Poem: Aisle Seat Please - Snacks - Snow!!!

Will the real astronauts from the Apollo 13 please stand up?

Here's their story.

TCM featured it last night since Bill Paxton, who played Fredo, the astronaut, passed away in 2017. Cause of death: complications from heart surgery. He was 61.

  Bill, we'll see you on the other side of the moon.

AISLE SEAT, PLEASE

With his flashlight
he led me down the
darkened theater

I blew my nose
softly as I sat down
and prepared for
three films
I'd never seen before

Mildred Pierce came first.
Joan Crawford won an
Academy for this. You
mustn't watch if you
can't stand a mother
who raises a spoiled
brat of a child.

That would be rosebud-
mouthed Ann Blyth, still
alive today at 89.

Jules and Jim was a lovely
black and white with bicycles,
kisses, trench warfare, and
a death triangle, as Jeanne
Moreau rejects each man
she loves. Each lover
falls hard the moment
they see her dreamy
deadly eyes.

I raced up front and chose
sweet-potato chips, yes, they
are crunchy, to fortify me
through the the final film.

Why had I thought Apollo 13
was a triumphant walk on
the dusty surface of the
moon?

The rocket engine blew up
shortly after launch. The
Odyssey Three as ground control
called them, fought for their
lives. Towards the end they
had barely any oxygen, too much
CO2, they turned blue with cold
and in a final inspirational
speech, Tom Hanks, after hugging
his men said, I couldn't be
prouder of you.

We all cried as their parachutes
opened over the ocean, even testy
Ed Harris back at NASA.

I too dabbed my eyes as I
realized I was sitting in
Scott's bed - he'd gone to
work - and I was borrowing
both his warm socks and
his Turner Classic Films.

***
I get so many donation requests in the holiday season. I write down every donation I give on a sheet of paper affixed to my wall.

I finally gave to WHYY-TV,  $5 per month. This morning I wanted to give to the Adan Hospital Maternity section - view it here - holy cow, I had no idea it was in Kuwait!

And so I did.

When I went to w/draw the money from my checking account - $15 - I saw the bank had charged me $10 for several w/drawals.

What's going on here, I asked Rachel, drawing water at the well, at the bank.

If you have more than 6 w/drawals they charge you tell dollars.

Jeez, I said. It's like I'm giving the bank a cut for all my generosity.

Woke up with a scratchy throat. Nuzzled under the covers on the couch and continued watching the thoroughly most terrible Netflix pix imaginable.

One is called THE DINNER. Roger Ebert hates it!

 Finally stopped snowing.

Gotta write a quick poem about my car.


SNOW COVERED CRACKERS

Be it bird or boy or
bellydancer or barn swallow
If' metal's your thing
come and dine neath
the pearl grey sky.

After I woke up from The Dinner, I snacked on sweet-potato chips and mild salsa.

I supped on soup - that cream of mushroom with the sweet condensed milk. Tell ya the truth, it tasted like butterscotch soup.

Watched a couple of TED Talks, about Alzheimer's disease. It's probly already growing in our brains OR we're gonna be caregivers.

Me? Learn Japanese?

Me? Learn the accordion?

Me, with my horribly painful right arm, will go upstairs and hunker under the covers and read.

Poems: Good morning Facebook Friends - Hilda - Marion and the Idea Box -

Rem mentioned the poet HD. Hilda Doolittle. No relation to the doctor. So I done wrote a poem about her.

HILDA

in Africa dark
a maiden there
was crowned
with coffee beans

i chanced by on
a safari with
friends and
never
have I
been the same

lying in bed
under the ceiling fan
dust motes
smote me
and i wish
for me own
demise

***
GOOD MORNING, FACEBOOK FRIENDS

I couldna wait to get out of
bed and feel the cold air
on my cheeks
63 in the living room
14 on the front stoop

Where had my warm sock
gotten to under the covers?

My house is as bright
as a thousand candles
at a Bruce Springsteen show

But now I must leave you.
Sarah Brightman's playing
on the kitchen recorder

and a ham and cheese omelet
is waiting to be built
from the fridge

Coffee? It's perking
and bubbling in the kitchen
and smelling as sweet as
a newborn babe.

