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My Word's
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vol. 3 #10,
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My Word's
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vol. 3 #10,
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PLAYING HOOKY AT THE START OF SCHOOL
The start of the semester is a frazzling time for me, and if my brain is not running on empty, it is at least down to its last few fumes. What creative energies I have left are going into writing handouts on how to use search engines. So this week, instead of a column from me, I give you a guest columnist--my son. I believe I have mentioned in the past that Brian's mind is a strange and wonderful place to be. But as the teachers of writing always say, SHOW, don't TELL. Therefore I give you two of my favorites of his poems, which I think will make it clear to you why, though he has sometimes irritated me, and often mystified me, he has always amused me:
An Unconfession
by Brian Friedrichsen BlockMy peers spend their evenings xeroxing what once was original sin,
and girls are too rude to ask me to join in,
nor has anyone proffered me acid or coke
or recently even a funny crude joke.
And it's hardly a crime
to do the one screwed-up thing I can do which is to destroy
a perfectly good rhythm by spewing all the syllables I so here I'm:
feel like before I decide to emerge at last with a rhyme
Not handsome enough to be salacious,
Not cocky enough to be pugnacious
or vicious
or to seem just a teensy bit somehow suspicious.
But at least I shall go from birth to cremation
And never surrender to evil temptation,
destined to offer St. Peter spectacular references,
whatever my actual preferences.
"America's riches of the '50's and '60's were a one-shot deal
from unique times," types the columnist on his WordPerfect 6.0,
bactracking to erase a misspelling.
"Unregulated American inventive drive was at its peak"
(he pauses to down his CD player's volume)
"and the Calvinist work ethic still remained, instilled by
families too unchic to treat the Cleavers as a smarmy joke. What does it say that American productivity growth
has tumbled since '71?" He ponders the screen, saves, and exits,
but doesn't fax it in just yet;
grabs his remote and flicks on C-SPAN,
hoping that glibber catchier phrases will summon his mind.
But he gives his TV little attention,
reminiscing the richer days ere the average wage peaked in '73.
Drowning his sorrows in Diet Coke
with Nutrasweet to keep his weight down,
he recalls the manufacturing time
when workers proudly manned their machines
and sent forth products a person could revel in.
Irritable, he hops up from his Laz-e-Boy adjustible
and exerts himself for twenty minutes on his Stairmaster 4000,
his cortex racing his calves and thighs till he surrenders to futility:
nothing he writes will arrest the decline of his flukishly wealthy lazy nation. Time to go close his column somehow.
Turning the airconditioner up,
bookmarking a flattened Grisham thriller,
booting up and clicking past the SimCity icon,
he returns to work repeating his usual distantly echoing rejoinder
to please, America, be more productive.
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NOTE: My thinking is always a work in progress. You could mentally insert all my columns in between these two sentences: "This is something I've been thinking about," and "Does this make any sense to you?" I welcome your thoughts. Please send your comments about these columns to: marylaine at netexpress.net. Since I've written a lot of these, some of them many years ago, help me out by telling me which column you're referring to.
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