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Wednesday
31st October, 2007
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A Thought for Today
The ghosts that each of us keep hidden in our hearts are the ones we fear the most.
This
One (Kind Of) Does It For Me!
Living as I do at the southern most tip of Africa I have to admit I've
always been a tad puzzled by Halloween.
It's just that it's never been that big a deal here although in recent
years it seems to have attracted a following of sorts, mainly among the
kids who I guess love any excuse to get their hands on free candy.
I do, however, know that it's a very big deal in the northern
hemisphere, particularly the USA, so to all our American readers
Happy Halloween
and I promise to read up on it and get with the swing of things by this
time next year.
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John Candy o
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There are choices and choices that go wanting. We wouldn't
know of ghosts but for the hauntings.
Dont trick your friends into treating you
nice. Expect good treatment from them.
We could use a lot more skeleton keys for
and a lot less skeletons in our closets.
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A JACK-O'LANTERN OF ONE'S OWN
An October Memory
for Wayne Green |
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It wasn't the hills or sledding there.
or chasing the girls down ice-clean streets -
stealing their mittens and paperbagged lunches
and sharing them with each other.
Not even the snowballs aimed at strangers,
then running 'round corners to staked safe place.
Part of it maybe, not all. What it was mostly
was not knowing what it was. Not even thinking
about it till now.
Some other yesterday back in the distance,
a long-ago twilight, a long time ago. Six
of us boys lined up and boasting, seeing just
which one could piss furthest, longest.
running the risk of bursting our kidneys
till enough was stored up
to write names in the snow.
Having a short name, I won some and lost
some, I carried the day. I stumbled, I fell.
Now's not so much different from
long time ago.
Many's the snowman - neighborhood effort.
you bring the carrot, I'll bring the coal. Hard
Guardian Angel not melting till now.
Spare tires that hung from limbs over water.
A dive when the creek had more water
than mud., A place to go off to where every
injustice, real or imagined, could be
ridden out.
Books, like jeans, were tossed in a corner,
left there dirty, dog-eared to grow.
Homework was building a hut in the cellar
to hide in and ride out fantasy, fiction, mind
fodder and stuffing. Planning a weekend
never a life, breaking the skin on my dick
in the darkness alone and forsaken, bleeding
to death. Hearing those footsteps above in
the kitchen, knowing that SHE must have
heard me cry out.
It wasn't the floorboards, only the foreskin
under the kitchen cracking from friction.
One-legged jumpers hopping chalked boxes
on cleaned-up sidewalks between heavy snows.
The taw a marble, a half-eaten jaw-breaker,
a rock from a pocket that fell through a hole.
Winter game, summer game, names no longer
known. Red Rover, Red Rover, won't you
come over . . .
was that Kick-the-can or Sheep-in-my pen?
Whatever, whatever, It comes back whenever
I think of myself as a fully-grown man.
The lines 'round my forehead and 'round
my eye corners bunch up like creased
leather on the back of the backseat of old
Buick Sedans.
Me growing older, imagine the irony.
I couldn't wait, thought it might never happen.
Was sure I'd be cut down before the next season,
let alone grow up, grow older, grow old. A
fatalist then always seeing the dark side. Why,
looking back, is there now only light?
A child builds life around birthdays and
Holidays, what other calendar works for
the young?
Money enough every October
for only one fat golden pumpkin. An eye
for my brother to hollow, the other for me
to carve. The mouth one more problem,
always, an argument.
Shouldn't Jacks smile?/ No Jack ought to frown.
When did a smile in front of a candle bully
a trick into a treat? No matter how careful
the paring and carving, always one tooth
usually upper, snapped onto the table
dropped into a lap, bounced on the floor
and got trod underfoot.
Oh brother, my brother beginning to bawl
over spoiled jack-o'-lantern,
just part of the plan.
My baby brother cried quicker, easier
than movie star ladies in mush matinees.
Tears would well up at the smell of a
quarter. Hush money, of course, to quiet
the kid. It always did. Then off to the grocery
for jellybeans, Jujubes. Poor old Jack left on
the table. Mama would always redo his
bridgework and always inevitable smile,
not a frown. Still what is a holiday without
family ritual. Thanksgiving, Halloween -
each has its rules. And, anyway, Mama
was some kind of sculptor. God may
have made Adam but ever year Mama
tooled up and turned out a remake of Jack.
Rooms aren't important to kids growing up
as long as there's nails and boards to build
boxes.
A box of your own is a must. It gives the head
running room the heart its own hollow,
the body a place to bed down and bed.
It well might be worth forgoing the ransom
for pumpkins messed up, carved crooked
on purpose
if every kid's Bill of Rights included a jackknife,
a taw of importance and his own scowling Jack.
- from "Folio No. 56", fall 1986 |
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AND FINALLY
More next week. Meantime if you have a favorite McKuen song, poem or story
you'd like to share, or a question you need answered, drop me a line at
kenb@mckuen.com and I'll do the rest.
-Ken, Johannesburg, South Africa, October 31 |
