suburban XM@S dinner

 
The large suburban Santa Clara home was darkly spacious, with a small sparklingly decorated tree reflected in a mirror; nearby it, on the wall, a massive TV-screen.

None of the 6 of us sang christmas carols; 2 sang karaoke pop songs; I sang Ihr habt gelert das cocktails ABC from Brecht's "Mahagonny", impressing everyone.

We had roast turkey, baked ham, corn/maize polenta, mashed potatoes, with merlot; I had hot decaf tea, but passed on apple pie. I was given lots of left-overs to take home; a Mind Benders daily block-calendar (giving it later to a puzzlist where I live); 4 pairs of Eddie Bauer half-sox.

Despising another (singing) guest for being a prurient, sexist, divorced single-dad Vietnam War USN vet spoiled my evening,  thinking: '"What am I doing here?" so I told the hostess later by e-mail & phone. She tactfully suggested he & I came from "opposite ends of the cultural spectrum."

FAITH

FAITH

(about his daughter Fiona)

In her quest for skill

our dexterous child unlocks

the file with letters from Santa

that have sat beside cookie crumbs

and dregs of milk each joyful morning:

the summation of her year, words of

caution and praise.

“Look,” she says.  “Look at this.

Santa has been using our computer!”

And we nurse, as we should, I hope,

the slow turning of the earth,

the eventual lengthening light.

 ~George M. Perreault (D. Ed.)

gmp@unr.edu  Univ. of NV/Reno

GO ASK A GUN-ADDICT

IF gun-ownership as an addiction  
FEELS WRONG TO GUN-OWNERS,  

GO ASK A GUN-ADDICT

VARIANTS: 

Gun-owners are/become gun-addicts, 
but deny it, like most addicts do.
They need a 12-step gun-program.

Securely addicted,

gun-addicts fear

Someone will disarm them,

Someone will assault them,

because they're armed,

calling it Freedom.

(24 DEC 12, Santa Clara CA) v5

LIVING ALONE

LIVING ALONE

Living alone, nothing
ever gets done now

without thinking:

nothing gets done now

without thinking
how to do it ?

(16 DEC 12, Santa Clara CA)v10

JASCHA

JASCHA

Little yellow Jascha

chirrips on his peg in 

the birdcage in my
Polish grandmother's
sunny white kitchen
  
while I crunch away at 
Kellogg's corn soya 
soaking in whole milk

on a happy Saturday
off Salem Common.

(15 DEC 12, Santa Clara CA)v4

"His heart is broken!"

An elderly Japanese woman spoke to me after a Xmas concert here last nite, apologizing for not coming recently to the monthly Fri. nite movies I show in this social center in the complex where we both live (btw, we're both having eye problems.) After we caught up on my bereavement, her tall, fully -Americanized daughter suddenly said: "His heart is broken!" I was astonished, & grateful to hear her say it. Suddenly the conductor (who I've sung under) walked up & said "You're lonely." I badly needed their acknowledgement. 

POEM VERSION:

MY BROKEN HEART

After the Christmas concert,

an elderly Japanese woman

apologized to me for missing

the monthly movies I show

here where we live. (We're both

both having eye problems.)As

I recounted my bereavement;

her Americanized daughter

told her "His heart is broken!"

astonishing me. The conductor

(I've sung under) said to me:

"You're lonely." 

(10 DEC 12, Santa Clara CA)V3

Shadows in the Sun

After 4 days of rain, it fInally stopped raining this afternoon, so I took Reggie out on my 4-wheeled walker for a circuit of the building I live in & adjoining ones. On my way, Claire, a Pole, smiled at him & called him kotchik (kitty)  which I understood because my mother spoke Polish to me when I was a small child. I took Reggie to the cottage door of a woman who I recall went to the film I showed here last night - SHADOWS IN THE SUN (2005) starring Harvey Keitel, Joshua Jackson, Claire Forlani, Giancarlo Giannani. Keitel played a deeply-depressed American novelist expatted to Tuscany who has not written for 20 yrs since his wife's accidental car-death, Forlani plays one of his 3 grown daughters, Jackson, a London publisher's agent who wants to sign him to a contract to write a new novel. (Ultimately, he succeeds, falls for the daughter.) The film reached me 5 painful years after Carolin's death; it also moved last night's audience who (typically) didn't tell me so right after seeing the film - until I sought them out today. The woman I asked - a painter who now tells me she had been to rural Tuscany - liked the film! (I really need to know that to be able to choose more films for them with any self-confidence.)