Elephant Crossing the Alps

It had only 3 legs but preferred to hop on

One

Before it lay the Alps and

Snow reflecting the blazing sun.

Hop, hop, hop

The elephant had to hop

Flop, flop, flop 

Went young climbers in their flip-flops 

Pretending to be detectives

Working on directives 

Of the Pope and the Nation

And Twitter's agitation

To bring it back to the Vatican.

Without a peanut or clump of grass

The nameless elephant hopped towards 

The Mont Blanc

Approaching the Aiguille Trè la Tête

A mouse scurried down from

The glacier of Bionnassay

At 2760 meters the rodent slid down at increasing

Speed and

Slammed itself into the 

One hopping leg of the elephant with no name.

There was a "woosh" and a "smoosh" 

The terrified beast slipped and fell

The glacier went "crack" and

The elephant exclaimed "This is wack!"

And the mouse's brains exited like 

An eggshell.

Going with the flow 

The elephant whizzed down and veered 

Towards France and arrived

Celebrated as a hero 

In Chamonix.

The mayor invited it for a beer

Rich in malt and hops

And said "Crossing the Alps was tops"

One could also hear

Pops

From bottles of Champagne

Such a feat hadn't taken place since

Triceratops.

The Countdown

The Countdown

Learning how not to count when counting too much or too little.

When my friends tell me I count too much -and too little, I tell them this:

Driving though the harsh, historical, Tuscan landscape

Getting flat after flat

Popping tires like pancakes

Counting my bats with

Open and closed wings

And

The days approaching my birthday and Pisa on the horizon

In that order.

My car is hissing 

If I pull over will the Cops

Start frisking

I don't care for I am ready.

Ready to start counting the number of 

Olive pits that in a near future I shall spit.

Ready to follow scientists' advice in maximizing the human capacity of 

Ingesting 

Carciofi alla Giudia

in one hour 

Knowing that a wolf can do better but a black bear gets tired after 10 minutes.

(These Jewish fried artichokes need to be devoured with the spikes facing outwards.)

My hissing tires stop at the Tower of Pisa where during these Covid days

I count the minutes, not hours it takes to buy a ticket to go up 

257 steps to reach the 55 meter summit.

I try to imagine the years, the seasons, the 800 year old monument has been through

And tweeting it to my friends.

So much thinking, during the spiral ascent, gives me

Dizzy spells that I lose count 

How many calories I've consumed  and

How many Madonnas with Child

I've seen.

I remember the portobello mushroom combo with organic

Humus sauce needs only

A few hours of preparation unless

One counts the time it takes to prepare pita bread or

Sourdough, which is so much a la mode these days.

I am willing to bet that if I combine

Portobello, humus, tomatoes and mozzarella for

A period of 514 days

or 1 year, 5 months -minus one day,

 -a number representing a round trip up and down the Pisa tower-

My mother would applaud the nature of such a balanced  diet 

And historically I'm sure even Cimabue or Giotto or Caravaggio -much later on,

Couldn't do better.

I am also ready to stop counting

Stop counting how many times my bones

Crack in a day

Stop counting the percentage of battery remaining in my phone

Stop counting the times I have misplaced a sock, a key or a spare button.

At this juncture even my ability to calculate the saturation point of Love

Is something I can do away with

For Love should not be counted even though it counts.


And all this counting and not counting leads us to

My spaghetti al dente

Which may or may not be segmented.

Hence my steps, carbohydrates and artichokes

Could be inert entities within themselves

Cancelling each other out

While a male mermaid sings a song

Without a meter

The new Space X is launched

Without a countdown and

The Olympics is run without a timer.

Don Quixote in 2020

Don Quixote, in search of the truth and real values, crosses the United States with his faithful squire Sancho Panza. Don Quixote is riding Rocinante, his BSA 500 motorcycle , and wearing his standard metal armor and is holding onto a spear. Sancho is on his 1967 Vespa scooter.

DQ is Don Quixote, SAN is for Sancho.



July 2nd, 2020

A run in with Twitter

DQ  "Sancho, what is this? Everyone is walking around looking at these devises, you call them phones."

Sancho, who considered himself a computer whizzola, explained how smart phones operate and how social networking it what it's all about. Then he got into Twitter, explaining how one can microblog with just 280 characters and use "pound" an hashtags and retweet when something you like comes around.

DQ goes to a youngster, asks him to show him a tweet and then grabbs the phone.  The tweet went:

"Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure, it's not your fault."


DQ "What's this?" he asked.

