Okay, this is the essay part. That first part is a terrible poem written by me to illustrate how to make your own found poem. Of course, you should know that I was not a natural-born poet. I am among the lower percentages of America’s worst-possible poets. Right there somewhere between the poetry books of Farley Bumbletongue and the Collected Musings of Hans Poopferbrains of Snarkytown, Wisconsin.
But I take great pride in my abilities as a terrible poet. You see, what I mainly was, truly was, was an English teacher of middle school and high school kids. And found poems were an activity in the classroom intended to teach writing skills, creativity, and an appreciation of what a poem actually is.
I needed a large usable picture file cut out of Christmas catalogs, Walmart advertisements, newspapers, magazines (“What are those?” is the most common comment you would get out of today’s classrooms,) grocery-store bargain flyers, outdated calendars, and any other non-pornographic picture sources available.
I would hand out three random images pulled out of the picture file without looking at them to each student (or small groups of students) and then require them to create a poem of at least twelve lines with an optional rhyme scheme and rhythm.
I would have to remind them not to eat the pictures, even if they were pictures of food. And with middle school students I would have to have extra pictures for the next class to replace the ones they ate anyway.
I would tell them there was a time-limit, specified to be much shorter than the actual time I planned to give them, and then let them create horrible poetry. Near Vogon quality in its horribleness.
When all of this was done, we would have a good long laugh by sharing the pictures and poems, and find out who the truly wacky and perverted poets were.
Now, don’t go telling parents that we teachers are wasting their children’s precious learning time this way, but it is not I lesson I created. Simply a lesson I used at least once every year.
But the real question on my mind is, “Given three random pictures, what kind of poem would you write?” Feel free to share.
The next day, of course, was Sunday. And after Sunday School and Church, Bobby knew exactly where to find Horatio. It was a screen porch with room enough for two rocking chairs, a futon couch/bed foldout, an old easy chair, and a small table for iced tea, lemonade, and the checkerboard. But there was also a spot on the homemade rug in front of Grandpa’s rocking chair where the sunbeams converged and made a warming zone that was absolutely perfect for warming arthritic dog joints and soothing old-dog complaints that needed to be soothed to allow half-day-long naps.
“So, Horatio, here you are!”
The elderly collie yawned. “Yes, Bobby. Here I are.”
“Silly old dog! You’re supposed to say Here I am.”
“Yes, I know that. You must remember, every time you hear me speaking like this, the voice is actually coming out of your own imagination.”
“Sure, and I guess I must’ve made you say it wrong on purpose for some evil reason.”
“Not an evil reason. A familiar one. Grandpa Butch makes that kind of joke by mirroring the things you say as if they were incorrect on purpose. It’s the way his sense of humor works, and you are really smart enough to know that, though you often pretend that you aren’t. Your mind filled in the blanks in a way that sounds right to you, even when there’s joking involved because that’s the world you’re used to.”
Of course, Bobby knew one hundred percent that he was writing the entire discussion in his head because he wanted Horatio to talk like he knew Sherlock Holmes probably would.
Bobby sat on the porch floorboards in his short pants and buried his right hand in the silky fur of Horatio’s neck.
“Why do dogs make such good friends?” Bobby said more to himself than to Horatio.
“Because dogs love their chosen humans. And a dog knows how to listen to people much better than any cat or parrot, or goldfish. Dogs may not know the words you are using all of the time. But they know your smell. And they know how to read what you are thinking and feeling because the see it in your face. No stupid cat can do that.”
“But cats are better at catching mice and rats,” said Shane, while stepping out on the porch with a piece of Mom’s cherry pie on a small plate that he handed to Bobby.
“Thanks, Shane.”
“You’re welcome. I had mine in the kitchen, and Mom asked me to bring yours out here.”
“It’s good,” Bobby said with the first bite in his mouth. “But, hey, wait. How did you know what Horatio said about cats?”
“And how did you get the information so wrong, too?” added Horatio.
“It wasn’t Horatio talking. It was you.”
“Oh.”
“See, my dear Robert, I told you my words all come out of your imagination. And sometimes your mouth,” said Horatio.
“Did you hear Horatio say that last thing?”
“What?”
“That thing he said about where the words come from?”
“I didn’t hear the dog say anything,” said Shane.
“I told you, dear boy, it’s only in your head.
“Well, of course, it is.”
“Is what?” asked Shane.
“You shouldn’t be holding two conversations in your head as the same time. You are confusing your brother Shane,” said Horatio.
“Yes, see. Only I can hear the dog talking.”
