Housewife

Every morning, he wakes, turns to her, and asks her the same question: “How did you sleep, beauty?” And always she shows him the same contented smile. The comfort of all those years spent together is apparent in the curve of those lips. No words necessary. And then he is able to face the world. That’s all he needs. “Get your rest,” he says. “I should be home around six. But I’ll be thinking about you all day.” Oh, make no mistake. Once, there were bad times, very bad times, and they used to try each other greatly. Marriage counseling didn’t work. An open relationship didn’t work. Nothing did. And then he stumbled on the solution. Now they’re just perfect together. She feels it too. Just look at that face. He can’t resist doing so, one last loving glance, as he stands dressing before the closet. Mummification makes the heart grow fonder.

Arrivals / Departure / Ocean

I'm really enjoying reading the current issue of Modern Haiku, edited by paul m. I'm very happy to have poetry in this issue.

This is a classic magazine with a storied history. I collect back issues as I find them on various bookselling sites.

The history of the editors:

Kay Titus Mormino, Founding Editor, 1969-1977
Robert Spiess, Editor, 1978-2002
Lee Gurga, Editor, 2002-2006
Charles Trumbull, Editor, 2006-2013
Paul Miller, Editor, 2013-present

As you can see, the magazine is enjoying its Golden Jubilee this year. Congratulations, Modern Haiku!

Thanks to editor paul m, whose work you should really seek out if you love poetry.  He has a gendai streak I grok.

I also received in the mail a wonderful labor of love zine from Maine, Letterfounder. Editor Jessy Kendall is keeping the Age of Zines alive. No end date in sight. I was quite honored when he wrote me out of the blue to ask for a poem he saw online, which is included in this issue. It's neat to be in an issue with Malok and Terry Gilliam. And it's still rad (in 2019, seven years after the Mayan  Apocalypse) to receive a letter written in ink on paper asking one to send some more poems, and on paper please? I will write some more and send some more. On paper. It feels like an act of defiance, in an age when the growing consensus is that print itself is an anachronism. No! Print's heart, like a certain Canadian talk show staple, will go on. Ooh...staple. I made a zine pun without even intending. I'm imagining a shrine of staples as a conceptual art object.  Thanks Jessy, see you again soon through the eye of paper. You inspire me.


I've just begun mourning a love, so talking about happy things feels like looking through a window at a festive gathering I can't really join. We just lost our one cat after seventeen years of sharing every day with him, except for short travels elsewhere. When we adopted him and found out he had feline leukemia, we were told to expect a short lifespan, that he might die in the first few years or improbably make it to ten. But he remained vibrant and never really had any serious health issues. He just suffered the decline of old age, as all of us do. Chronic kidney disease is a tough one to beat. We've spent many days of the past year adjusting to his disability and trying to cater to him. He knew he was loved and I'm happy to know he never experienced cruelty in this life, that he felt safe and secure, that he felt special, and that he still enjoyed some of his favorite things within days of the end. His going was peaceful and he was surrounded by his loved ones. I will have to write a proper story about his interesting life. It would be better if he could have told it. But we make do with what we have here.

I've begun to realize shaping absence is something that never ends. I don't think I've suffered a single serious loss in which the process of shaping that absence is not ongoing and constantly changing. Ghosts don't stay in the same clothes and they don't even wear the same face forever. Keep watching your goners. You are a part of their afterlives.

Sometimes, Justice Is a Pale Thing

But I am really proud of the jurors who made the right decision on Friday in the McStay murder trial. Their verdict was only announced today.

Thank You, Jurors! Good people, listening people, Thank You!

That was an exceedingly long trial. Not quite O.J. Simpson trial length, but it was working its way up there. It ran five months.

The evidence was clearly there. But there was so much obfuscation through overload (the defense strategy) that it risked jamming the jurors' gears. This did not happen. Instead, Charles "Chase" Merritt will be consigned to a small cell for the rest of his life. Doubtless, he will continue to manipulate people on the outside from there. Why let a little thing like a quadruple murder conviction stop your game?

Even if Merritt receives the death penalty, it is almost certain he will never be put to death in the state which let Charles Manson live long enough to be idolized by Axl Rose (who ignominiously recorded one of Charlie's songs) and then die of old age.

A family of four (including two very small children) was murdered, almost certainly within a matter of minutes, in a blitz attack in their own home. What a horrible reality this is to digest. Many people will live with the void which hangs there where four lives were flourishing. Not only their family and loved ones will miss them. Many who never knew them in the flesh mourn them, for in investing care in their fate we came to know them as individuals and as a loving family embarked on a wonderful adventure together. This absence stays with all  of us who followed this story from the early days of mystery to the later days of justice.

I wish peace for the McStay family. I wish peace for the family of the convicted killer. There is pain on all sides.

How many years of suffering in countless people one reprobate soul can unleash.

