Coffeeshop Writers - Happy B'day Dad - he's mentioned in my poem "Watching Mr Lincoln"

Three poets at Giant.

Linda wrote "Fluffy Buttons" about a family dog she mistreated. Martha, who left early, so no photo, said she never would have the nerve to write about something like that. Linda, whose poetry and short stories span many subjects, is not afraid to write about cruelty.

Donna wrote "The Porch Swing" from the viewpoint of the swing. Well-done. She realized she was actually writing about herself: her renewal since she was widowed last year.

Carly wrote what I thought was a perfect poem called BFFs, a term I did not know.

"Did you show it to Charlie?" I asked.

"It's not about my husband," she said. "It's about my best friend."

We suggested she state that under BFF. She moved to Illinois, said Carly.

I was trying to shoot candid shots, but Arlene was like a hypervigilant prisoner just released from jail, and snapped to attention with a smile.

This is probly the best picture she's ever taken. She's very cute!

Which is more than I can say for her characters in "Sugar Makes a Call," a fast-paced well-written tale of people I think of as "white trash."

It's part of a series she's been working on for five years, I think.

Since I don't have Martha's photo, this one is a close second. Martha wrapped up a story she's been working on for TEN YEARS. This last part had her character Yanny die a good death and then ascend to heaven.

Very moving!

"How did you feel when you came to the end?" I asked.

"I'm lonely," she said. These characters accompanied her every single day and now she's let them go.

To cheer you up, Marf, lemme play you a little music. Click here.  

I'm doffing my hat for being so thoughtful.

Here's Beatriz's eBook. See her name prominently published. She and her son Peter designed the spritely cover. Peter is an amazingly talented comic book artist.

Comic books! Don't snort. My son Dan only read comic books until he went to college.

Let's see what Dan looks like today.....


He's a joker.

And always on the g'dam phone. You get so you don't notice it any more.

Attencion! en espanol, Beatriz's native language. Her fascinating piece on "Bumble Bees: It's a Jungle Out There," featured the survival of the species, such as wolf wasps, cuckoo wasps - they lay eggs in wasp nests that are not their own - and other curious pollinators who will do anything to survive and bring up their young.

Really amazing little stories.

Photo is of the Ambush Bug, who lay in wait for HOURS, until he gets his man, in this case a bumble bee, who the bug paralyzes, and then sucks out yummy juices for sustenance.

I showed Beatriz a wonderful book I'm reading now. I'm probly the first to borrow it from the library cuz it's so stiff, I can hardly pry it open on my chest. Here's the author Edward O Wilson

Ants are his specialty. Their numbers are the largest social creatures in the world. Born in 1929, he said, referring to ants, that "Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species."

In the book he advises us young scientists to never take a vacation. Go on field trips, he said. 

The first piece I read was Swim Within Me, a loose interpretation of a library director I know who struggled and won over breast cancer. 

If it ever gets published, the group urged me not to send it to her. 

I began writing this morning at round 10 a.m. Knew I wanted to revise the Swim article and write a poem on a movie I saw yesterday.

While watching the film and being supremely bothered by the audience, I said, This will be my poem for tomro.

WATCHING MR LINCOLN

"Lincoln at 2?" I asked the

blond behind the counter

"Hurry," she said, pointing thataway

The room was full

My seat was taken by a

coat,

“It’s for my wife,” said the man

I grabbed a folding chair from

the side, unfolded it, and neatly

put it where I could see

assuring the woman behind me

"I won't block your view"

“Is it 2 yet?” asked the

projecteress

The man looked out the door

for his wife, who soon hobbled

in with a cane

She was all dolled up

a huge aquamarine ring

that barely hid her finger

knobs. Would I like her? I wondered

The projecteress turned on the

video, Spielberg’s “Lincoln” and

impure sound issued from two

speakers on the floor up front

we were people past our prime

if our hair was blond, it was dyed,

like the chubby-armed woman –

what chubs! – and how I stared –

my own grow fatter, I’m insulin-

dependent and never feel full –

Shades are drawn and the room

is dark, images flicker on the screen

I think they’re coming attractions

like at the “Cedar and Lee” back in

Cleveland where we’d buy Good & Plenty

and watch Rhonda Fleming get saved by

Kirk Douglas

“Is this the movie?” I ask
thinking it was coming attractions

SHHH! say the chorus of the elderly

the woman with the ring looks at her

big fat watch, and I knew it...

continued holding up her watch
every twenty minutes

forcing me to contemplate the

passage of time

and with it

death

How, I wonder, can I sit through a

three-hour and twenty-minute movie

in front of all these strangers

my own bodily systems pumping away

to keep me alive,

my stomach, intestines,

duodenum, what if I shit in my pants?

Anything is possible when you hit

sixty-seven

Soon, I assure myself, you will forget you’re

here. You’ll find yourself in the same room

with flag and book-lined mantelpiece

as the credible Lincoln – man, is he tall,

standing next to the shorter Missus

Then they take out their food.

They take out their foooood.

Not the Lincolns, but the audience

In the periphery of my left eye is a

woman in sequined red, unless it is

a newly developing cataract that causes

the sequins, she is very discreet,

like the soldiers we will meet on the

battlefield, and chews first with restraint

then more vigorously, never lifting the bits

high enough for my periphery to see

The ringed woman pulls out ghastly orange

peanut butter crackers, I had thought better

of her than to buy processed foods, after all,

I was beginning to bond with her, oh well,

she downed a pack and I congratulated both

her and the woman in red for not making much

of a rattle

It’s the rattles that disturb you at the movies

and I am not talking about palsied hands

According to the Internet which I check at home

while the movie is on, the film concerns the

last four months of Lincoln’s life. He is fighting

a war he knows he’ll win, is fighting his pretty,

accusatory wife – “you killed our baby” – and

fighting for passage of the amendment to

abolish slavery.

I sit alone in another theater. The downtown Ritz.

Tears well, as the roll call begins.

We’ve won! We’ve won!

I sadly look down. A night at the theater will do

the president good.

Should I leave? There is no one to comfort me.

I simply remain sitting and practice for the

inevitable. “Daddy! Daddy!” cries his son Tad when he hears

the news.

My own father went first. Today, Saturday, May Fourth

is his birthday. A day of twittering birds and pansies in

the front yard, and the gestation of three blue oval

robin eggs in my rose bush.

“Mom,” I say over the phone. “Just called to wish

Daddy a happy ninety-first.”

“I’ll tell him when he calls,” she said, neither

of us flinching from the knowledge we

will never see him again.

At the end of the movie in the library

I race out to my unlocked car

The windows are down

allowing fluffs of early spring

to settle where they will.

Forgetting all I have seen

is the only brace against death:

to put everything behind us

and await the breaking of the

eggs and triumphant

winging forward.