KID  "It's a tweet from the President of the United States" the child replied, with an admirative sparkle in his eye.

DQ "Sancho! Come here! I need u to help me spear this Twitter thing!"

SAN "Spear Twitter? Master, but how?"

KID "Haven't you heard of Tic Toc?" said the youngster, grabbing his phone back from D. Q.

DQ and SAN "Tic Toc?" chimed in D.Q . and Sancho.

KID "Tic Toc. It's the rave. I'll film you riding with your spear on your horse and I'll put it on Tic Toc"
The boy deftly put himself in position and called out to DQ to gas it up.

KID "Look fiercer! Fiercer! he shouted in his strident voice."

DQ "I am going to spear this ungodly Twitter!" chimed in DQ, leaning forward on Rocinante, the wind blowing his long, greying goatee, his eyes ever so focused on his target.

Like the windmill, DQ imagined Twitter with giant spinning arms. He charged and charged at Twitter, wheeling his motorcycle  around for what seemed like an eternity. Then he heard sirens. The cops had been called because he was tearing up the local high school football field.

SAN "Lets get outta here!" cried Sanchez, pulling a wheelie on his scooter to catch up to DQ.  "Follow me!"

DQ followed Sanchez into a large blue store that happened to be an Ikea.

DQ "I speared that Twitter thing, Sanchez, did you see?"

SAN is walking with his eyes riveted to his phone while trying to negotiate the complex,
labyrinth-like alleyways of the Ikea store.

DQ "What are you doing?"

SAN "I'm connecting to Tic-Toc Master."

DQ "Si, si, that boy said I was going to annihilate Twitter with Tic -Toc."

SAN "Yes, you can see it here, already it is getting many hits."

DQ "Hits?"

DQ moved over to look at Sanchez's small phone.

DQ "I shall buy you a gold case for that little smart think, Sanchez, 18K!"

SAN "I am honored but really it's not necessary--"

At that moment, as DQ was moving to look at the Tic-Toc images, he bumped into an office chair, inadvertently hitting one of the levers that made the chair pop up, hitting his chin and making him fall on his back. His armor made a lot of clanging noise as he crashed to the floor.

SAN "DQ, DQ, are you alright?

DQ, a little wobbly, struggled back to his feet. "I want an apology from this chair, the designer of this chair, the salesman of this chair and the person who put this chair together. I will not move from this spot until formal apologies are presented."

SAN, about to reply but then thinking twice takes another approach. "You are right, his excellency, I shall contact the manager. Do not move."

At that, Sancho runs off and finding a family with 3 children he asks them to to him a favor. "I have a friend who is a little delusional, could you please act if you are the manager of the store, the designer,  and the salesman and just offer an apology to my friend." At that Sancho pulls out a gold coin from his pocket and gives it to the father.

Child 1: "What is delusional, Daddy?"

Father: "It is when you see something, but you don't really see something, and then you see something."

Mother: "Delusional is when someone is going a a self-deceptive head trip because they are hallucinating or daydreaming to find the fool's paradise."

Child 2: "Does that mean that the person is a liar?"

Mother: "Thank you for asking that question Melissa, I will try to be brief. When delusional, the person may be thinking he or she is telling the truth because they see a mirage, and as far as their perceptiveness is concerned, that mirage is a real as can be.

A dent et Eve

Dans le jardin d'Adam une dent, et Eve se trouvaient sous un
Pommier
La dent, provenant d'un mammouth,
Se présente comme
La base d'un barbecue

Les hamburgers rôtissent

Adam
Se trouve sédentaire


Mais Eve et le serpent silencieux
Qui montrait ses crocs  est
(Les Crocs font pas de bruit, que sais-je?)
Se lamentaient   car il manquait le fromage a raclette pour faire le
Cheeseburger!

Le serpent siffla et chuchota dans l'oreille d'Eve,

"Pourquoi tu ne remplaces pas le Cheese par un Marshmallow?"

Eve lui lança un tel regard froid que le serpent eut une crise
Lui provoquant des hoquets, des hoquets et encore des hoquets
Jusqu'au point ou il cracha une pomme rouge.
"C'est magique" cria Eve, prenant la pomme dans ses jolies mains

A ce moment Adam ce réveilla
Le vent soufflait emportant l'odeur des hamburgers vers l'est
La dent commençait à noircir et Adam songea a la dernière fois où
Il visita le dentiste.

Puis, les yeux d'Adam tombèrent sur la pomme -qui commençait à jaunir- et
Il l'arracha de la main d'Eve et l'avala aussitôt.

