Stevieslaw: Have you read it?

Posted on October 10, 2018 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw: Have you read it?

Marsha, Cousin Myron’s long-suffering wife, called at 10:30 this morning.

“Have you seen your bonehead cousin?” She asked.

Without waiting for an answer, she announced that she thought Myron was off to that big-deal Kosher deli we were keeping secret, to stuff himself with enough delicacies to kill a horse. You all know Myron, the high-school dropout and math savant that made a small fortune betting on the ponies.

“Something new is bothering the him,” she continued. “He’s got high blood-pressure and if he makes himself sick, I will kill him.” Then she hung up. Marsha is like that.

I high-tailed it to the Deli—which is up on Queens Boulevard—the one we are not disclosing the location of. Sure enough, Myron was there. He had three corned-beef sandwiches, four potato knishes, and enough sour pickles to lower the Ph of the city by a point or two. When I came in, he was emptying the contents of a salt shaker on a huge platter of french fries.

“Hungry?” I inquired.

“I take it you’ve read the U.N. report on climate change,” I said, coming right to the point. The U.N. report predicted a climate disaster by 2040—much earlier than we had thought.

“Yes,” he implied with a nod—his mouth was full of corned-beef.

“Damned climate deniers,” I said. “They’ve cooked us now.”

“Don’t be a dope,” replied Myron. “All the people with real money and real power believe the science,” he said, turning to a knish. The anti-science bullshit is for the political hacks and the poor dumb base—the people who need something to scream about.”

“They know,” he said, “And they’ve made the calculation that there is nothing the world can do to head off disaster. They plan to make as much money as they possibly can and hunker down and prepare to survive in luxury.”

“We’re cooked,” he said. “Have a corned-beef.” Myron’s eyes were always too big for his stomach.

Just then there was a rap on the plate glass window. Myron’s teenaged twins had tracked us down.

“We were worried about you, dad.” They said—not quite in unison.

I could see from my bighearted cousin’s face that they were not half as worried as he was about them.

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Stevieslaw: Ekphrastic Review

Posted on October 9, 2018 by stevieslaw

 

 

My poem: Naming Names is up on The Ekphrastic Review today.  It was written in response to Anne Ryan”s collage #7.  Here is the poem and the link:

Continue reading →

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Stevieslaw: A Sense of Humor

Posted on October 3, 2018 by stevieslaw

I found this in a New York Times book review article on the Nobel Prize. I really like the last line.

“. . . common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humour are without judgment and should be trusted with nothing.” Clive James writing about Arnold Bennett

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Stevieslaw: Leroy

Posted on October 1, 2018 by stevieslaw

My poem, Leroy, was just published in the Ghost City Review.  Here is the link

 

https://ghostcitypress.com/october-2018-1/

 

and the poem:

LEROY

It was right after the rent-a-cop—
with his fine-tuned
sense of self-preservation
made his tattooed self scarce,
that they came on the court,
so loose-limbed
you imagined them melting
in the August heat.
Yet their procession
seemed as inevitable as the tide.

I hadn’t realized I was still dribbling
until Leroy was on me—
face to face.
I had played b-ball with him
at pick-up games on Stone Avenue.
He was like some sub-atomic particle—
Leroyiam,
always moving.
He was good
and when he went up for a jump shot
I was left defending knees.
Leroy showed me a metal Band-aid box
full of twenty-two shells
and a taped up pistol
as ugly as Brownsville.
He told me—
“I’d stay off the streets tonight.”

Soon after
the draft started
to round up the basketball stars,
the craps addicts,
and the layabouts
from the bowling alley.

Word was
Leroy flushed
his subway token
and took off—
with just his basketball
and his dad’s pay envelope.
They haven’t caught him yet
and the smart money says
they never will.

Perhaps, he will
grow old
and prosperous—
on a court somewhere,
lofting one-hand set shots
over his grandkids’ heads
and catching only net.

 

 

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here’s to the beans.

Posted on September 29, 2018 by stevieslaw

i’m a native speaker

beth's avatarI didn't have my glasses on....

celebrate national coffee day with a big cup of joe.

i celebrate each and every day

at least once.

—

‘coffee is a language in itself.’

-jackie chan

—

image credit: glam o rama

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Stevieslaw: CREEP

Posted on September 24, 2018 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw: What rock did you crawl out from under?

In 1972, we had fun with the acronym CRP (The Committee to Re-elect the President) extending it to CREEP as a way of succinctly explaining Tricky Dick and his campaign.

