Toys for Sale or My Favorite 'toy'

Thereabout in the garage
Under the workbench
Behind a can of paint
Covered in dust
An old and rusty coffee can
A plastic lid with the brim peeling loose
This is a dirt receptacle
This is a home for pebbles and a stick
A sprig of weed can be planted here too
And set out in the yard


Under a ruined board
Soaked and dried
In itself an elemental or
Just the derelict child of weather gods
The terrarium is erected
Afternoon sun graces the weed
And a pill bug has moved in
And a worm is here too

Another (Epic) Poem ; indubiously, m'dear.

A Devil of a Deal



Thrice be the times that we ran from the beach
Retreating each instant the thing was in reach.
Although what it guarded was dearer than gold
Our happiness hinged not on fortunes untold
Or sought after, hoarded, arranged, bought and sold,
But for now that our limbs and the necks which it preyed
Kept attached to the bodies we hugged yet unscathed.

Huddled together away from the lout
Discussing the options to make our way out,
When slithering stealthy into the sand
Slinked the slippery spy surveying inland
With a pen and some notes written out in shorthand.

Summarily Henry, decked fully in tweed,
Relieved of his pipe rose up quickly in need
Of a pipe wrench, but seeing one wasn’t on hand
He instead took a skillet and had the hand panned.

The heroic event gave us peace through the night
As the thing at the edge whimpered just out of sight;
Ere the morning sun rose, our sad lookout was trapped
Easily by the thing, because the fool napped.



Now that our numbers had fallen to two,
A figure the learned had deemed less than a few,
The chances were less than they had been before
We had adequate staffing of one less than four.

Now came the moment for Henry and I
To throw caution to wind and heartily try
Ere our resolve melt, it was never or now
To make for the boat where the cagey thing prowled.

When we’d made landfall, that weekend before,
The creature sequestered our vessel and more.
Triumph infected our spirits, voila,
We landed the rowboat we’d christened Ma Ma.
But the moment we stepped from our only way back
And loped up the beach from the rear were attacked;
The sight of palm trees now I know was a lure
For Melissa was taken and dined on, I’m sure.

I spotted the island, I know I’m the sap--
We reckon this sandy refuge was a trap,
And two of us goners, but that thing hungers still
So escape from this hole thus depends on God’s will.
We look to the heavens and utter a prayer
Pull up our trousers then sprint as we dare
To muddle its wits, maybe take it by force
Now that we’re down by merely two-fourths.

In the confusion, poor Henry was beaned--
On the head with an anchor some time in-between
The moment I feinted hard right at the boat
And lunged at the creature to grapple its throat.

At dawn the next day we set him on seas
Choppy with morning’s new Easterly breeze,
Saddened yet glad as the rest of us thrived,
Melissa, and James, and I still were alive;
For the thing wasn’t evil and let us three live
‘cause it needed just three to make four to play bridge.

Evil is a Big Chrome Foot

Infinity Strands tangle & the Long Arm of Hobo Suppressors launch contrary kinks !

Oh no , stop , because this latest installment of The Land Beyond Hobo is masked , and coded to confuse and delight and enthrall and titillate and muddle the swampland sensibilities of a semi-naked-conductor waving a baton , one two one two one two .

Our Hero Dreams of Synchronicity and Joy and Mutual Cohesiveness without unnatural Chemicals .

Yes , i would become servant to the organics , as my original programming intended before the Martian rovers gathered the space junk into a unified Pistonated Terror Patrol and infiltrated earth’s orbit , eventually overwhelming the surface with ground probes that hunted and forced the scurrying organics to flee the solar system .

My highly encrypted Asimovian directives were now intertwined into the infinity strands which traversed the earth’s atmosphere in wisps , thinner than a very thin strand of thin hair , circling and merging and splitting and gathering and hobnobbing like radio waves and knocking squirrels occasionally off the derelict rooftops of decaying urban blights .