Often, justice is a pale thing, a pale shadow of something our soul wants to exist, call it God or karma or whatever you call that force you wish existed to set things right again in the universe. Justice is a shadow of that thing cast into our broken world. And it has to be enough. It is horribly never enough in tragedies like this one. But it is something. It is the contract between humans, the commitment to decency.

Decent people were murdered by a man who allowed himself to become a monster. Decent people stood up for the murdered and spoke for them and honored their lives with this verdict.

I hope people remember the great love the McStays had for each other, and cherish the people in their lives the way they did each other.

That would be Carver's "small, good thing." That is all we get here: the gift of translating darkness to light. We can hold on to the light of these good people. They are with us, still with us.

Donald Trump In Hell

Donald Trump began insidiously developing certain tracts of land in Hell. He had his usual b.s. eminent domain arguments pre-loaded for litigation. He had a number of contacts (eternally damned friends and business associates) already on the inside, and they had greased the palms of some of the lesser demons with baksheesh. You’d be shocked at the sorts of things they crave down there, copies of Dancing with the Stars and Pepperoni Bites, crap like that. Pretty much the same stuff as North Korea, really.

But the Devil eventually found out that someone was building on his property. He only uncovered this when he found paperwork from the Infernal Zoning Board (DING!: there is no “Infernal Zoning Board”) purporting to approve the Don’s latest monstrosity. This was a sprawling titanium-facaded hotel designed to resemble his coif, or rather anti-coif. It was designed by Frank Gehry, no less. It looks like a giant Trump toupee sitting there amid the countless grease fires of hell. It does feel weirdly appropriate. Except it’s shiny and it lights up like a merry-go-round at night. And it’s very, very large. Because the suites inside are also very large, designed to pull in celebrity demons and their so-called families, the rates are astronomical. Working class demons simply can’t afford this putrid pile of putatively-pedigreed poshness.

And what does this hotel have to offer amidst the (admittedly boring reruns of) eternal torment of human wrongdoers?

Donald Trump has the answer: “Fresh hell!”

Yes, he’s many other things, so why wouldn’t he be a plagiarist too? It’s emblazoned on the towels, and even embroidered in minuscule flowing script of black thread on the heavy Le Jacquard Français napkins: “What Fresh Hell is This?” And the bastard even had the nerve to add a little TM there at the end. It’s also used in the commercials for the resort, you know the ones with the dancing she-devils really letting down their cat-o-nine-tails and exploring their sensuous side. It’s typical sexist Trump fare. The she-devils were plied with alcohol and fake telephone numbers of demon celebrity bad boys to make sure they really let loose in those ad spots. Even in hell, the bad taste goes on, coeternal with the Trump name.

Soon thereafter, the Devil showed up at Trump Tower with his Dream Team, a cadre of the some of the best, fast-talking, long-dead attorneys ever to walk the planet and end up in perdition. The cease and desist’s were duly delivered. And then a few thousand pages of impending litigation were dumped on the desk of T., who was, of course, too busy watching reruns of The Apprentice (fast-forwarding always to his lines) to give a shit.

The Devil spun Trump around in his chair without touching him or the chair.

“The Trump Do? Seriously? That’s the name you give that piece of shit-welded-to-gimcrack you call a hotel that you’ve placed on poached ground in my demesne?”

“That name tested very well in several rounds of live trials. The info-metrics are good on that. See, people like my hair, it’s part of my brand, unlike whatever that shit is you’ve got scribbled up there on your red noggin. What is that? Brillo?”

(Here Trump’s lackeys, and aren’t they all, pretended to enjoy the enjoined laughter that must follow what palely passes for wit around those parts.)

“Mr. Trump, you do realize we have a future assignation in my nation, where the only Red State is eternal fire for slippery pollywogs of evil such as yourself. We both know your pro forma, external piety is not fooling the Old Guy Upstairs. I heard he’s actually thinking about adding a few new commandments based on your tenure as presidency alone.”

“What a lovely piece of work he is, up there. He created tarsiers. Tarsiers! Have you ever seen those goddamn things? Who in their right mind would create a tarsier? What a lovely piece of work you are, too. You’re a Nasty Worm, Man. You two both mismanaged your affairs. If I was running Heaven, there never would have been a Fall from Grace. And if I was running Hell, the Guy Upstairs would find himself in the same place I put Merv Griffin.”

“Merv is in Hell,” the Devil said, shocked at Trump’s effrontery.

“Exactly!” Trump said and laughed. Of course, all his lackeys did the mandatory chuckle. A woman brazenly fake-snorted.

