by Howie Good
Sail On, Sailor
The tongue is all muscle. But if you must scream, please scream quietly. There’s a committee of men who travel from town to town with a portable guillotine. “They killed plenty Jews,” Zayde bitterly observed. A phone ringing in my dream wakes me. The red pill I take sometimes before bed to help me sleep leaves me feeling drab and stupid the next morning, a wino mumbling incomprehensibly to himself. Scrupulous use of language is the basis of truth-telling. In his lost volume on Latin grammar, De analogia, Julius Caesar advised, “Avoid strange and unfamiliar words as a sailor avoids rocks at sea.” Caesar came by his knowledge of the sea honestly. During a naval campaign in the Mediterranean, he spared a crew of captured pirates the customary punishment for their crimes, the prolonged agony of death by crucifixion. In an act of kindness, he personally cut their throats instead.
Beside the Golden Door
It’s the end of the American Century. Darkness seems to fall earlier and earlier with each passing day. I cope, but only by exceeding the maximum daily recommended dosage. A self-proclaimed king has extinguished the lamp beside the golden door without so much as a “pardon me.” I keep drifting over to the window to look out. The heart knows things the mind rejects. That time of night, the road is pitch dark and goes wherever you want it to take you.
The Z Train
There are about 900 million dogs in the world today. Each and every one of them, no matter how pampered or puny, is a descendent of wolves. I was 4, maybe 5, and drawing on the sidewalk with colored chalk when a massive German shepherd sprang at me as if specifically bred to maim and kill. All in all, I’m lucky to still be alive, though an old man bent like a question mark. My bones are eroded. I bruise easily. The thoughts running through my head aren’t always my own. One morning I boarded the Z train with the idea of visiting Samuel Beckett’s grave. It was Beckett who once observed, “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.” The Z, by the way, doesn’t stand for anything. Ever feel that way, too?
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