Probably the Greatest Poem Ever

There once was a maid, who, quite sick
All day, had cravings, and went out to pick
Hulled gooseberries. Boiling
A tea, and spoiling
Her thirst, she made of meal of a pickle.

I know. Amazing. Your admiration is a mere redundancy. A shallow thinker might suppose that rhyming sick All and  pick Hull(ed) with pickle is also a redundancy, but these are clearly different words, not even homophones, so critics should shut the hell up and just admire the beauty and eloquence. Morons.

Why is it okay to say moron, but not retard?

I may be going back to being a street poet, busting out extemporaneous verse on topics of the day. Dude can pick up a lot of change that way. I recently got some disappointing news about circumstances, and being the soulful sort, I get depressed. So another career change seems attractive. Oh, my Muse is speaking:

A Poem on the Vicissitudes of Circumstance

Okay?
No way.

Man that's good. People don't appreciate how brilliant I am. People should appreciate my brilliance. Instead of always disappointing me the way they do.

Whenever something goes wrong, I think it's God, punishing. Certainly not protecting. Somehow a lesson? Sure, okay ... a lesson taught through punishment. It occurred to me last night that, just as "A woman's right to choose" is an unfinished sentence -- right to choose what? -- so, "God is good" is unfinished. God is good to the good? None is good but God, to quote the Pharisees. God is good to me? Well, I'm breathing, and that's good. And worse things aren't happening, so that's good. But I don't have the emotional maturity to be satisfied only with the blessing I have. I want more blessings.

I find I don't worry. I get depressed. God isn't impassive, but he's implacable. King Hezekiah got his prayer answered, and was granted a longer life -- during which time Manasseh was born, next king, an absolute disaster. Seems almost like a punishment? Pray for something God doesn't want and you'll get it but be sorry? Won't someone comfort me, please?

I was not entirely pleased with my results from last week's Opens performance, so I did the workout again the next day, and improved the score by a minute degree. Tweaked my back doing it, and have been twingey since. I'll be fine by Saturday. But for that second workout I filmed, no taped, no, uh, videoed -- recorded it on one of these computer phones from the future. I hadn't seen myself for some decades, and when I reviewed it, to make sure I'd met the standards, I was truly surprised by how much I looked like my son. Or visa versa. I'm more gangly, but the way we move and hold ourselves, and just the facial expressions -- it was striking. There might be something to this genetics thing. Seems that in this one matter, my former wife was true to me. I haven't quite gotten what folks have meant when they said we look alike. Now I do. It's not just features, it's carriage. My posture is better than I'd thought.

What to do. What to do.

J