Onion rings as a child. And how I love them now.
I mean if anyone were to ever make them for me
but they don’t. Sometimes I look at Saturn and wonder
what it might look like without onion rings, and
whether or not Saturn tastes yummy, and
who, of course, would eat the onions. Sometimes
I even think I am Saturn, and my rings are solid
and doing well, drawn a hundred years ago by
a blind child who drew a spaceship in
the sand.
A salty selection from the Solar System snack tray. What’s yours? – mh clay
Nobody really knows where it’s from.
Perhaps China’s snow and rice, mixed with saltpeter, frozen to zero
Perhaps Ancient Greece, where Hippocrates proclaimed it livened
the “life juices” Perhaps Persia, with their rose water and vermicelli,
saffron and secret spices Or the Medicis, with their tin ice pots,
strawberries, raspberries, and currants
We can thank the Quakers for bringing it to George Washington
and Carlo Gatti, not a mobster – outside Charing Cross, selling
scoops for a penny
or AB Marsalls’ Book of Cookery, that introduced the ‘cornet’ –
made of crushed almonds, pressed, not ironed –
All playing in a band where nobody was certain of the tune
and yet so lively
Must it have milk? they ask
Must it have saltpeter? Why add rice?
Can cinnamon be added which stings the eyes?
Durian which putrifies the nose?
Jackfruit?
Mung Bean? Crema Catalaña? Red Bean?
How much milk fat?
How many globules?
How small the crystallines?
What is a colloidal system?
But the question beyond all others
that I always return to
and the answer I always seek, is:
How is it that I was so fortunate to have met you in this life?
And how fortunate are we, if asking the question? (Oh, and sprinkles; gotta have sprinkles.) – mh clay
Don Cherry plays the pocket trumpet. I think those are the most beautiful words in the world.
For there is nothing more delicious or more red than a cherry, and there is nothing warmer or more comforting than a pocket, especially when you have your hand in it, especially when someone puts their hand in it, and for love. And trumpets are of course lovely, too, even out of context. In fact, if there is anything wrong about this sentence, it’s got to be Don.
But, let’s give Don the benefit of the doubt. ;) (We welcome Ricky back to our crazy congress of Contributing Poets with this submission. Read more of his madness on his renewed page – check it out.) – mh clay
are shy and don’t like
to be touched by other trees.
The spaces can be so slender
between them that they form
graceful lines that look like
the old hand of lightning
constructed from equal parts
hesitation, vim and doubt.
That’s why you know that
like lightning, it is not real,
or at least its reality is doubtful.
What’s real are the spaces between
what it separates from itself.
Let’s get real; gimme elbow room. – mh clay
By the time I pronounce bruschetta correctly as many times as I pronounced bruschetta incorrectly, I will be an old man, and no longer able to afford bruschetta, and if I can afford bruschetta, I will no longer know what it is and I will ask “What’s that?” and they will say “bruschetta” and I will say, “Who cares, Tommy? I for one, do not.” And then I will eat it and I will enjoy it, and they will say, “Tony.”
Buon appetito! (Whatever your name is.) – mh clay
He was the Headless Horseman. But he lost his horse because his horse ran away and of course he had no head and could not find him. So he become The Headless Man Without A Horse. He stayed that way for quite a while and everyone called him that. Eventually people forgot he ever had a horse, and people called him the Headless Man. Eventually, people forgot that he ever had a head in the first place and so he became Jim. Eventually, everybody just called him Ol’ Jim. “Isn’t that Ol’ Jim?” They would say. “I do believe it is. There goes Ol’ Jim, always riding the bus to somewhere or other.”
Affix no name to obvious affliction; making it real, demanding our attention. – mh clay
In 1963, George Harrison sang: “She’s Got The Devil In Her Heart” and then “NO NO NO” and then “This I can’t believe.”
