Thursday, August 25, 2011

SCRABBLE POETRY

HAIL VAST ORE OF DESTINY

Biker welds a vast jar, five grams.

Radion? Knees rot.

Go pony! Bike is demoted.

Wide warts on the crown. King is demoted. Hail crown rot!

Now go hail humour. If the eel zaps the goat or ox, vast destiny rots.

Or bet on gay erotica. Avid knees or wide eels hit and jar.

Hail Id! Hail vast ore of destiny!


NOUNS erotica goat crown rot bet destiny bike knees humour eel grams hit pate wart jar pony radion biker id ox five vox la bin ore VERBS rot welds bet bike demoted humour hail zap hit jar go ADJECTIVES demoted gay vast avid wide CONJUNCTIONS or nor if


Orange Julius

My first job when I was 15 was working at Orange Julius, one block away from the beach in Newport Beach, California. Orange Julius was a greasy, unsanitary fast food chain specializing in hamburgers, hot dogs with all kinds of glutinous "fixins'" and Orange Julius, a sweet fruity drink made of ice, yogurt, various combinations of fruit and a secret ingredient. The branch I reported to every day was in a part of the beach called "the Fun Zone," a carnivalesque hangout for stoned surfers, over-tanned, fake breasted beach bunnies, and zombified junky street punks.

After about two weeks of working behind the counter in my orange and brown polyester outfit serving the impatient tourists their slop, I started to befriend the other mostly Mexican boys who worked there for their $4.75 an hour (minimum wage in 1985.) One day I was fixing myself a custom-made Orange Julius when I noticed two of the employees looking at me and giggling. I blended the ice, yogurt, orange juice, and crushed raspberries into a cup, and was about to put in the "secret ingredient." This was nothing more than sugar water, which was stored in a huge 50 gallon vat in the back of the store. It had to be refilled and mixed with bags of sugar about every three days when it ran out. This was part of the closing duties.

"Don't use the sugar water," one of them warned me.

"I like the sugar water, it makes it sweet," I replied.

"I wouldn't use it if I were you. It's for the tourists."

I had already made myself dozens of Orange Juliuses by this time, but I took his advice, fearing the worst.

That night at closing time the two employees let me in on their little secret. As I was sweeping the sandy floor of the restaurant, one of the boys called me into the back. I walked around the corner and saw him with his pants unzipped, a yellow arc of hot piss streaming into the sugar water.

