Donald

a total orphan

before he was 2 months old

/ he is emotionally stunted

teenage girls would love him

if he went to their school

and he would break their hearts

like porcelain coffee mugs

donald has less than

a kindergarten level education

/ spent his childhood in hospitals

nearly lost his tail to a lasceration

when he was only 7 months

/ had it shaved for surgery

now he's twice that age

not interested in school or girls

prefers to hang around the house

examining the space below doors

fighting plastic bags

and pushing things off ledges

Gratitude is complicated

i've been working

as a veterinary receptionist

for six years now

and i just received my first

'thank you for being good

at your job' type card


it was from the owners

of a cat who accidentally

strangled itself

on the window blinds srawstring

while they were at work

they ran in without calling
a doctor saw them right away
the cat was dead

The fable of the church bell

The church was the most impressive building in the village. The new rector came from the city where they had lots of impressive buildings. He decided to put this little town on the map.

He started a fundraiser to build a giant bell which would ring in the hours of the day. They sold high end designer shirts to raise the money and all the villagers bought them. Everyone was sharp dressed now and even though they didn't have a lot of money for groceries they looked good.

Finally they had raised enough money and the new rector rang the bell. It's rang resounded so loud and deep that all the windows in the village shattered and it was winter.

Not getting anywhere

we all stand around, looking back and forth, making small circles, sometimes listening to our music and sometimes glancing at our books. some of us have been on this humid, narrow platform for over an hour. we are not strangers to stagnant crowds, we are professionals.

two grinning jamaicans drinking from baby blue bottles wrapped tight in plastic bags. an inordinately diverse group of loud mouths smacking each other, screaming idiotic gibberish, and giving a large radius of commuters something on which to direct their wandering frustration. a frail old woman in a short blue dress inhales from a smokeless cigarette while badgering another woman who just wants to go home and see her cat and go to sleep. most of us are unremarkable, trying our best to be unremarkable. most of us didn't know which way to even look for the train to come. shuttle bus weekend is anybody's guess, but the old school riders, we know.

a gentleman reading a book next to me, it had an interesting cover. he was overtly literary. probably not a fan of genre fiction and yet his existence was a kind of genre; a book person. at some point he pulled out a small piece of index paper and began to scrawl something on it. typical, i thought - and not a little bit hypocritically. but as i took another peek i realized he was writing a love note. it started "you're cute..." and i knew who it was written for.

she was three feet away, two feet away from him. i tried not to stare at her. beautiful women don't like that. she was certainly gorgeous tho, cat eye glasses and light brown hair, a t-shirt and shorts but with style. a regular girl-from-the-loft-next-door beauty.

but my friend the bookworm was not her only admirer. another gentleman, easily the douchiest of the three us all, starts asking her questions about the subway situation. "when is the train supposed to come? will it be on this side or that side? i'm trying to get into manhattan for a concert. do you like music?" a love note became a bookmark and there's no story here.

The Coinstar superstar pt. 2

i took my jar of change down to the coinstar at TD bank because this is what one does when one is preparing to move. it was a mason jar that had been accumulating change since last august.

they allow you to guess how much change you've got before the counting begins and if you are within $1.99 you get a prize.

i guessed $68.54 because it spells CA.SH in pager code and my total was $68.21. i grinned at the little receipt. then i grinned at the cop standing next to me. he smiled back. the bank was silent now without my change clanking through the machine.

historically i have never been good at estimating. this is a significant development for me.

i went up to the ladies at the desk to get my money and my prize. they were not as impressed as i expected them to be. one of them retrieved a green plastic rectangle with TD written on it in white and handed it to me. that was a confusing moment. the cabinet from which she pulled the rectangle was in the same place in my veterinary clinic where we keep the ashes of cremated animals, near the floor opposite the desk. what is it? i asked. it's a piggy bank so you can start saving up your change again.

i raised my mason jar over my head and slammed it down against the concrete floor. the ladies mouths opened but nobody said a word.

why did you do that? one finally spoke. i didn't do it, you did it. you shattered that jar the moment you gave me this durable, light-weight, plastic piggy bank. you shattered my mason jar. without my accumulating pocket change that jar had nothing.

the police just stood there watching and i tried to think of something else to say. can i have a pen? no sir, i think you should leave, was the lady's reply. commerce bank always gave me pens.

a man in a sleeveless v-neck sweater emerged from the back and observed my jar. something in his eyes told me this was not the first time he'd seen this situation play out. he turned around to get a broom and i headed back for the door. being a winner, being good at estimating, has a dark side that good estimators almost never talk about.

back on the sunny sidewalk i tossed the green piggy bank in a garbage can and used my new cash towards an iced coffee. the glimmering ice cubes reminded me of my mason jar, spread apart now in so many pieces, i might have liked to spread those shards into the breeze on a mountaintop but that would have been dangerous.