It was a terrible thing to say because there were millions and millions of girls who loved George Harrison so much so terribly much that they cried and fainted and asked themselves, Could he be talking about me? Secretly they wanted for George Harrison to say anything at all about them so they could faint and pee all over the dance floor when they fainted and their muscles relaxed even if it meant that George Harrison was saying that they had the devil in their hearts, no no no and that he couldn’t believe it.
It would have been so much better if he had simply said Judith or Cindy or Patty or Jill Has The Devil In Her Heart No No No so fewer girls would think that they had the devils in their heart woe woe woe and just the one guilty one would and then she would turn herself in to the authorities, or as the English would say, bobbies.
Now all those girls are really old and on respirators and never think about George Harrison. I bet one was a murderer and got away with it. A long time ago. In love with George Harrison and killing people. She probably burned the house down while innocent people were sleeping peacefully inside. What a terrible person she was. Well, what can you do? She loved George Harrison. And she really did have the devil in her heart no no etc.
I always thought George Harrison was very perceptive, and also very spiritual. I just wish that once he had taken the law into his own hand, rather than sing all the time, for the sake of everybody but that one terrible person whose name probably isn’t even Judith, or Patty or Jill–Cindy is an excellent choice of names. It was probably Cindy. Surely, with a name like Cindy, you would fall in love with fire and screaming and murder.
Yes, in a world of tragedy, George Harrison definitely had it going on!
George did have it goin’ on! Maybe Cindy just had no goals, so she took any road that came along (imagine the road it must be to make one love “fire and screaming and murder”). But, George also said, “When you don’t know where you’re goin’, any road will take you there.” – mh clay
I am not sure how someone
came up with this idea but
it is brilliant.
I have no reason to believe
that the man who imagined it
did so while reading sad letters–
many of them–but I have
no reason to believe he wasn’t.
You may say: “Perhaps a woman
wrote it.” Cautiously, I would reply,
“I have no reason to believe so” and
then would interrupt myself to say:
”No, she didn’t.”
Who is she?
The woman who didn’t write the screenplay
for ATTACK OF THE 50 FT WOMAN.
I would very much like to meet her.
Meanwhile, the other woman, this 50 ft. woman,
is apparently very angry at her husband who is
committing hanky panky left right and center
and she is determined to find him and take him
in one of her huge hands and crush his whole
body like a walnut.
I believe that the trailer even shows a picture
of him, dressed nicely in a suit, in her hand,
squirming. You can almost feel the anticipation,
which is delicious.
The walnut part I added myself. I tried
to crush one years ago during a strange
and interesting flight of fancy but it only
left a reddish impression in the palm of
my hand and a little aching in my fingers;
I felt foolish and alone.
Later that night, and far away,
I dreamt that I was living
in Babylon and listening to Marduk
the short-tempered god of Babylon
talking on and on about floods. “Then
I will make this flood” and “Then I
will make that flood” until I fall asleep
in my dream and wake up and see
that I am right in front of the TV and
there is the 50 ft woman in front of me.
It’s just as well that she’s there.
We live in a society today that would
not honor or respect a 50 ft woman,
who, once upon a time, would have
been likened to a god. It’s all in
the dream.
Even though the 50 ft woman was
made fifty years ago, truthfully, they
didn’t care for her much even then.
They liked things like spoon bread.
And 5 cent cigars. Not fifty-foot women.
And there was only one of them.
My doctor says: “You must learn
to stop romanticizing. It is bad for
the internal organs.”
Still, someday I will leave this world
without a word and go to a special
place that would embrace the 50 ft
woman, even if she is attacking
something. I am certain that it would
be unlike any place that I have ever
imagined, although I do imagine
That there would be palm trees but
no, no, it would not be Babylon.
There would be walnuts, in abundance,
and a bed of grass in which to sleep.
There would be more than enough
room for everybody, scoundrels
would be there, and hope would
Flourish, and televisions would
work miracles as they often do
And the grass would stretch out before
you, or me, for much much more than
just fifty feet.