“You’re weird,” said Shane, grinning at Bobby as he left him to enjoy his pie with Horatio as company.
Then, something in the yard caught Bobby’s attention. Out between the porch and the barn, on the gravel drive, a large rat was slinking along doing rat business as if he didn’t care who or what saw him.
“Who is that, Horatio?”
“That, dearest Robert, is Whitewhiskers Billy. He’s an evil, egg-sucking rat.”
“So, that’s Whitewhiskers Billy, is it?”
“Why would that rat be Whitewhiskers Billy?” asked Grandpa as Bobby realized that Grandpa Butch had suddenly appeared at the doorway between the porch and the house.
“Did you hear Horatio call him that?” asked Bobby.
“No, I heard you say it,” said Grandpa.
“Oh. So, why is he called Whitewhiskers Billy?
“Because his whiskers smell white. He eats chicken droppings. It makes them sort of bleached white,” said Horatio.
“Because his whiskers smell white,” said Bobby.
“Smell white? Horatio tell you that?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, I think we should put some rat poison out, maybe in the barn and under the hen house..” said Grandpa. “That will give old Whitewhiskers Bill something to think about.”
“Will that kill him?” Bobby asked.
“It should. But we will have to be careful that the dog and the stupid turkens don’t get into it. We would hate to lose any of them by being less than careful.”
Bobby nodded wide-eyed. He certainly didn’t want Horatio to get poisoned. Of course, if it got a turken or two, he wouldn’t be too upset.
“I need to check the flyer I got from the hardware store in Clarion. I think I remember a sale on a good poison to put in the barn.” Grandpa left the porch again too.
As Bobby continued to sit in the warm, yellow sunshine with Horatio, he began noticing his bare white legs, how girlish they looked in the sunlight.
“Can you tell if Blueberry is a girl or a boy by smell?”
“She definitely smells girlish. No boy smell. No boy pee. Lots of girly flower smells.”
“I have always believed she is a girl.”
“Yes, and you kinda like her too. It’s a shame she already has a boyfriend.”
“Horatio!”
“You know I can tell how you feel about her by the scent of romance whenever you’re around her. And I know that whatever gender-irregularities she may have, you are convinced that she must be a girl. Remember, I will always know what you are thinking because…”
“Because you are the world’s greatest dog-detective with your all-knowing sniffer.”
“See there? You are a lot smarter than you let people think you are. And you are a great imaginer too.”
Our strength as human beans is not from the power of fang or claw, nor even from the power of Hercules’s muscles (since only Austrian dudes named Arnold and CGI Hulks have those,) but from our adaptability.
Of course, we are bound to call upon that power soon. There are those religions that say the world will end by 2026 (which wouldn’t be quite as concerning if one of those religions wasn’t climate science, based entirely on factual observations and measurements.) So, we will need to adapt to breathing carbon dioxide and develop fire-proof skin as the surface temperatures rise above the flash-point temperatures of cloth, wood, and eventually steel.
Now that the spoiled mango with a yellow bird’s nest on his head is no longer King of America, we have to adapt to a two-party political system where the GOP (Greedy Old Perverts) are led by Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam (who love guns and are immune to consequences; you can blow up dynamite in front of them and it only turns their face black and singes their eyebrows and moustache,) and the Donkey party are led by Bugs Bunny (in a dress and calling anti-maskers morons) and Daffy Duck (who only thinks of himself and his stupid, impulsive self-destructiveness.)
And somehow we have to get that whole mess to save us from a swiftly warming ocean, the profit-making corporate polluters, and a population that is working harder and making less money for it than they were half a century ago.
Maybe (as in the Paffooney where the flying saucer is about to snatch the kid bounced out of the rumble seat) the aliens will save us.
But we have to adapt. We have a tendency to be suspicious of outsiders and people who look different than us. And, boy! Do the Zeta Reticulans ever look different than us! Well, except for Jeff Bezos. He’s actually an artificially intelligent robot created by aliens. He actually began life as an electric duldo in the 1980’s.
The aliens need to teach us how to use cold fusion and zero-point energy instead of fossil fuels. And how to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turn it into wood the way all the trees we have cut down used to do.
If we can rapidly adapt to changing situations the way cartoon characters do during car chases, we will all be okay.
One of the side “benefits” of having diabetes is that it often comes with an extra helping of diabetic depression. I had the blues really bad this week. I am not the only member of my family suffering.
So, what do you do about it?
Or, rather, what does a goofy idiot like me do about it?
Especially on a windy day when the air is saturated with pollen and other lovely things that I am absolutely, toxically allergic to?