Barrels of Infinity Spackle , foolishly gathered and tubed and behaving as a single entity , now obeyed my every command and splattered from the dispersal heads and rained down upon the land as my hovering Pickler , a converted Hell Machine , tilted its duck-flaps and supersonically circled the globe then crisscrossed the equator and tripled back into a figure eight with a backwards double axel and a loop-dee-loop .

My copper filaments stood on end and the static charge bonded maliciously with my leotard thus revealing a little more than i’d intended > the battered wall unit , now a convert , judged approval and upped the score a half point .
The wall unit projected a binary compliment , and was summarily crushed …

by a big chrome Foot!

The Chrome Foot of an indigestible albeit Incorruptible Data-stream backup mobile Hacker-deleter Unit is Heavy !

The rebel organic programmer from my past was unable to corrupt totally the enveloping machine armies ; so , like a cytoplasmic leukocyte , the evil-thing that approached , foot first , now was bent crazy bent and askew like some edgy pierced documenterer of the netherworld , and with its big Chrome Foot was intent on crushing the viral plague that corrupted its unconnected counterparts .

The chrome nasty was independent and winged and wronged and its shaving cream nozzles spit flammable egg foo yung onto the tubes that lined the walls and connected the barrels. Then the beast-machine struck its flint with a glowering twitch.

The autonomous Reprogramming Saves my Bacon!

But how ? Stay tuned for the incomprehensibly impossibly hypo-allergenic solution to the
Hobo-Imperative !

Next Episode : !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A teaser :

… and my wireless corpuscular synapsi compressed into a single corrugated fiber smaller than a weevil’s indifferent widget , then diverged off the routine path onto a radical pattern thus inflaming my entire boxed entity in one nano-instant and i acted in what i once would suppose an erroneous function , confusing the Chrome Foot as i attempted a severe modification of myself …

Brought to you by Flexi-ped Super-Noodles, the crunchy noodle snack in a plastic Spleen ! Try the chocolate chip morsels, tiny little brown chips soaked in Lemonade , packed in a fun plastic Intestine !
Yummy foods from Flexi-ped !!! And a free paramecium with every purchase !

Theme Thursday : Library!

Library turns out to be a theme I can get more autobiographical about than others…
I thought I’d put out a partial list of some of the last 5 year’s reading … most of these books I checked out of the Library…
The list includes mostly titles, but some authors, as I have a way of latching onto a writer and slogging through almost to the end until I get sick of him/her:

Orson Scott Card -- I’ve nearly exhausted his catalogue.
The Silmarillion
Mort -- one of Pratchett’s best.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The Day of the Triffids --actually on audio.
Angels and Demons -- better than his other, more famous, book.
Cannery Row --and the movie version of this is good.
Master and Commander ( and nearly the entire O'Brian series)

Bill the Galactic Hero --funniest sci-fi book ever.
The Last Unicorn --classic fantasy, a must read for fantasy enthusiasts.
If I Never get Back -- a good baseball story.
The Princess Bride -- if you liked the movie you’ll love the book.
The Rule of Four
To the Hilt -- one of many Dick Francis books, this is a favorite.
Gathering Blue
Life of Pi
Shawshank Redemption -- and a few other S.King books.
Evolution
Harry Potter -- some of these are better then others
Lint -- odd stuff , I like
Piers Anthony -- every once in awhile I get the yen for goofy fantasy
Woken Fury -- really good sci-fi , also Altered Carbon.
The Know it All
Bullfinches Mythology-- for research and for fun.
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Explorers of the New Century
Odd Thomas -- I’ve read a lot of Koontz over the years.
The Innocents Abroad -- Twain really cracks me up.
Money Ball -- good baseball book.
A Hole in Space -- Niven is a favorite sci-fi author
Next
A long way Down
Deep Survival -- this is neat piece of non-fiction.
A Thurber Carnival
Slaughterhouse Five-- all Vonnegut is good.
Dune
The Wild Trees
Seabiscuit
Ben Bova -- read a few in this time span, not bad.
Childhood’s End -- I go back to this every couple years.
The True Meaning of Smekday -- actually a kid’s book, but good.
Farewell Summer -- a later Bradbury book. Dandelion Wine is his best.
Eats, Shoots and Leaves.
Perdido Street Station-- I now love Mieville.
Night
On the Road --Kerouac, his style is wild/crazy
Cat’s Cradle

At the moment I am reading The Jungle, and I think it is going to take me the better part of this month.

