Elevator Talk

In Miami I took the elevator 7 times a day

But the first few days I had nothing to say

Finally I got less timid and launched  on the ground floor,"Hi, the Japanese are closing

their reactors, what will they do now with their uranium?

to a man with a small dog on leash

"Have a nice day!" he bowled!

I concluded international news must be avoided, so for the next 

person, on the 8th floor, I made it more personal:

"Do you know, M'am, yesterday I was painting a house

and by accident I kicked over a bucket of paint and it dripped over

the facade like a Jackson Pollack."

"Enjoy your Easter." she pinged at the bing of the opening doors.

On another occasion, coming down from the penthouse, the elevator stopped on the l7th floor.

A young boy holding a red lollypop walked in and I said, looking up

 at a hidden camera: "Hey, we're being filmed, do y'a know?

Security here knows everything we are doing. And in Florida you can get strip searched for just not wearing your seat belt!"

"I don't drive. Have a great day!" said the boy,skipping out with a red smile as soon as the doors opened.

After a week the elevator talk was wearing my nerves thin

Only with effort I held up my chin

 expecting to hear the dropping of a pin.

Having just read Darwin and Hegel I wanted to impart with

 these fleeting strangers, just something beyond, 

"Have a great day!"

Finally I decided the only way to breach the gap of social order and natural selection

was to knit, stitch and loop in the elevator.

Holding balls of wool and oversized needles 

able to make any witch weary

I knitted breathing deeply going down or up the dark shaft and

-aside from some strange looks from Miami muscle men-

I was showered with complements and smiles

My grin took the countenance of a Swiss Cheese.

And the elevator talk flowed like a good French wine.

PS: In the case of a stuck elevator it appears that Elevator Talk is elevated to another principle.

Pink Slime and White Coats

Pink Slime and White Coats

 According to a large body of work

our bodies work according to the environment.

If you wear a Wall Street Jacket

you are liable to save pennies in your bone bank

A simple doctor's jacket

Can make you a more detailed oriented person, regardless

our skills or background

A farmer's overalls

Will suffice to go fou fou for leek

A military uniform

Makes one more adept in the killing fields

And wearing a butcher's apron

Will make you a ground beef master

But in America when business outfits and science outfits come together 

Using Ammonia to sterilize and beef up sales

All in the name of Connective Tissue

Our bodywork is lost

The environment has been broken

The Ammonia burger has been created!

Ammonia burgers don't sound good

So some call them Pink Slime burgers!

If Coleridge (the author of Kubla Kahn) were alive today

Might not he close his eyes and see a pleasure dome and icy caves

while bitting down on a Pink Slime Burger?

Or would he see, after biting a chomp,

his demon lover?

Or a pig, flying over the dark chasm of humanity?

The world upside down

There are those who see the world from a privileged  point of view

there is no question of their balance being askew;

our world may be spinning to keep us in our shoes

our brains may be spinning to keep us from the blues;

What argument may there be to think, conceive, instrument ourselves to

hear like a bat, walk like a beetle or swim like an otter?

Is it not enough to see a Balkan ballerina do a grand jeté? 

Or a Greek geek tweet about green thé?

On this unbenounced day

Not having seen a bump at the end of an extravagant run

 my ski and leg was sent to

the outer limits of an inner city slum

Pain hooted through my ears

and my orbs knew only tears

My ham, my only jambone, that string that belongs to the mighty Thigh,

was plucked harder than any violin string

shredded like cuban ropa vieja

recoiled like a cobra

Not knowing how to react 

I invoked the  rhino scarab  to accompany me in my upside down world!

I opted (if a choice there ever was), to slide down the face of the mer de glace,

 head first down a sled

wrapped up with straps and inflatables

 "A little outing to meet your clay maker."

-that's what Osiris, the speedy sled pilot said.

Once more I thought of the ectoderm of a Rhino Beetle

It was a way to make pain impermeable to the bumps that we overslode

The ride was long and true, soft on top and icy on the bottom.
And all the way down people peeped at me as if I had
some mental disease
"What an appetizing sight! Pity no blood!"
I felt damned as to why, an impassioned  cycler like myself, why did

I choose to ski? Was it, could it, be all for that special view?