Well, for one thing, I used the word toxically in this post because it is a funny-sounding adverb that I love to use even though the spell-checker hates it, no matter how I spell or misspell it.
And I bought a kite.
Yes, it is a cheap Walmart kite that has a picture of Superman on it that looks more like Superboy after taking too much kryptonite-based cough syrup for his own super allergies.
But I used to buy or make paper diamond kites just like this one when I was a boy in Iowa to battle the blues in windy spring weather. One time I got one so high in the sky at my uncle’s east pasture that it was nothing more than a speck in the sky using two spools of string and one borrowed ball of yarn from my mother’s knitting basket. It is a way of battling blue meanies.
And I bought more chocolate-covered peanuts. The chocolate brings you up, and the peanut protein keeps you from crashing your blood sugar. I have weathered more than one Blue Meanie attack with m&m’s peanuts.
And I used the 1957 Pink and White Mercury of Imagination to bring my novel, The Baby Werewolf,home. I wrote the last chapter Monday night in the grip of dark depression, and writing something, and writing it well, makes me a little bit happier.
And I have collected a lot of naked pictures of nudists off Twitter. Who knew that you could find and communicate with such a large number of naked-in-the-sunshine nuts on social media? It is nice to find other nude-minded naturists in a place that I thought only had naked porn until I started blogging on naturist social media. Being naked in mind and body makes me happier than I ever thought it would.
And besides being bare, I also like butterflies and books and baseball and birds, (the Cardinals have started baseball season remember) and the end of winter. “I just remember of few of my favorite things, and then I don’t feel so bad!” Oh, and I like musical movies like The Sound of Music too.
The monsters of deep, dark depression are being defeated as we speak.
Last night my family and I went to the new Disney movie Jungle Book directed by John Favreau. It was the movie version I have been waiting for all my life.
The amazing thing about this movie is the way it took the book and layered its themes and central idea on top of the classic 60’s Disney cartoon. The music is still there and intact, though mostly moved to the end credits. The kid is still cute and mostly vulnerable, at least until the conclusion. And they have still given the Disneyesque comedic touch to the character of Baloo the bear, voiced by comedian Bill Murray in the this incarnation. But this is a live action movie and the kid-friendly Bowdlerization of the original story is a thing no longer.
A classic book illustration by E.J. Detmold
Fortunately for the young actor, Neel Sethi, they don’t require him to play the entire movie naked as would be required by a strictly by-the-book approach. They allow him the Disney-dignity of the cartoon red loin cover. But the sense of a human child facing the violence of the jungle naked, armed only with his creature-appropriate natural defenses, has been put back into the story. This version literally has teeth and claws. We see the boy’s body wounded and scarred during the course of his life in the jungle. And at a time of crucial confrontation, Mowgli takes the defense stolen from man village, a torch of the feared red flower, and throws it away into the water, facing the terrible tiger with only his wits and the abilities of his fangless, clawless human body. Thus, an essential theme I loved about the book when I was twelve is restored. Man has a place in the natural world even without the protections of civilization.
The story-telling is rich and nuanced, with multiple minor characters added. Gray Brother has been restored to Mowgli’s family. The fierce power of Mowgli’s wolf mother has been written back into the screenplay. And the character of Akela is given far more importance in the story than the cartoon could even contemplate. Although his role in aiding Mowgli to kill the tiger Shere Khan has been taken away from him, Akels’s death becomes the central motivation bringing Mowgli and Shere Khan together for the final inevitable confrontation. And this movie does not shy away from the reality of death as the cartoon did, resurrecting Baloo at the end and Kaa’s attempts to eat Mowgli being turned into a joke (though I would like to note if you have never read the book, Kaa is not supposed to be a villain. He was Mowgli’s wise and powerful friend in the book). Even the tiger survives in the cartoon version. This is no longer a cute cartoon story with a Disney sugared-up ending.
I will always treasure the 1960’s cartoon version. I saw it at the Cecil Theater in Mason City, Iowa when I was ten. I saw it with my mother and father and sisters and little brother. It was my favorite Disney movie of all time at that point in my life. I read and loved the book two years after that, a paperback copy that I bought with my own money from Scholastic book club back in 1968, in Mrs. Reitz’s sixth grade classroom. That copy is dog-eared, but still in my library. But this movie is the best thing that could possibly happen to bring all of that love of the story together and package it in a stunning visual experience.
Here;s something undeniably true; Astrology is NOT science.