Look forward

someday
your reputation
as someone who says what they think
with no regard to consequence

will catch on fire
and you will be free
from the burden of being
who you are:

someone who approaches
every new situation
with taste and grace

Culture Corner with Jack Burton: The Seagull

Heya Folks,

It's me, your old buddy Jackie Burton. Been a while since I rapped at ya, but I got somethin' on my mind so shut off the iPod and lend me your ear, will ya? I'll give it back, that's a promise.

Now I don't need to tell

you

that The Jackster prefers to live his life to the maximum; his hobbies include driving fast trucks, dodging punches, gambling with criminals, and helping people in trouble. What you may not know, however, is that The Jack Man is simply

spellbound

by the magic of live theater. A successful show... oh, how do I phrase this? ...It

opens the heart... like the wings of a newly formed butterfly

; unfolding - blossoming - revealing us to ourselves. It's a sublime and transcendent experience! 'Course, sometimes things go horribly wrong. Sometimes the production is an endless chain of malfunctions and there ain't no flowers bloomin' - maybe Venus Fly Traps - and guess what? You're the fly.

I recently took in a free production of Anton Chekhov's

The Seagull

at the Parker Hudson Community Theater. It's an all-time favorite of mine; top shelf stuff. A comedy so sharp you might mistake it for a melodrama. A reflection on family and failure, success and ambition. I mean here's a play that's right up there with The Great Pyramids, tank tops, and Democracy... Chekhov's genius is in creating authentic characters and defining them through their insincerity. So when I realized the jackal-bats on stage intended to take that insincerity and portray it

in compound with their own insincerity

, well, it had me

sincerely

goin' green. And no, I ain't talkin' about recycling. Unless yackin' up Jack Snacks qualifies as recycling - which it doesn't.

Now listen, nobody ever said Chekhov's plays were easy. To stage a successful production takes exceptional hard work and determination. The script is a ninja star of subtext and it never stops spinning - so you can imagine my disgust when they opened with a song. News flash folks, The Seagull is not a musical.

The script was revised, peppered with references to contemporary life; the internet, John Steinbeck, New York. I don't mind daring theater, the Jack Attack accepts

all

challenges, but it was done so halfheartedly. It was more like they took a red pen and marked up Chekhov's masterpiece with the willy-nilly carelessness of a waitress jotting down your order, "

that'll be a serving of one timeless masterpiece with extra crap sauce and hold the subtlety. Anything else?

" Yea! Kill me, please! The dialogue was disjoint, moods shifted incomprehensibly, and most of the cast was yelling their lines instead of simply enunciating from the diaphragm. That's theater 101, kids.

I panicked! I scanned for the exits - but then I regained my cool. Jack Burton doesn't walk out in the middle of an act. He waits until intermission like a gentleman. Well these goof-blisters out-smarted me on that front too - no intermission! It was not a pretty sight. I mean I've been in some truly harrowing jams over the years but nothing that compares to the tooth grinding torture of sitting in that auditorium for over two hours.

Anyway, like all things ultimately do, it ended. They did one last song and they set us free - dazed, humiliated, and vaguely angry, into the world to guzzle beer until we finally washed the taste of blasphemy out of our mouths. Folks, let me leave you with a word of caution: think twice before attending a free play. It may seem like a can't lose situation but Old Jack learned the hard way, sometimes there's a required donation - and it ain't money,

it's your soul

.

Here's your ear back. Thanks for the loan.

Your pal around town,

Jack Burton

this is an editorial by Jack Burton from Big Trouble In Little China and may not reflect the views of ILOANBooks

Youthful enthusiasm

certainty as an icing spread sweet and rich upon the thick headed skulls we can fall on soft strangers safely making out some temporal achievement absurdest (attractive?) -most!

among them most, resembling, but never compared to, the over eager cop in training hung up like bar hooks his fingers in his belt loop try'na be a good dude in a pentagon of newlywed duffle bags - watch as new law goodbyes its rookies with a CUNY smile, enjoys bbqs responsibly, birthday parties, warm like somebody's tongue, a nursed corona.

justice you tetrino, you kaleidoscope you are never done digesting and some bearded babies wanna know if you can spare a (high) five. these crimes of taste are not why you joined the force. look

here's a child mindful not to wake his mother sound asleep, cooing in her exhausted ear, "there will be cake, my child i was in heaven in 2006 and god told me to tell you this life will certainly yield cake."