***

Freezin cold as I marched, yellow pitcher in hand, to the compost heap.

Now, ladies and gents, upstairs I go to read under the covers.

Nelson DeMille is in the lead as his library book A Cuban Affair is due soon. Not all that good, to tell the truth.

Oh! You like MY writing, Mr DeMille. That's me, always jokin.

***

MARION AND THE IDEA BOX

Meet me at Boston Market,
she said, and presented
me with the nearly completed
thesis of her broken
daughter. Marion! You
have died a thousand deaths
since then.

I put your daughter's
neatly typed work in
the bottom drawer of
Aunt Ethel's bureau
which still smelled
of the cigarettes that
would eventually kill her.

The thesis lay there
useless, absorbing
the smells of the
house - did Sarah and
Dan know about this?

Until, finally, in a
fog, I waved them away
on garbage day.

 ***
Cat cup that Ethan always liked was returned at my bday party by my sister Donna.

Speaking of Boston Market - and yes I've wrin a couple of poems about it - my former client Julie and I would eat there - Sodium Capital of the Western World.

***
The last drawer in Aunt Ethel's bureau now contains letters I'd written to her.

***
Temp please:  17 and rising.

Gonna shop at the Giant now.

My cousin Ray thanks me - Ed Quispe - Poem: Eating my Omelet on the Cold Stone Steps - Remnants

I sent my Cousin Ray a 'YES I CAN' postcard, which he thanked me for in an email.

EATING MY OMELET ON THE COLD STONE STEPS
LIKE A CAVEMAN

What's the point of wearing
a coat or hat, or those
marvelous gloves that
caress my fingers like
a lapdog in the Chekhov
tale

The steps were damn cold
as I lowered myself down
and dug in. Steam from
the omelet and also from my
mouth.

Sun bursting onto my
plate and the frozen
bird bath, the planter
where elephant ears
grew in the warmer
months.

Yes, I joined the
Polar Breakfast Club.
We refuse to be cowed
by the distance from
the sun.

Entering the house
I smelled fresh
coffee. I heated
it up and silently
thanked my friend Rem.



Ed Quispe is battling cancer. Just by chance I looked him up as there's only one man left in Peru - Ed's country of origin - who is the only one left that speaks a particular language. Was gonna forward it to Ed.

Here's the video from the Times about the last of the Taushiro language. Six minutes.

Years ago, Janssen Pharmaceutica, makers of Risperdal, would publish our Compass magazine for free. When I got there - and I always got lost - Ed would give me the royal treatment.

I wanted to share the above with two people, but they're both dead. One was my former BF Simon Baniewicz, the other Eddie Van Noys. Here's my true story about Eddie.

Ray's Road Review is no longer published. Everything has a life span.

But we're alive!

Here's a recent Compass.

Here are some of the many b'day cards I received for my 72nd birthday.

Garbage Night. Took me half an hour to organize and take all the garbage out.

Now I've gotta write a poem about it. It's 4:30 pm. I'm gonna go offline and write. Be back soon. Will miss you when I'm gone. Mwah!

Took an hour, tho, of course I did other things. 

REMNANTS

Rich folks party
on the Riviera,
Aruba and private
islands in the Carib

They are the most
homogenuous people
in the world, writes
Scott Galloway

We party on Cowbell Road
Lasagna, salad with crunchy
croutons, snappy olives
with nary a pit, trail mix
that hikers take with them
up mountains

Every one of our guests has
climbed many a mountain
I scaled the mountain of
manic-depression and
rewarded for no reason at all
by getting rid of it

My niece Kamellia of Ukraine
came over here and landed in
the lap of her husband Tyler,
an Orthodox Jew and teller of
tales from his Reb.

A package from UPS just arrived.
I cut it open over a carton so
the sawdust won't sneeze all
over the room.

CONCLAVE, the name of a book.
Who's it from? I know! I'm on
a buying spree and ordered it
for myself.

Twilight shines over Trash Night.
We're past the solstice now, so
every day is a little longer.
Wave goodbye to the sun for now
and greet it at 7:22 am.