Dana made me think out loud

It was the funniest thing, strange not ha ha

Where’d I hear that?  Slingblade?  yeah anyway

Queerest thing.  It was this poet

and I met him at one of those weep out loud

Wallow in self pity whacha’ call it angsty  places

Where poets just go crazy.

So anyway, he had this epiphany

 which is like being ruptured

 but in the head not the nuts.

He quit crying and started laughing  outloud

Right in the middle of this longish

Poem about suicide or cabbage

Or suicide by cabbage, anyway laughing.

This was back in like the sixties

They didn’t ice pick em behind the eyes

Anymore but they still liked electricity

They liked electricity a lot.

Nowadays , it’s better living through chemistry,

 But back then progress was  our

Most Important Product

And did they ever progress the

Living S**t out of this guy.

So I saw him the other day and he looks

Fine, not so much hair as before

But fine.  I thought you might want

To know so’s you won’t laugh when you orta

Weep. 

God knows what they’ll think of Next.

Good to see again.

Reviews

[h d e rushin]

even in a group picture, you can always pick out the poet among the group. They aren't just 'different' by comparison. But they are 'energy bill in winter' different. And Gregorian-ly, the reason why poets don't need camera phones to take selfies: The marchen folktales, the bitter trample of fallen leaves, the hanks that live well under their homes on stilts, the round faces of their ancestors or just the visit to the tomb of Frost or Auden is "self image" enough to share on "Farmers Only or Crossdressers.com. I still turn my collar up like my father or Stan Laurel. My punctuation is still god-awful and sometimes I don't taste good, But I unashamedly love poetry. Thanks for this story my friend. When the Red Army finally defeated the Nazi's at Stalingrad, Hitler was made to believe that he had won a great victory. See what I mean?

forever in your debt.. love
dana

[Delmar Cooper]

I love the way thou dost baffle me. Now, to me that is way more elegant than WTF. Thank you for sharing the tick tock, inner werks of your delicious mind.

[TL Boehm]

They liked electricity a lot. There is this delicious Ginsberg or Bukowski vibe in this, and yet it reads like a conversation over drinks. It has its own quirky life - well done

[rew]

Inexplicable: 'back in the sixties' is like, middle of the last century, but the omniscient speaker drags ''it'' into current time with ''what will they think of next?'' having touched on surgery, one presumes, with
'' ice pick behind the eyes '' and shock therapy ''liked electricity a lot.''

The whole tenor, tone, of this little piece is one of sardonic disdain which starts at the beginning '' strange not ha ha'' and continues to the end with the offhanded dismissal of its listener- 'good to see you again'
When and where, anyone can presume, the protagonist goes back to its ruminations.

As a brief comment on mental illness it neither alows the sufferer a voice nor, indeed, the voiceless listener - this last observation is very telling Inso far as the omniscient protagonist is unable to advance from its unsympathetic view point.

All of the above, of course, is unfair with your get out clause of ''... laugh when you orta weep''

Now, one doesn't expect a writer of stories to have a sympathetic voice but - a poet? Of course...

regards from rew

[Delmar Cooper]

This is helpful, thank you. I'm tumbling "get out clause" around in my head a bit, but I think I communicated the laugh , cry advice pretty well. Who knows? If it made sense it would be in another category altogether.