Archive for December, 2008

Watch the baseball game while perched on top of a ladder that rises from the on-field grass to the tier seats’ airy reaches.

Some teenage pranksters give you a push and the ladder sways out and away to carry you over the top of the stadium and drop you on the perilous pinnacle of a tower across the street.

You manage to climb down by using your trusty Swiss army knife to puncture the plastic bags between the levels of the rooftop pagoda.

When you are discovered in the basement particle physics lab an angry white-coated technician sprays you with green anti-freeze. You protest you were only saving yourself from certain death.

And why on earth shouldn’t Yvonne DeCarlo be reunited with Fred Gwynne? Something to do with the discontinuation of tape cassettes. Ridiculous! We will make tape, tape and more tape, if that’s what it takes.

Darkest winter morning with only the blinking lights on bridge tops and the usual helicopters hovering over the expressway traffic, until the birth of blue on the dome of the sky, and another December day begins.

I’ll take you out, but I don’t want to throw
My money in the street.
That used to make me mad, but not now.

Somebody stole his suitcase
A vintage pale green Samsonite
That his mother might have taken
On her honeymoon to France

The goddess appeared again,
Cheerfully offered to explain
How to arrange the pieces of the game
In the little mirror-sided box.

Naturally he was relieved to learn
There’s no such thing as the self.

The way you stumble through crowds when you run from the gunman.
The way you wear the big pants cinched up with a belt.
The way you drive the bus without knowing which pedal is the brake.
The way the alley is too narrow to turn around.

You can play the blues
On your plastic flutophone.
Wander around the airport.
Peek out at the parking lot.
But if you go outside
Security will have you disqualified.

If you make the ladders part of your treehouse
You won’t have them to climb up or down.
Still they are very pretty,
Lashed across the branches,
A bridge in the upper air.
I often want the wrong things, too.
Misguided choices may have led me here,
Though I still have most of my hair.
I try not to judge the partridge by the pear.