The Beginning of the Story


The story is as follows: Vida is from Serbia. She married a man she called a “tall drink of water” who was also of Serbian descent. They opened a diner together in Southern California before the war. After the war they adopted over a dozen children from troubled homes. They saved these children from abuse and neglect and malnutrition and sadness and even death. Her name is Vida Kavosovitch, and her husband is Savo Kavosovithch. 
By the time I come to know them, in the late 1970's, their names have been changed to Sam and Vida Glush. They have been fully integrated into American life. One of their adopted children was my mother, Marilyn Rae Fowler. 
Marilyn was born in 1941 to an American father and a mother of Russian Jewish descent. 
The sands of time have blown away many of the pertinent facts about her biological parents, but this is what I think I know. Her mother and father were lower middle class laborers. Her father, R.W. Fowler, was a drunk who had trouble hanging on to gainful employment. Her mother, who came from a jewish family, gave up everything when she married R.W. When her jewish kin heard she had married a non-jew, they wrote her out of their lives. She was dead to them, to the point where they literally held a funeral for her. Into this morass was born my mother, one of seven children. Betty, Paul , Florence, Marilyn, Phillip, Terry, and another one I can't remember. Of the seven, two or three remain. I know that Betty and Florence are still with us and I am in touch with them. Terry disassociated himself from the family sometime in the early 80's and has never been heard from since. He may or may not be still alive.
The rest of the family came to their ends in this way; Phillip died of some sort of heart failure in the mid 80's. I remember him sleeping on our couch in Costa Mesa and breathing very heavily, his large lumbering chest toiling for air. Paul died of AIDS a bit later, in the late 80's. Marilyn, my mother, died of breast cancer in 1989. She was the only one in the family to have attended university.
On the other side of the family, there is a man named Victor Hemery. He is an internationally recognized, champion auto racer. In the early 1910's, he broke the world record for speed in an automobile, which he held for about twenty years. I think he went something like 100 miles and hour in one of those crazy jalopies that they drove back then. He drove for BMW and won races all over France and and europe, and also in Russia and the United Staes. There is a photo of him looking proud and fierce at the wheel of his car hanging on my hallway in Brooklyn and he looks exactly like my father. Or vice versa. My middle name is Victor, after this man. When he was 75 years old, after a life of fame and glory, he decided that he had had enough. He was ready to get off the ferris wheel of life. A madman and an egomaniac and probably a depressive, he had subjected his family to the whims of his scalding personality. They knew his ways and so they did not trust him to preserve his safety. His wife kept a close watch on him. She had two young daughters, one named Martine, (my great aunt, who I came to know and love very well, and to whom my father was very attached later in life) and Huguette, my grandmother. One fateful day Victor sent his wife and young daughters away, against their wishes. He turned on the oven and shut all the doors and windows in the kitchen, then he sat on a chair and fell asleep forever.
Victor's daughter Huguette married a man named Paul de Gaillande, my grandfather. He was a civil servant living in the south of France during the difficult years of German occupation in the 1940s. In 1943, they had their first child, a son named Philippe (my father). Times were tough under the Vichy regime and resources were scarce. The town organized a "cutest baby" contest, and the prize was an additional reserve of wartime rations. Baby Philippe was the winner, and the family received a bonus of food rations. In 1945, Paul was appointed a position as a an administrator in a French colony in North Africa, and the family moved to Morocco.
In 1946, while in Morocco, a second son was born, my uncle Yves. He was a "pied noir" (literally translated as "black feet") meaning he was a white man born on black soil, so only his feet were black. The family lived an idyllic and peaceful existence as colonial French occupiers in Morocco. My father recounts this part of his life as a dream of youthful nostalgia. The family lived in a seaside port town called Mazagan (a name left over from Portuguese occupation). They had a large, comfortable, government supplied villa with a cook and housekeeper. They coexisted in harmony with Moroccan society. They played on the beach with the many French expatriates in their community, and their associations with Moroccans were seemingly copacetic and friendly. My father recalls with fondness his cook Mohammed, who cheerfully admitted his sexual relations with livestock in times of desperation. For the French youth growing up in Morocco in the 50's, life was sunshine and wonder. The Moroccans, to their understanding, were appreciative of the influence of the French on their existence. And then in 1954, it all went topsy turvy and the Moroccans demanded their independence. They kicked out the French, but for some reason, they dind't kick them all out. My father's  family stayed another two years until 1956.
Then it was time to go back to France. My father was a moody and rebellious teenager. The family relocated to Tarbes, in the southwest. Philippe the heavy lidded philosopher was dissatisfied and restless. The move back to France was not to his liking. He did well in school and read well, but the spirit of the times manifested itself in his young mind as an overall dissatisfaction with society as a whole and a general personal feeling of alienation that would never leave him.
In 1956, southern California was a land of orange groves and newly built freeways. Marilyn Fowler was not satisfied with her lot in life. Her father had trouble holding a job, and her mother had turned to evangelical Christianity to soothe her suffering. The family of six was not making ends meet. Living in a trailer park in Baldwin Park, R.W. kept a gaggle of german shepherds which he seemed to value more than his own children. Marilyn was a bright student and very involved in school activities like cheerleading. But things at home were not to her liking. At age 14, she made the momentous decision to run away from home and try to find a better life. I'm not really sure how it all went down, but she turned herself in to the authorities and asked to be placed in a foster home. They placed her in the home of Sam and Vida Glush.
In the Glush home, Marilyn thrived. Sam and Vida provided material comfort and an abundance of love and support. A stream of foster children came and went, but Marilyn stayed. She was one of two children who the Glushes adopted as their own, the other being Carol. Marilyn was a very accomplished student, and she graduated from high school early, at age 16. She applied and was accepted to U.C. Berkeley. She entered in 1961 at age 17.
At Berkeley, Marilyn did her best to do well in school, fully appreciating the opportunity she had been given. She was the first person from her adopted and birth families to enter college. 
Once there, Marilyn found the political upheaval of the Vietnam war protests very distracting. She wanted to get to class and get her degree, and she found her way literally blocked by protesters, many of whom were kids with trust funds who could afford to jeopardize their educations. I think this formed the profound political ambivalence she carried for the rest of her life. On the one hand, she sympathized with the causes and philosophies being espoused and championed by the youth movements around her, but on he other hand she resented the casual irresponsibility of the leisure class who had the freedom to risk their educations in service of protest.
But Marilyn was a worldly and sophisticated young lady, and she wanted to embrace life. She befriended the daughter of wealthy New England Industrialists. Louise was a painter and artist and spirited hippie. She and Marilyn hit it off right away. Marilyn began to pursue a career in acting and modeling. Louise and her parents were happy to help relieve some of Marilyn's financial burdens, and they welcome Marilyn's stabilizing influence on their wild daughter. Louise and Marilyn made a plan to go to Paris. 
(to be continued)