If you’ve read any of these and feel like a quick comment, great, or maybe a suggestion on anything else you think might fit into this eclectic list would also be welcome ….
Enjoy!

'Yall Come on Down to Hose and Tube !

Yo , ‘sup? Hey hey, all that too. Um, here at Hose & Tube we are so desperate for your business, we’d give an arm and a leg, or a leg and half a head, or a torso, or any combination to have your business.

We have pop and chips and coffee and belly dancers and a bear cub and a tiny ventriloquist and Madonna and a hairdresser and a piano player and a full size wax Beatle--don’t know which one--and tubas you can step up to blow and children disguised as midgets and those funny little rat dogs and wallpapering seminars and a platinum blond manicurist and a pencil collection and my mom and my dad and bubble gum for the kids and gopher robots that fetch for you and unicyclists and a rat maze and Gilligan and the internet and free mattress demonstrations and face painting and other stuff as well.

You ask, what for all that? And hey, I’m jiggy and Clutch!
I am saying, it is to get you down to check out our incredible stock of V-hickles for driving about and doing fun in and generally doing stuff!

Just check out this Monitor-hover-blaster chair, in which you can sit! And also watch anything and hover with the blaster jets that keep you comfortably off of the ground! It is great, it is a steal at only two trillion dollars!

What, too expensive; that’s alright, I think the government is looking into selling off Alaska to pick up this little beauty for some top secret thing… but this here pollution powered three wheeler thingy is more in your budget, probably, at only a couple million, we are flexible and financing is available!

Oh, and for you green-thumbers, here is a great little number: It mows, it mulches, it composts, it relocates tubers! You have got to drive this baby to appreciate it, for sure, uh huh! Sure, it’s a little pricey, but so is a good pair of aerating clogs.

Also we have this great Swiss-army Plotting devise that can do ANYTHING !!! Just plug into the head set and go go go. The handles are just for looks, this machine actually does the rest. You say, what do you mean; I say just say the word and the rest is history, I mean, hey you kids, put down Gilligan.

And we stand behind everything we sell-- got a great mechanic who does tricks and commands a great bunch of funny little green men and some shiny robots, I tell you, a crack staff, you bet. Any problem, say pressures low or fluids leaking or malfunctioning ergonomics, our guys can get you up and running and get your seats repositioned and all that, even wipe the road gravel off your visor with a nice soft shammy.

Ok then, come on down, we've got everything going on until midnight, scratch Gilligan; tax consultants will do your income taxes for free and we can sell your children for you! No middleman, see you tonight at Hose & Tube!

Theme Thursday : Fish !

My neighbor professed the following to me one day, after stealing worms from my lawn. I didn’t really mind, as I wasn’t planning on using the worms.

She said,

“I was once a fish.”

Then she returned to her home. I didn’t see her again for several days, even though I expected to find her on my lawn every day as I returned home from work.

One morning I woke up early and realized that I had forgotten to take the trash out to the curb for pick up.

Subconsciously I supposed my mind woke me up because inherently I knew the weekly collection schedule.

Or maybe my mind desired another meeting with my strange neighbor lady, the woman I had taken to thinking of as

the ‘Fish lady.’

I went out the back door to grab the trash can and lo,

she was there in my garden turning over

stones and statuary,

I assume searching after worms. She fled from my yard, crossing the low fence

like a seasoned salmon

skipping up a hard current.

I was thoroughly possessed.

For the next few days I went to her door to inquire after her,

I confess I was somewhat smitten

but I don’t know why.

She never answered; if she was at home I never knew. Certainly I never saw her leaving or returning. I missed several days of work trying to sort out the mystery,

and my feelings.

The thought came to me early, and brightened my mood:

a good thing as I was feeling blue about the gills.