This year, barring some impeachment miracle, we will be dealing with CREEP 2 and somehow the stakes seem higher, but Republican theorists have been dealing with the larger issues associated with creeps. In a recent White Paper entitled, “CREEPS: Will They Be There When We Need Them?” the Republicans studied the potential problem of replacing the current crop of really creepy old white men—misogynist, racist, breathtakingly ignorant (yet eager to speak out)—with a new generation of creeps.

The study concludes that such people will be available and Republican in the foreseeable future—a conclusion buoyed by the Kavanaugh nomination—a man so certifiably creepy my mom would have described him with—“ooh, what rock did he crawl out from under?”

Still, Republicans acknowledge that they will be hard pressed to replace some creeps. “Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz come to mind,” said Republican spokesperson, Slim E. Ball. Can we find someone as clever as Rick in putting words to rape (“rape victims should make the best of a bad situation”)? Or someone as innately creepy as Ted (nine out of ten Americans interviewed agreed with the statement, “one glimpse of Cruz has me thinking “I need another shower”).

“We just want Americans to know,” said Slim E, “that the Republicans are concerned about maintaining the high level of creeps in the party, and that we are on the job.”

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Stevieslaw: All the best people

Posted on September 17, 2018 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw: All the Best People

Way back in the eighties, my brother called me once from a rest area on Route 80 to say he had some money for me. I had helped make his bail. We were at a Thanksgiving dinner and I suggested he join us. He told me, “You wouldn’t like my friends.”

I imagine he was on a drug run—armed to the teeth and brain addled on whatever, but he still realized that the folks with him were not good people.

I didn’t go.

Trump told us he knows all the best people. Many will soon be serving time. I’d rather not meet the rest.

And now the Republicans—more than willing to give Hitler the keys to the country, if he professed to be anti-choice (anti-woman), have identified an accused abuser as the best candidate for the Supreme Court.

I don’t get it.

Let’s vote.

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Stevieslaw: Lunch with Jesus

Posted on September 13, 2018 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw: Trump discloses lunch with Jesus

In a Fox News exclusive, President Trump described his 2014 lunch with Jesus at the famous Russian Tea Room in NYC.

Jesus told me that I was the only one capable of rescuing America from the clutches of that treacherous Muslim, Barack Obama. “He had some wonderful things to say about me—believe me, believe me,” said Trump.

“We both had the Chicken Kiev,” said Trump, “Delicious. And it went perfectly with the Sauvignon Blanc he made from the tap water.”

Trump admitted to being a bit nonplussed by the fact that Jesus stuck him with the bill.

“I thought that he would pick it up, or at least offer to split it,” he lamented.

“It worked out ok though. I told them I forgot my wallet and never paid it,” concluded the President of the United States.

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Stevieslaw: Cold Sweat

Posted on September 4, 2018 by stevieslaw

 

Here is the link and the poem.  Type in my name in the search box to find the poem.

http://www.dimeshowreview.com.

 

Cold Sweat

They finished stitching you
at 2 A.M.
The crowd at the ER
spilled out into the corridors—
drunks and druggies,
strokes and heart attacks.
People in such pain
they could no longer keep the silence of poverty.
A woman gave birth
on a gurney in the hallway.

We left before the cops came by.
I’d come to walk you home,
but you said “not yet”
and took off, long-legged
into the ragged dark.
I don’t know why
I tagged along.

We walked past the projects—
ugly as the lives they housed,
past the burnt-out wrecks
of places people once called home.
Past schoolyards
and in the eerie darkness
under the el.

You practically ran
down Stone Avenue
where Bubbe once lived
among the roaches.

We didn’t talk
and it wasn’t until we neared home
that I realized you had lifted a scalpel
from the hospital
and were searching
for the guys that cut you.

But not that night.
My heart calmed as the key
opened our front door.
The cold sweat would wash away.

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Stevieslaw: Redeeming Qualities

Posted on August 25, 2018 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw: Redeeming Qualities

My first cousin, Paul, had sticky fingers. He could not go into a store—be it a shoe store, a supermarket, or a used car lot, and come out without some unpaid for treasure. Periodically, his mug would appear on the front page of our local newspaper with the headline, “ Local Man Caught Red-handed.” Truth to tell, he wasn’t that good at stealing things.

But, we all loved Paul, in spite of the occasional embarrassing episodes or the calls for bail money at two in the morning. Paul was a delight to be with. He was great with children and pets, could tell a racy joke or two, and was a first rate “spite and malice” player. Rooms lit up when Paul came in.

My mom used to say that Paul had redeeming qualities. You could love him, in spite of his felonies.

So, I spent some time trying to come up with a list of Trump’s redeeming qualities. I came up empty. I tried it on some friends. We all came up empty.

Anyone have even one?

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