MuDJoB Guest Writes: First Anniversary

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Two small people carry one large thing and an argument ensues,
It ends with the big thing left on the street when one of them blows a fuse.
A patient sues his doctor and the lawyer sports new shoes,
The doctor makes excuses, saying, “I’m always the one they accuse!”
Fans at the game are anxious to see the visitors lose,
Though the leading player rolls on the ground and rubs a swelling bruise.
Mom and Dad watch a crime in progress on the local news;
A hateful man in an interview hurts with the words he spews.
Three competing suitors are hoping the beauty will choose
Against a backdrop of music and hearts of pink in varying hues.
The tenants default on their rent with excuses by ones and by twos,
And complain of the neighbor who stinks up the hall with the garbage that he strews.
Eli propounds on Kate’s erroneous definition of clerihews;
In order to get her to see the light, he gives her a book to peruse.
The church falls short on worshippers who can’t sit in predestined pews,
And Masons turn out their membership for failing to pay their dues.
A husband abandons his wife in aborted attempts to amuse;
Her demeanor is drowned in pot luck casseroles, soups and stews.
A detective sifts through the ashes searching remains for clues;
He’s found an earring, a tooth and a nail, but he doesn’t know whose.
Teenagers wooing, say they aren’t smoking. They are. It’s only a ruse.
They’re thinking of eloping because her father is turning the screws.
Workers waiting for jobs are standing outside in queues,
While the hardnosed factory owner seeks alternatives to use.
Someone is at the zoo with a child his ex-wife would abuse,
And an old man who’s lost a fortune regains it by singing the Blues.

© Michael D. Brown 2011

Static

I first heard it when I woke at six, a hollow moaning rising from the dry patch beyond the yard. Figured I’d make a move to investigate when Annie rose at half-past, but then was deeply involved in cooking eggs for her.

“It’s been a long time since you made breakfast for me,” she said. She seemed reluctant to throw off the comforter. “Did you leave the kettle whistling on the stove?”

I said I hadn’t but I’d check to make sure, and went back out to the kitchen. I sat and rolled myself a cigarette.

I had only smoked half when she hollered, “What’s that?”

“Nothing, love.”

A couple minutes later she came out, tying the cloth belt of her terry robe. “It’s coming from outside,” she said.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Won’t you see about it?”

For a moment or two I thought I might, but when Annie turned on the radio and all it produced was sputtering static, my resolve faltered.

“Why don’t you get dressed?” I said instead. And where’s your breakfast plate?”

“Coward,” she said. She turned off the useless radio and headed back toward the bedroom.

“It doesn’t sound like a human in pain,” I said to the closed door.

“All the same,” she said, “I thought you were my protection.”

“What if it’s carrying something?”

“Well, if it dies, it could be just as dangerous later as now.”

We had already desexed whoever or whatever was making that awful noise.

I sat at the table thinking, but concentrating was difficult. When we’d first bought the farm, I sat that way for hours on end, marveling at the quiet. We were so glad to leave the city behind us. Annie would play solitaire in the parlor, and I’d sit and smoke and think.

Around noon she came out with the dish. It still had most of the eggs on it and she hadn’t touched the toast, either.

When evening fell and we discovered there was no light by which to read, we decided to go to sleep early.

Annie lay far off on her side of the bed and there was more than the usual space between us.

I awoke around 11:30 to see a beam of light coming through the closed window, then I realized it had grown silent. I rose and walked quietly to the window and pulled down the top pane to let in a little air. There was no sound at all. Not even the owl, nor the crickets. The beam flickered and faded. I couldn’t see the stars. The only thing visible then was the hard white moon against an empty black sky.

Welcome to the Information Age - Eric Bosse

HoW 2010: New Orleans

House of Writers meets in New Orleans, Labor Day Weekend 2010

l. to r.: Dwight, Julia, Jared, Mike, Sandra, Gita, Teresa

not pictured: Shauna, Michael

Performance

He drove up in a rented car, half the size of the one he had back home, and his wife got in. Then he headed toward the bank. He’d had several tacos with a very picante salsa and a couple of beers for lunch while she had insisted on eating steak and potatoes in the hotel dining room. They were on vacation, for chrissakes! Now, she was wearing too much make-up and an orange blouse with sunflowers on it. Obviously, she’d wanted to stay behind so she could change her outfit yet again. Visiting places with her got up that way made him feel so much like some stupid tourist. Thank god she had no itinerary planned for today. At the corner he had to stop for a light.

“Can I have a cigarette?” George asked.

Brenda pulled out two, lit them and handed him one. “You know, we really should cut down,” she said.

In the intersection, a bare-chested young man in dirty pants laid down a cloth-wrapped bundle and opened it. He quickly arranged his props.

“Oh no,” she said, “Please don’t.”

“He’s going to do it.”

“I just ate my lunch.”

The young man spread several pieces of broken glass on the cloth and, for just a few seconds, lay face-downward, his ribs on top of the shards. Then he stood up again. The shiny brown skin of his chest was unmarked in any way.

Next, he picked up two rods each about half a meter in length. At first, George thought he was going to light them and perform the fire-breathing stunt. Brenda had translated an article from the local newspaper about the Mexican government trying to get the fire-breathers off the street and into rehabilitation centers. The kerosene they held in their mouths to do the trick burned the insides of the mouth and throat, affected their brains, and their career-expectancies were nine months to a year at most. But this kid surprised him.

As he inserted one rod for what seemed half its length up into his right nostril, Brenda looked up the street in another direction. She tossed her cigarette out the window.