La suite de l'histoire tout le monde la connait sauf qu'un
Hamburger avec du marshmallow a un gout un peu sucré.

Poetry on the lake

Subatomic Laundry

(My sincere appreciation goes to Dennis Overbye who wrote an article in the New York times on the Grand Sasso Laboratory in Italy.)

            Photo by Tommaso Guicciardini


I live at the Gand Sasso Nuclear Laboratory in Assergi

Often I don't see the light of the day since

Work is underground and I spent 10 years on

The Cuore, Cobra and Cupid projects, been there, done that.

When I go home I've absorbed so many neutrinos that

I take an antacid before going to bed.

I love Grand Sasso, the Big Rock

And I would love it more if not for the stains that

I get on my designer shirts and jeans.

So for my fellow scientists, I've developed a formula for

Laundry:

• Take one cup of liquid xenon 
• A spoonful of axions
• A sprinkle of neutrinos 
• A 1/4 cup of tritium

Use the "Magic 4000" cycle and if dark spots still appear

Rub a photomultiplier ointment into the affected area

Expose the tainted garment to the sun for 20 minutes an 6.8844002 seconds

or

If cloudy, a strong magnetic field will do.

For wool and synthetics 

Double the tritium

Wash for 12.8 years

Remember

Cosmically reflective shirts should be smoked

In dark matter and rinsed with enough axions

To regain all their splendor.

The Dreaming Mailman

Been Mailman for 44 years
I've got less than one to go before I retire
So I thought I would share for all of your
Ears
(One ear at a time
Only the truth is worth a dime)
And I apologize if you can feel that I'm
Beginning to perspire.

Many say to be a mailman is kinda hypnotic
My wife says I'm neurotic but
Let me explain:

On the job we gotta concentrate
And pretend we got blinders on like a horse
So to ignore the barking dog, the latest viruses
Always paying attention to the cracks in the sidewalk
To deliver what the folk want: their mail.

In June 1976, six months after I took the job,
I was suffering from recurrent dreams of
Not delivering the mail or
Delivering it to the wrong address
Always the same wrong address:
2767  Court street, Brooklyn NY 11231

It was the address of a store my Mom used to take me to
Where you could buy Ladybugs and Preying Mantises
Insects that would take care of your garden problems
And we would always be going back there because
The Lady bugs were out of stock

My shrink told me to project myself before
The start of the day
To project and think how I successfully would deliver
All those envelopes
To the address holders who
Waiting to rip 'em open -often without a proper envelope opener
With the smooth edges of a butter knife-
Would barely notice my blue uniform with black shiny shoes.

Therefore, after six months I found a spot
400 yards from the main distribution center where
I could lay
Rain or shine, snow or sleet
In my favorite mailbox and dream.

                                                                                                 Photo by Melissa Zexter

I dreamt.
I dreamt of delivering each and every letter
I dreamt of hearing the soles of my shoes creak as I approached
The last steps leading to the doormat
I dreamt of dogs who would sit regal and observe my passing and
Viruses that would hide under the mat as I arrived
And real stamps that would stick to the lick of saliva
I dreamt.

I knew that I dreamt of my friends that I had lost touch with
Friends who were not always still pacing this earth
And I also dreamt of people who had their hearts warmed by
Reading a few scribbly lines
An emotion
Captured like in the spider's web of love.

Yet some of my dreams were laced in evil
People waiting for a letter in hope to
Conspire
And plot an illusion
and plot confusion
That would spread well beyond 11231.

Yesterday, my last dream
-Dreams because they were multiple-
Went like such:

A man, ready to spill his soul at
A computer guised as a confessional
The camera was hidden in the cross and
The voice required the man to wear a bag
On his head and it said:
"Why did you make bats smarter than preying mantises?"
In vain the bagged man tried to press "alt + delete"

Then there was a loving couple looking over towards the Twin Towers from Staten Island
They too had bags on their heads
The skylight was fading yet
They could not sense it
Only the crackling of the paper
Made their love alive

The last dream was in a loop
I was in a Woolworth's eating a
99 cent Chili
Wearing a checkered paper bag I
Could not see the display of
Hypnotically spinning cakes
Overloaded with sugars and fats

I was in this Woolworth everyday and
For some reason they would not change the menu
It was always the Chili for 99 cents

Perhaps I wanted to reach for a cake that
I could certainly smell through my checkered bag
I could reach and touch the locked display
The plastic keeping those magnificent cakes intact

The Chili smearing over the edges of my plate
I knew
I knew I would have to write about it
Before the rain would fall and
Get the envelopes wet.