That being true, it is also true that there is a certain untestable validity to the ideas of someone gifted with a semi-accurate intuitive foresight I find Nostradamus endlessly fascinating. But I don’t rely on any of his so-called predictions. It is uncanny that his quatrains can be interpreted as having come true after the fact. I remember Orson Welles narrating a documentary on old Nosty back in the 1980’s offering a possible prediction for the near future. in which the third antichrist arises in the Middle East and sends destruction through the air to the New City.
Osama Bin Laden’s attack on the World Trade Center Towers in 2001 is a scary coincidence. But it is no more of a useful prediction of the future than Nosty’s predictions of the first and second antichrists, Napoleon and Hitler. Did anyone know about any of these three predictions at a time when they would’ve benefitted anybody?
The Coming End of the World
My most recent Christian faith system was, unfortunately, the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They are an eschatological faith that believes Jehovah God will soon destroy “This wicked system of things” and the bad people will all be done away with before all the newly “perfect people” take over and turn this world into a paradise. I am doomed. I have knocked on doors and shared the “Good News from God’s Word the Bible” with all the potential “other sheep.” But that’s not good enough to punch my ticket to paradise. I don’t keep the right words in my heart.
But my wife and other Witnesses are now eagerly waiting for “tribulation” to wipe out the rest of us so that the good times can begin. Wow. Jehovah can wipe you out just for touching the Ark of the Covenant with the wrong hands. He’s a rather angry, vindictive sort of God.
And yet, the world does seem to be ending. Actual climate scientists are presenting evidence in their latest report that it is a problem that will overwhelm us faster than I am ready for. And corruption in the world governments, prompted by the fossil fuels industry, continue to ignore the problem in favor of short-term profits. Talk about “having the wrong words written on their hearts!”
It does actually look like we are all gonna die. Not an A+ outcome.
Predictions and Solutions
So, what predictions does an amateur wizard like Mickey of the Goofy Grin have to offer about living under unlucky stars?
Well, here’s one I know will very likely prove true; If the world is ending tomorrow, I will be among the first to die. Seriously, my health is poor enough that a hot wind can easily blow out my candle. When the zombie apocalypse begins, I have warned my children to make good use of the time they gain to get away while the zombies are picnicking on my gray matter. I believe my brain should be pretty tasty.
But even though I and many many other people just like me will fold up and die at the beginning of the coming dark times, that doesn’t mean everyone is doomed. Humanity has shown remarkable resilience against war, famine, disease and that boney guy on the fourth horse. They may yet come up with a magic-bullet solution that allows life on earth to continue. Even if it becomes the planet of the cockroaches. And probably lawyers. I’m sure there is a legal maneuver that gets around not having air to breathe. From a God’s-eye perspective, there is still an entire universe to play with. We could go get reincarnated somewhere else in the galaxy. Maybe there are people out there who are smarter than us. There are ways to heal the ecosphere if we just have the will to do it.
It’s been two weeks, and no spider sense or webbing shooting out of my wrists has happened yet.
My beard glows in the dark (if I use the flashlight properly.)
But no verifiable stuff that might get me an invitation to join the Avengers.
How do I know that it was a spider bite that has caused two weeks worth of painful spider-wound? Well, this is the second time I have been bitten by a brown recluse spider in Texas. The previous time was in 1982 in South Texas. I had to go to the doctor with a temperature of 103 degrees, a necrotic wound in my right armpit. And I needed sulfa drugs to keep from getting worse and possibly dying.
This time around I didn’t go to the doctor. Not only was it a much smaller wound, only causing a slight fever and a moderate wound infection, but going to the doctor brings with it an added chance of catching and dying from the Covid Delta variant. I am vaccinated. But I also have three of the serious conditions that have caused the only Delta deaths among the vaccinated people with breakthrough infections.
I bought myself a new Moana doll from Walmart to make myself feel better about being bit by a spider with no resultant super powers. But it is a reminder too that my mother, the doll-maker, is dying.
The spider that bit me this time around must’ve been a smaller one than the one that bit me in South Texas. That one caused a wound that was larger than a quarter. This time it was smaller than a penny. The wound itself is caused because the spider’s venom dissolves flesh into a juice the spider can suck out of the victim. The biggest danger it causes is an infection that turns into gangrene. I avoided that outcome by repeatedly cleaning the wound with soap and water.
So, this spider bite is not going to kill me. It is sore, but not deadly. Like the first time, I never felt the bite happen, nor saw the little spider. But I have no desire to be bit a third time in my life.
And, unfortunately, I do not get to be Glowbeard the newest Avenger.
Catch a Falling Star 