Damn Right, I'll Rise Again

Maybe you’ve seen my tongue limping in circles, yoked to the whip hand of my brain, sinking further and further into the muck. The words don’t come out the way they’re supposed to, or the way they used to. Something happens. Happened. It’s like when you take a picture and the print looks nothing like what you saw when you looked through the view finder. I think you could define that feeling as disappointment.

This world astonishes and appalls me in equal measure. It keeps taking things from me and trying to hoodwink me into believing I’ve given them away.

This from my horoscope yesterday (Scorpio): “Don’t trust little ones with potentially dangerous tools.”

Okey-dokey.

Was Job cursed with sleeplessness? Do the damned sleep in hell? Not likely, I realize, but is it official anywhere?

It’s almost funny how long ago long ago was. It’s not funny, though, how much my hand and wrist have been cramping lately. Eventually, I realize, I’m going to have to learn how to write left-handed.

You there, little man, little speck, when did you forget how to leap? Leapless, you’re helpless. Go back to leap school, dammit, and relearn your old gift. How else are you ever going to leave this planet behind, even if only for an ecstatic instant?

One last observation, or whatever this is: My eighth grade shop teacher was the creepiest character I ever met, the way he’d sit there on his stool whittling the calluses on his hands with a pocket knife. I remember one time he said, “I could teach any one of you morons how to get out of a pair of handcuffs in five minutes.” He had a tattoo of Jesus wearing his crown of thorns. It was on his chest, and every day when the bell rang at the end of class he’d pull down the top of his tee-shirt to reveal the tattoo and say, “Believe in this man.” People around town said in his younger days he was a motorcycle racer who’d fathered children in damn near every state of the union. Once upon a time he’d allegedly bragged about having received more than fifty citations for urinating in public. He said it was a hard habit to break, and I’ve no doubt it is.

That’s all for this morning.

Thank you.


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