Archive for May, 2008

Once a handsome young man had a pretty little wife who was made of whipped cream. He liked nothing better than the sex he had with her, for she was his fantasy come true, in all her sweet slippery deliciousness. Naturally, being made entirely of whipped cream, she wasn’t good for much else besides sex, but the young man didn’t mind. He considered her limitations rather an advantage since he preferred to keep her at home while he was at work each day, and even forbade her from using a telephone or a computer. Still the whipped cream wife had appetites of her own. After sex with her husband she would always smile and announce in her squeaky baby voice, “Me hungry! Me want McDonald’s!” These were moments when the young man was disappointed by his creamy spouse. As he steered his enormous black SUV into the suburban traffic crawling toward the shopping mall, his smiling confection at his side, he would grow sullen and wonder if his marriage had been a mistake.

What was that cannibalism story? The drama students searched the professor’s basement for his poisonous herbs while I stared at my reflection in the bottom of a bucket and saw my face turn skeletal. Oh yeah. They double-crossed the book collector and served him up in steaks.

The Mexican cookbook writer—horn-rimmed soul-patched Irish from Jersey—is acting in a low-budget movie of the Passion, playing Matthew as a nerdy sidekick to a blockheaded Peter, the two of them wedged together in a wheelbarrow beside a muddy vegetable patch. Let’s push them over to a small altar supported by statues of three monkey gods.
“A fake antique—what awful kitsch!” says Matthew.
“Doesn’t matter,” says Peter. “If you believe.”

More spiritual to Matt’s tastes is a tall refrigerated display case filled with ice cream confections in devotional shapes: flaming hearts, yin-yang dials, chubby Ganeshes, beaming Della Robbia babies. He can’t stop looking at it.

The sainted master is in town, the mustachioed founder of the movement. His dusty portrait hangs high on the wall. But the disciples are worried. Pete, keeper of the car keys, has lost them again, and has left on a bus. In a darkened room dominated by a huge glowing aquarium, a fish like an orange seal swims all by itself.

Of course I want to develop my qualities
So I can be of benefit to others
But who wants wisdom here at the gate?
Take the elevator to the top floor
Climb the ladder on the wall
Squeeze through the little blue window
Slide on my back across a snowy frozen lake
Afraid I’ll break the ice if I stand
Come up against a corner post
And shake loose from a high shelf
A car that’s been crushed into a rusty cube
It crashes onto a back porch
And startles a middle-aged couple
Who rush outside in their pajamas
Spot me and hiss, What did you do?
Now here’s a good moment to say
The voice of ego is the cause of all suffering
So how am I supposed to find my way back
From an ill-conceived binge
On the dead concrete outskirts of Baltimore?
Can I fly? No
But levitate for long minutes, you bet
Like a basketball god I sail above the rim
Sink lay-ups and jumpers
Take passes in mid-flight
On an ever-narrowing court
Truck traffic squeezing closer and closer
Plant a good seed with ease and grace