And then for no reason at all, I though of my grandfather who I had never met

He, like many, was taken away from our family tree because of the war.

60 years later dear mother gives my his hankies from an unbeknownst coffer

So while I am sliding and forgetting the pain thanks to the rhino beetle

I am flabbergasted at how beautiful and delicate the DZ monogramed handkerchiefs are

despite the passing of time

despite the outpouring of hatred that went towards Zoltan Denes and people of his like,

the fine stitching and squared colors defy their period

These pre-kleenex utensils 

Memory receptors of what flowed through the nose

Today are history in the making.
They attest to the invincibility of mankind.

Back to my drama I flowed down my own white, mucusoid mountain

relaxed, serene, as a rhino in the sky.

Cracking fingers, arthritis and other studies.

50 years of cracking fingers does not give arthritis.

(Thanks to a study where Donald Unger tested cracking

his own hand, the evidence is conclusive.)

Nevertheless, scientists have discovered that,

-smoking crack and cracking knuckles may.

Other related studies streaming in has revealed that:

-37% of people who crack their fingers are victims of assault.

-people who crack their fingers while driving and texting are not,

according to a recent 6 year study in California, more prone to accidents

than people who play sudoku and text drive.

-men who crack their pants while cracking their fingers do not risk

contracting diabetes more frequently than women who crack their pants idem.

Finally, Merit schools report that 82% of students who crack their fingers are no

more sensitive to the noise of nails scratching down a blackboard or the heavy

breathing of a bully than students who do not crack their fingers.

However, students who cracked their fingers showed higher results in

CGCSE and IB4UME tests than their counterparts who scored lower in

CGCSE but higher in IB4UME.

No link was found between cracking fingers and obesity, although it is believed that

the wider the individual the more difficult it is for the hands to reach each other,

grasp the knuckles and pop the space of synovial fluid, hence making cracking impossible.

High Tech Ham

It has been announced that Best Buy, responding to further competition, will begin selling

ham and cheese in its computer departments. "This is a strategic plan to show that Best Buy

is not only about innovating and innovative technology" announced a spokesman at Nevada's

Technnofair. "Like computers, ham and cheese can signal memory, either in the taste buds or in the stomach."

We are also considering whole grain bread, however, voices having concern over crumbs on the keyboards have made us put the project temporarily on hold.

Plus rien a dire

When French lovers love a lover's spat

not always may it befall in the privacy of a flat

some, charged with chagrin

are ready to post before a field

so that all with a conscious know how you feel

Maybe there is room for irony, a smiley; a frown

But even a bat knows that if there's nothing more for us to say

you might as well write it in open space

and say 'fuck', I'll wear my own crown.

The Crackhead

It didn't happen in a Crack-house

nor with the flick of a lighter

I called him a Crackhead

-I had no choice

It's been 28 years since Crack hit the streets

when I called my friend a Crackhead

I doubt he knew about freebasing, snowballing

or burning it on a spoon

or how it could melt in lemonade

But the notion alone of being called a crackhead made his body shake

His young hands shiver with fear and anger

I suppose his reputation, pride joy of being

Made Public and Private

I saw it -almost- yet unbelieving

like a crack of a whip he went into a funk

His eyes burned crimson

Like after an overdose of Ginseng

His back appeared to breathe

In the vein of a Dragon lizard

or an angered little boy

He was in a state of fusion but it felt like fission

He was in a state of turmoil as a mother-in-law

having a dark vision

And then as his hands gripped my throat -but we were friends, weren't we?

It could have been a toss of a coin to guess who would crack-up first?

As my breath shortened I felt the Crack get longer!

Deeper and more perilous

with no return in sight.

My memory floated back obscurely to l984, living on the streets of Harlem

Where my landlord, running his cold-wash-only laundromat, sold single cigarettes

And Crackheads selling little bags on my stoop

I laughed in the dim as I approached the threshold

The dealers jived me with light chuckles

looks were exchanged

and I pushed the door open with a screech.