-bitch. I vividly remember my grandfather standing at the screen door of the porch calling for his wife to bring him her sewing kit. He was holding his thumb tightly and close to his chest. From between the fingers, steady tributaries of blood flowed. He patiently waited on the front step because he dare not spill his blood on grandmother’s carpet. Nothing wrong with being house proud, she would say.

The only sense of urgency came in response to grandma’s casual queries as to why ever would he want her sewing kit. He replied, “Damnit woman. Quit your fussing and bring me some thread and a needle.” He embarrassed himself by his impoliteness. He softened his tone to ask me to come outside with him because he was going to need my help.
Grandma was not as composed when she stepped to the screen door. The “oh my god” refrain repeated peppered with phrases like “what have you done now?” and “what happened?”
“I’ll be alright. The boy is going to help.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure. I'm sure.” He turned to me and motioned, “C’mon.” I followed him to the picnic bench where we usually ate watermelon sprinkled with salt and spat the seeds at grandma’s multitude of cats that were constantly milling about the farm.
So far I had followed these events with the uncomprehending stoicism that only children are capable of. This impassivity failed me when grandpa charged me with the duty to hold the torn flesh of his thumb together while he stitched with light blue thread the gash that ran from the tip of the digit to the meat of his palm.
I started to feel cold flushes and grandpa must have noticed the colour leave my face. He buttressed my consciousness by his deep and grumbling voice, “You alright, boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re almost done here.” (We were not. He had not yet sewn a third of the way.)

It took all four of my small fingers of each of my hands on either side of the long cut to match its edges together. His skin was sticky from the drying blood and if I moved my fingers, the cut would open again and provide a fresh dollop of blood.
“Steady now.” Grandpa would say.

Grandma came out with a bottle of rubbing alcohol to wash out the infection.
“Go on.” He nodded to her, pausing his sewing. She poured the clear liquid over our hands as timidly as if the resulting pain would be felt by her instead of her husband. Grandpa registered the pain by closing his eyes tightly for an extended pause.
“Alright. That’ll do. Mama can you get some clean rags or bandages if we got ‘em?”
“Yes dear. Hold on.”
“Let’s get this done before that woman tries to kill me again.” He whispered with a smirk and a mischievous wink. He finished his uneven but sufficient suture and no more notice or mention was given to the injury wrapped in gauze and sealed with a small strip of duct tape.

I lose faith and interest in humanity on a daily basis. We can't be far now from what the newspapers have been aching for, which is a headline that reads "Muslims! Run for you your life!" In the South that's what racism looks like. It's bold and up front, its horror and ugliness born bare for all to see. There's no "I ain't racist or nothing..." preamble. I prefer that to the gentile racism of the North and Europe where pig-ignorance and bigotry is usually swathed in middle class lefty patronisation or couched in politically corrected doublespeak.

But I digress. Instead I want to show the little things that help redeem my estimation of our little confused collective watusi upon this earth.

Usually for me it is the ridiculous that I find comforting. More often than not it is also the profane. I was reading Iggy Pop and the Stooge’s concert rider. It’s a thoroughly fun read through out. In it Iggy Pop’s stage presence is referred to as “He’ll be all over the place like a mad woman’s shit.” There are plenty other gorgeous moments of ridiculousness to be found. Check it out and forget for a moment that the world is ugly and full of misery.

As my mom used to say, "god bless his pointed little head".

Have you ever met someone or even just passed someone in the hallway and that was sufficient to know that any further interaction would bind you by duty to mankind to follow that person into an empty men's toilet and shiv him in the buttocks? Yeah, me too.

My family has a number of historic anecdotes of our time in the western hemisphere. There are also a few vague references to ancestral eastern-hemispheric going ons that involve horse thievery which might explain the decision of our forefather to relocate to the new world. Since that carrier of my surname brought it and himself to the land of providence, we have accumulated a rich oral tradition of misfortunes that have befallen our race. There is the tale of the confederate sniper hunted down and shot with his family as they slept. There is another story about a whole branch of my family tree being murdered and thrown down a Virginian well because the locals didn't take kindly to the ruckus those predecessors caused while building the railroad nearby. However these tales are merely appetisers to the feast of calamity one person of my linage endured. A cousin of some manner of multiple removals and ordinal number was a farm labourer. His daily endeavours featured his proximity to a vat of pig waste. Why there is ever a need or how pig waste is put into vats has never been sufficiently explained to me. This proximity was ultimately the cause of my misfortunate relation’s demise. He died, drowned in an enormous vat of pig manure and urine. Apparently the slurry of pig piss and shit has similar properties to that of quicksand. Haven fallen there would have been no way to extricate himself without assistance. The one difference being sand usually has a more benign odour compared the indescribable stench that pigs create. It truly is a horror upon the senses and once you have had the merest of whiffs in your nostrils, you will forever remember it.
As if this fate wasn’t undignified enough, the gods saw it fit to add yet another heaping helping of contempt for one of their creations. My cousin met his particular god at the end of the day just before a long weekend. The consequence being that his earthly remains remained were his spirit departed it for several days. His corpse marinated in that hellish concoction until someone else made its bewildering discovery.
This submersion resulted in a curing of the victim’s flesh so that instead of a death in pig shit soup, you might have thought that he quietly died in his sleep during a relaxing island holiday. He had the healthy tanned look of a retired banker as he peacefully rested in the coffin and an unknown preacher recited scripture over him. The relatives who had been at the service all agreed that our cousin had the look of a man of leisure dressed in a sharp but hired suit. However they also agreed that throughout the service and even at the grave site, you couldn’t help occasionally catching the scent of pig shit drifting in the wind.