“Listen, I got a little deal I want to discuss with you. You pay those demons decently down there and then they go and spend their money on the most ridiculous, cheap-ass, 7–11 type stuff. You ever step inside the homes of that peonage? I have. It’s unbelievable. They have these animals they call pets. They give up a significant share of their capital to a creature that’s lunch over in Asia. And your low-class demons are like that. You could be turning all their salaries right back into Hell to build the infrastructure. What do the wives of demons want? They want to have a story they can tell their neighbors, the other wives who they hate. Give them a little visit to a Trump resort and they have all the ammunition they need. Walk with me a little bit and let me explain. “

So, after waving a quick personal hi to Kellyanne, one of Satan’s favorites, the leader of Hell went with Trump for a stroll and a summit, tailed by Secret Service bodyguards who were all collectively considering leaving T’s employs to become a team of male strippers known as the “D.C. Acey-Deuces.” Don’t ask, it’s complicated.

Hours later, the Contract was inked and the Bearer of Light put down the oldest existing signature in the universe right next to Trump’s scrawled signature, which, appropriately enough, resembles the jagged lightning of electrocardiograph paper indicating a heart attack.

The Devil went back down to Hell (didn’t even stop off in Georgia for nostalgia’s sake, as he had planned) and the further he descended, the more he realized he had just been shafted by a man whose only raison d’etre is shafting, and his tail began to slink between his legs. Tears fell on his cloven hooves.

When he got back to his offices, his Unholy of Unholies, he noticed the way all the other demons looked at him now. They had that knowing look of scorn dipped in the au jus of ridicule. Everyone knew he had been taken and that the Glass Ceiling in Hell had just been shattered for humans by something very closely resembling a human.

When Trump got back into the Oval Office, he had to tell Kellyanne to get out of his chair and take her shoes off his desk. but she did that thing she always does to him with her killer clown eyes, stared him down, unmoving, and he decided he would go and eat an egg salad and pepperoni sandwich instead. He would see if Melania felt sorry enough for him to go and lie and tell Kellyanne that Putin wanted to continue that game of “Truth or Dare” they had been playing on Snapchat which almost resulted in the nuclear annihilation of Montenegro, just for shits and giggles, last week. Because then he could get his chair back without losing face. And that was sort of important.

The Voice Problem

A fly went to see a psychiatrist for a troubling mental complaint. Every time he spoke, it sounded to him as though a fly were speaking. This was whether he was speaking aloud or thinking to himself, inside his own head. "It comes out as sort of fly-like buzzing!" he lamented to the psychiatrist, who was himself just then perched upside down on the ceiling of the consultation room, vibrating his wings. "Very interesting," the shrink thrummed and rubbed his fore-legs together to savor the conundrum even better. The fly psychiatrist was actually fantasizing about horse excrement, how sensuous and inviting it was. Even more than a fly femme fatale on her best day. "It's like a long didgeridoo sound that never ends," the poor fly told the doc. "Well, are you hearing it  even now?" the doctor probed. The fly paused a moment to listen to his thoughts."Yes, even now," he confirmed. "And my voice, the voice of a doctor with many success stories, do you hear it as only the drone of a fly, a small hairy bag of being with a striking proboscis, the sonic output of eight limited chromosomes?" "Yes, I believe we are both buzzing," the patient sadly admitted. "How worthless patients are," the fly doctor thought. "Patient is a terrible misnomer. If patients were patient, most of their problems would be solved by time or death." But they had to show up and bother him. "I'm going to write you a prescription for absolute solitude," the doctor concluded. "If you follow my treatment regimen faithfully, I will never see you again. Also, never feed again from anything that even vaguely resembles a proboscis. And your identity problem should swiftly resolve. Please stop at the payment window before taking to the sky."  The fly did as he was told and was soon starving to death. But the doctor was correct. His voice began to change. The buzz disappeared. There was only a thin sound that issued from his body now. It was translucent like the voices of clouds. On his last day, the fly realized the wings had been his problem all along. How had the doctor missed that? What a quack!  He castrated himself of his wings and his voice by flying at a razor-sharp piece of broken glass in the window of an abandoned house. He fell to the dank wooden floor of an empty house and listened to his own blessed silence. There was nothing even remotely fly-like about him. When a child exploring the vacant house stepped on him moments later, his final cry of anguish, he noted with pride, had not one iota of buzz left in it. It sounded like the scream of the paragon of animals. The pride inside him separated itself off from its animal. He stared at it a millisecond as a proud parent does with its newborn. And then he was something like a niggling doubt that he forgot.

(but read)

The Woman in the Snowstorm

I just noticed this post on Reddit about my theory that serial killer Steven Brian Pennell might have been responsible for the horrific murder of Sheree Magaro.

Sheree lived in my area, only about a thirty minute drive from my home at the time. I never knew her or any of her relations, although I did go to school with someone sharing her surname. It’s probably a fairly common name. I had missed the story of her disappearance in the news cycles at the time it occurred. I learned of it only recently and accidentally while researching another unexplained local disappearance.
She must have been a brave woman (she clearly fought her attacker) and I'm sure she is still missed by many.

Unsolved gruesome murders like that nightmarish one really stay with one. One hopes for answers and justice, even when one knows the likelihood of that is diminishing year by year.