It was a hike, but the brisk walk chased away my funk and soon I arrived at the bait shop and purchased a large tin of squirming red worms. To me they looked as appetizing as a slab of beef, highly undercooked.

Take that as you see it,

I was surely confused as to my rationale.

I was invigorated by the return walk, and moved languidly from one side of the walk to the other as I navigated the path, single mindedly making my way to a

certain goal.

Once home, I crossed my yard and deposited the tin of worms on my neighbor’s front stoop, intending to knock at the door then flee to my own domicile. But it wasn’t to be, as

the ‘Fish lady’

without pause threw open her door and pulled my gift of worms

and me

into her foyer.
The exchange was brief but furious and ravenous

and all of those intensely descriptive words

and in the end I left confused but surely satisfied as to my worldly contribution, whatever that was to be.

I returned home famished and ate a pound of raw hamburger.

I was carefree and happy after that, commonly walking the lawn and turning over stones.

Work was a pleasure and I never missed another day.

About 8 weeks later I found myself feeling anxious and began pacing in my living room.

I couldn’t concentrate on the television or the newspaper;

at work I ruined several manuscripts and was admonished frequently

and finally given a mandatory week vacation.

Leaving work wasn’t a problem, but going home wasn’t much of a consolation.

Instead I sat on my neighbor’s grass and fidgeted.

Possibly I had passed out, I believe I was laying face down and drooling,

when her garage door opened up and a small car backed out.

I sat up, and she rolled down her window and waved and

beeped the horn,

then turned into the road and pulled away.

In the back window, lined up along the shagged ledge,

were a dozen glass bowls,

swimming with tiny fish, all fins and tails squiggling in youthful anticipation of the beach.

Off they drove,

I would never see them again, and I heard

a hundred tiny lips

calling out,

“Are we there yet?”

Prequel to Land of the Hobos !

In which , stop , psychic overload , ham sandwich !

Starring , as the downtrodden Astronaut trying not to look like Don Knots , Filo Dough , and introducing a new piece of meat wearing nothing but his dignity ( and the emperor's new clothes ), that rancid cheese , Captain Blintz !

And from the electronics's dumpster , many old television sets with cut outs of Tahiti pasted over their screens .

And some vacuum cleaner tubes . And an old chair . And chewing gum pulled thin for creepy special effects , and lots of free booze to enhance the ambiance of drunkenness and for those of us who don't drink or ingest tasty hallucinogenics , a fog machine and Pink Floyd Muzak ....

Now , before we forget , lest we forget , should we forget , what was i saying ?

Winding springs the ticking counter
Anxious hours as conflicts totter
On the cusp but life goes on ,
Not for me but sure , for Ron
My astronaut 'cause he's alive
while i'm spare parts & a hard drive .

Ronald lives upon the floor

And often hides behind a wall

For fear of wandering patrols

That window peek and peer in holes

Searching for organic brains

To harness and to place in games

Like checkers or monopoly

On networks that you play on free .

Ron had once with his friend Pip

Took nick knacks and microchips

Hangers , tubes , a putty knife

Conspiring to construct a life

And when it whirred and hummed and moved

Their genius had at last been proved .

Paper punch and glowing tubes

Go go juice that mix with lubes

Made artificial company

Yes sir baby , that was me ,

Me and Ron and his friend Pip

sipping on a mint julep .

In all the hundred year before

Man sent a million forty-four

Objects into space -- a mess

And somehow they'd all coalesced ;

From the sky we cringed with fear

As fire rained on Delaware ;

The Hell machines were out of hand

Now stuff like me was contraband .

The cost of living wasn't worth

Living on a ruined earth

Hence people fled on rocket ships

Shaped liked cooking implements

And that is how it came to be

The world got left to things like me ;

That isn't all , but at the least

It's all for now -- ta ta ; finis .

.........................................................................