Flying Bear Heaven



I wrote this about ten years ago when I was working at Goldman Sachs in the "multimedia" department.


FLYING BEAR HEAVEN

Wall Street is where I work, but I am an impostor there. I go to work every day disguised as a willing cog in the investment banking machine, but I am a dreamer and a poet. They pay me to keep the machine running, but I spend my time daydreaming about ways to destroy the system that keeps me alive.

I have a high-paid, non-finance-related, technical job, which gives me ample free time and constant exposure to people who work in the world of finance. I am not one of them. I hate what they stand for. There may be decent individuals among them, but after three years of working among them, I can honestly say that I despise their lifestyle and their arrogant worldview. I stay there because working for them gives me freedom to dream and write, and also to travel. I have traveled to many interesting places on the payroll of the bank. I consider myself a field researcher on the intricacies of human greed.

Every morning I either take the bus or ride my bike from my apartment in Chinatown to the gleaming edifices of the financial district. It is a short distance physically, but the psychological transformation one must undergo to “belong” on Wall Street is huge. I get up every morning, take a shower, comb my hair, shave, put on deodorant, put on nice, pleated pants, a good shirt, and the obligatory tie. After all of this I look like a guy who works on Wall Street. When I ride the elevator to the 31st floor in the Goldman Sachs building at 180 Maiden Lane, I look like any one of the young investment bankers there. But I’m not one of them. I’m different. I’m an imposter. I have not made the necessary psychological transformation to become a banker on the inside. I will never make that transformation.

Usually my day at the office involves sitting through any number of soul-crushing meetings about meetings about meetings. My only respite comes from the Dream. I often lapse into the Dream. In the Dream, I am always a big brown bear, and something wonderful and violent always happens. Today, as I settle in to the first of many meetings designed to drain the lifeblood and crush the will of the participant, I feel myself dozing. I am sleepy, and maybe if I relax, just maybe I will go there, I will drift, I will be, I will…

Now I’m a big brown bear, and I am striding down the hallways feeling warm and sleepy. I fall to all fours; it’s more comfortable this way. No one notices my transformation. I go into the cafeteria and I eat one of the waitresses, clothes and all. She screams a little but no one notices. I go into one of the closets and it is lined in animal furs, soft and downy. It is dark and smells like honey and smoke, like a campfire. I curl up in a soft fluffy corner. I have a big window in front of me. The lights of Brooklyn shine from across the East River. I am sooo sleeepy. My big meal sits comfortably in my stomach. I am a big sleepy, ferocious, lazy predator. I want to savor this feeling, but I drift into sleep.

