homosapiens

Some of the girls wore SPANX.

Others were adorned with blue hair, their nails the length of palm tubers. 

And these were the nurses at the reception desk, waiting to give me

a flu shot. 

Some things you witness as a human

rupture you into breathing; others

soften the English speak into spoken words.

So assuming that we all will die (something

my father would say over dinner until

my Grandma shut him down with her gaze):

But assuming that some problems are

incapable of being dissolved in a liquid,

and others, if you persist, of this

insentient earth, will form the scab that

your inner soul demands. And

assuming, just for the sake of argument, that

there are angels, and that some of the big,

flightless, old ones don't sleep at all.

And then believing that while dead that both

good sex or anything you have entered into

gently or slowly and everything of horribleness,

will be the absurd workings that you recall,

inasmuch as death is also being a state

of such pathetic-ness as to only be

mourned or loved out loud, I took my

shot like a good little boy. Put

my grape sucker in my pocket and

cried myself all the way home.

Reviews

[emmajoy]

Isn't it amazing how a prospective flu jab can be the medium for so many glorious tableaux! How come you can romp at a novel's length/scope with only thirty or so lines?! You set thoughts, sex, opinions, memories, asides, and the like - swirl them together then come up with how L-l-life is, how us creatures pass along it like folk on an early morning train! Done it again, typed too much.. but then, am only human!

Great stuff, my friend, as ever.

[M. Shepherd]

I like that - death puts things into perspective. Even as we feel all of life all at once and too much sometimes, we have no choice but to show up for it. Because soon and maybe even sooner, we won't have it anymore.
And while we're still here, it can be so gloriously unexpected and interesting. Blue haired long nailed nurses that we trust with our lives because that's their job.
I read this a good many times and loved every piece. It captures a kind of microscopic chaos in life that is so hard to pin down sometimes. How our minds can travel every which way during a single moment.

[Ken Simm.]

Oh excellent my friend. I always find I can see the protagonists in your work speaking to camera. This one has such a back story to explore. Such vivd tableaux to look at and disect as we the readers get to pass through its gentle but heartfelt flows.
I enjoy all your work but this one especially.

[h d e rushin]

thanks so much Ken....I lost my internet connection for a few days........(something to do with the bill they tell me...lol..) Lately i have been trying to write a story as you have......sadly i have failed so far.....but i keep trying and i keep using you as an example..........dana

[LapseOfMind]

Bravo! This was awesome! It pulled me in quickly, taking me through this weird tangle of words yet leaving me hopelessly enticed, almost jumping ahead to the next line before finishing the one I was on. Excellent job!

[h d e rushin]

thank you Lapseofmind.....for stopping by and offering those kind remarks my friend...dana

[Beccy]

Reading your poetry is often like looking into a kaleidoscope that at first seems slightly out of kilter. But then, as the eye and mind adjusts it all starts to make sense, which is more than I can mostly say of this increasingly upside down world we inhabit.

My dad is seventy now, and despite the annual exhortation of his doctor, (and my mother,) consistently refuses to take flue shots. Bit like cutting yourself with a rusty nail and hoping it won't give you tetanus, he says.

Beccy.

[h d e rushin]

my new years resolution was to try and be less weird. I'm trying Beccy..I swear i am...Thanks for those kind remarks my friend...dana

[Ed Hart]

the real poets just tell stories or any damn thing they please, and sometimes take us on a ride of decades with a tag on this and that and come coasting to a slow stop back at the beginning, just like a funpark whirl-around and up and down...and all the children screaming

[h d e rushin]

i love it......and didn't i so love those whirl-around's my friend...thanks so much dear master....dana

[Tony Jordan]

Scene after scene arrived like a image Rolodex Dana. The glam-assistants at the MD's surgery, your poor gramps getting 'the look' for expounding at the supper table, AND blooming flightless elderly angels and sex dreams in my coffin.
Is that the only shot you got? They didn't like give you an LSD pre-shot or anything (joking)
This is brilliantly witty and acerbic, love it!!!
xD

[h d e rushin]

love you Tony Jordan......how about that for a doctors office visit my friend....thanks so much....dana