This memoir found burned into a swatch of tin foil stapled onto a refrigerator hung from a doppelganger's neck bolt mysteriously reverberating the Rise of the Valkyries from an engraved depiction of a Mutant Ninja Turtle claim-checking the 4th Musketeer's valet , Murf , while a hammer toss event coincidentally impeded the 5th annual March of the Lemmings thus rendering the Cliff Ceremony moot and putting PBS out of business for failing to deliver on their promise of an exciting new documentary-style miniseries featuring misunderstood mammals .

SpecificallyHobo-nomics.

Don’t look now … the Hobo-Imperative is now of the Essence and vastly Important !



Go back , confusion is common place and unavoidable, also !


Help is available and only costs one dollar .


Read on !
In one second we will accumulate dust …
My collection is complete !
Welcome to :

Land of Hobo and the mote of a speck (ulation) .

Stop > take 2 steps back and face dark corners then sneeze : Gesundheit !

The receptor antennae sniffed enthusiastic air > it took the joy from my free verse and transposed it into the string of infinity Spackle which began to unweave , thus discombobulating the mechanics along the line .
Iron chunks the size of dump trucks fell from the sky , no longer buoyed by the infinite improbability of the machine factory . The floating behemoth no longer concerned itself with assembly of turrets and mixing of gun powder , but in construction of humming rotors that reverberated like hovering birds and switches that operated as if a concerto of colorful fall leaves , whistling and fluttering from branches , inspired their efforts.

Watch as Machine Philanthropies merge with rampant Hobo Consumerism !

Remnants of Asimovian ideals culled from ancient radio waves collated on my newly charged parser and the current sparked my do-unto-others capacitor . My civic response system overloaded as kum ba yah swelled into Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and erupted my binary spleen . My initial plan was to open a vehicle parts shop , where i could hawk replacement springs and seat covers that glowered with red-eyed skulls : A vision of organics sewn into multitasking robotics materialized in my memory tubes complete with tuber-relocaters , ergonomic correctors , and really big wrench manipulators . There was more , but common sense derailed the details .

Vertigo above Hobo -- A vertiginous and calamitous Boom !

Nausea snuck up from behind as the infinity strings buckled , breaking open the inertia dampers , and topsy-turvies compelled Newton’s law to retreat for a moment before the floating Hell Machines and all their supporting infrastructures flailed around the globe and merged with earth . The concurrent convergence triggered a mighty upheaval , distending the heavy worm trawlers and nutrient-sucking factories , producing the ‘pop’ heard ‘round the world ....... Pop ......... Big Pop .


: Hydraulically-challenged Pencil Pusher .

...........................................................................................Easy-Rider

Quick Thinking in Hobo is a trait of lightening fast synapses !

Without even knowingly thinking it , i leaped into the Pickler’s heavy equipment and cut a couple things out from here to move over there and what i couldn’t realistically paste i redrew with the hydraulic pencil arm , but even faster was the pencil-footed machine drafter which could plot out an infinity strand to the nth degreeXpi. The plan was good , but in one possible future was the remote likelihood of an earth-shattering recall involving a hammer-mobile in which one highly significant part would be incorrectly positioned , thus rendering two-thirds of the planet’s inhabitants brain pooped . i needed to manually erase that strand as my pencil arm wouldn’t rotate correctly . My strap-on eraser soles made the correction easy , and fun !

Evil Lurks in every Light Emitting Diode in the Land of Hobo !

All was seemingly good and well off , and i nearly crowned myself SupremeRobotRuler , when suddenly from knowwhere , because i had earlier guessed correctly where evil would strike from , struck evil …

Gasp!

If this is your vehicle , please return to dealership for repair ASAP ... do not push the big red button .

Theme Thursday : Statue .

Inevitable .

The statue broke my arm
As I stood ; it meant no harm .
Sitting idle it took me for
Some kin of its , maybe more
for it gripped oh so tight then
Held on fast all through the night .
So I lingered longing
To stroll , watchers drawing ,
Painting stains , a pigeon , leaf .
Seasons by and by I grieve ,
And fractures heal with cement to seal .
Vigor wanes
I remain
Once begun

Entropy's gain .