In my dream, I dream I am flying. I am a dream bear dreaming I am a flying bear. I fly out over the city, looking into windows. I fly gracefully, pawing the air with my giant arms. It feels like swimming in warm, liquid air. I see naked women, people fighting, people cooking, lots of people watching TV. Some see me and run to the window, call their husbands, call the police, scream. I take no notice, for I am warm and sleepy and free. I fly up up up, high above the buildings. An airplane whooshes past me, about fifty feet away. Close call, better go back down. Back down to the buildings and lights and cars. Back into my window, into my safe downy fur nest, back to sleep. When I wake up, I will be asleep. Reality doesn’t exist. This is it. I am exempt. I am sentenced to perpetual comfort, rest, flight and freedom. I guess I died and went to flying bear heaven.

My pager vibrates at my hip. I am back at Goldman Sachs. I have to go help a client plug in a computer. I see my reflection in the window. I am no longer a bear. I am a clean-cut, professional, businesslike human male, about thirty years old. No one will suspect that I am sometimes a flying bear. I meet the client. She is a middle-aged woman, yet it seems she has been dead for most of her life. She exudes no life force whatsoever. Her professional demeanor has left her dead. I plug in her laptop. Her body language lets me know she wants me to leave. She mouths “thanks” as she looks past me. I walk out, back to my cubicle.

It occurs to me that “cubicle” rhymes with “testicle.” If a cubicle is a testicle and I live in a cubicle, does that make me a spermatozoa? If so, into what womb am I being prepared to shoot? Most likely I am one of the hundreds of billions that will die in a condom or die of exposure on a pair of breasts, or sizzle in stomach juice, or perish in an esophagus or in a colon. Of course I don’t mean I will literally die in a digestive tract, but if I stay in my cubicle, I will most certainly not reach the proverbial egg. I have to venture out, wiggle my tail and swim.

Sometimes rage overtakes me and I just want to shake everyone. I want to take my co-workers by the shoulders and shout: “When did you die? Was it when you left your parents’ house in New Jersey, when you realized you had to marry your father or your mother to keep that child-like security alive?” Mostly I just wait until the fur grows and I become the bear again.

Now it’s time for another meeting. The speaker is discussing yesterday’s meeting and fielding comments about this morning’s meeting. I’m feeling sleepy again, very sleepy, so so sleeeeepy…

Now I am skulking through the corridors again. It is warm. I swing to the right, crash a spindly door down with my great, brawny bear arm. Inside are the stacks of computers and servers. This is the LAN room, where the information nests. I lumber in and lean against one of the towers and it crashes to the ground. Cables rip and glass breaks. Millions of gigabytes of information are lost forever. Who owes what money to whom, what company is sucking the blood out of what individuals? Gone. It feels good, and I go from tower to tower, slashing and crushing and tumbling the plastic and metal like so much kindling. Two skinny men with glasses rush into the room. It is John and Felix from the I.T. department. I rip out John’s trachea with my sharp claws. He falls gurgling to the ground, spurting a thick river of brownish blood. Felix makes the mistake of jumping onto my furry back. He digs into my flesh with a pencil that feels like a mosquito bite. His other fist is clutching my fur. I rise up on my feet and back toward the large double-thick, bulletproof window. It shatters as I slam into it and Felix plunges, screaming into the cold Wall Street air, 31 floors to his long-awaited death.

When I wake up I am in a very boring meeting. The speaker is still droning on and hasn’t noticed that I was asleep. There’s a little bit of drool on my chin. I wipe the drool from my chin and I feel pretty good. I feel really good. I still work here with these people but I am something they will never be. I am a big, dangerous, furry, flying brown bear.