“God, that’s gross,” George said, “He looks like some kind of surreal walrus.”

“Oh, don’t tell me,” she said, “I don’t want to know.”

“Have you got a peso?” George asked.

“You want to pay him for doing that?” As she turned around to see if she had any coins in her pocket, she must have caught sight of the youth removing the second rod because she flinched. She asked how it was possible to put something that far up one’s nose. He thought she was about to upchuck that expensive steak. Looking away again, she handed him some money and said, “People should pay him not to do it.”

“I think that’s the point,” George said. He handed a coin to the performer. The light changed and he drove on.

“Why couldn’t he just dress up like one of the clowns and juggle or do somersaults?” Brenda asked.

“Maybe he’d find that too demeaning,” George said, “At least he’s doing something for the money. Not like most of the homeless people back home in New York, who just sit in the street and beg.”

“What about the window-wipers on the Bowery?”

“I always give them something. They do me a service.”

“Yes, they smear your windshield with a dirty rag. And you know they’re only going to buy wine with the money,” Brenda said. “These boys are more likely doing this for food for their families.” She patted her permed hair in that way he found irritating.

“Hey, what a man does with the money he earns makes no never mind to me,” George said, “So long as he does something to earn it. Here’s the bank. Stay in the car and I’ll run in and make a withdrawal.”

“Take out enough so I can stop at the artisan’s place later. I promised my brother and Alison I’d bring them some souvenirs.”

“You just don’t get it, do you?” George said, closing the rental-car door with extra force. Did she even listen to him anymore when he spoke, he wondered.

“Oh, I understand you, George. You have your priorities and I have mine,” she said, “Besides, I need something to keep me occupied while you spend all afternoon and evening on the toilet.”

The Versatile Blogger Award

MuDJoB has won a Versatile Blogger Award!

What a treat!
If you Google the Versatile Blogger Award, you get approximately half a million results as of 1 Aug 2010!



The 4 "rules" (with my responses) that accompany the award are:

1. Thank the person who loved you enough to bestow this gift.

• I thank Salvatore Buttaci for adding MuDJoB to his award list.  You can find Sal's terrific poetry and fiction at various places online, and in print.
  Check out his Amazon.com page.

2. Share seven things about yourself.

1. I was born and grew up in NYC, and now reside South of the Border.
2. To the best of my ability, I teach ESL to young people.
3. I write all the time, and have been doing so for over thirty years.
4. Although, I have been affiliated with several writing sites over the years, I recently discovered dream sites on which to express myself, including Rob McEvily's Six Sentences and Blake Cooper's Thinking Ten among others.
5. I've used online resources such as Issuu to "publish" work of mine and that of students, and am tickled pink to find we're being read all over the world.
6. I try my best to be forthright, honest, and sincere with others, and try to write daily.
7. I am very grateful to my many peers, and the people I've met in my travels who have extended a hand of friendship. This world is nothing without friendship.

3. Bestow this honor onto 10 newly discovered or followed bloggers–in no particular order–who are fantastic in some way.
  Here are a dozen bloggers (among many) that I think deserve this award:

• Anthony Venutolo
• Coraline J. Thompson
• Teresa Cortez
• Gita Smith
• Bolton Carley
• Joe Gensle
• Elliott Cox
• Adam Byatt
• Paul de Denus
• Jared Culpepper
• Peter McNiff
• Quin Browne

There are several equally fantastic bloggers I would like to include. For starters, I would like to include all the writers who have participated here at MuDJoB, but have limited myself to a dozen, and considering the names previously mentioned by Sal (who also bent the "rules" a bit), and that each of the above should be gifting at least 10 bloggers, I'm fairly certain if I've not included you here, you will shortly be recognized. So many great writers, so few awards to bestow! What's an admiring blogger to do? Ha. Spread the wealth, won't you?

4. Drop by and let your fellow bloggers know you admire them.

The Versatile Blogger award is peer-driven and such recognition does a great deal to connect and support our on-line community of writers. It has been my pleasure to be a recepient and now a bestower. All my best wishes to those I was granted space to name, to the many that are great, but just couldn't fit this time, and to those whose writing I have yet to encounter.

The Day Before the Incident

She was sweet-faced, silver-haired, virtually imperturbable as plump fingers turned the pages of her mystery novel every afternoon on the bus going downtown. The roughnecks would laugh a little too loud and their chicks would howl at most of what they said as if they were dating the world’s top comedians. Occasionally, they disturbed other passengers, but the old doll never seemed to notice.

Leonard silently fumed. He had never been like that as a youth. Sure, he had done some bad things, but never in an ostentatious way. He wondered why the bus driver didn’t stop the bus and throw them off when they got like that. He had to know what to expect. They were daily passengers – a little too old for school, but more than likely not working yet – piking off the parents, no doubt – and Leonard had seen a couple of them boarding through the back door when the bus was crowded, fare-beaters and acting haughty because it was too easy.

One morning, he was sitting beside the woman. He glanced down at her book, and took in the words, “…and then you stole into her room and took advantage of the situation, didn’t you, Mr. Dodd?” before looking away. A Christie or some such, it suited her. She looked the type.

“Do they bother you?” she asked.

“Excuse me.”

“I only ask because you look as if you’re ready to boil over.”

“They’re punks. For two cents, I’d…”

“They’re just kids. We were kids. Could anybody tell you anything when you were that age?”

“I never provoked people just for the sake of trying to amuse my friends.”

“I see.” She went back to reading and didn’t say anything more until the bus had reached her stop. Then, she excused herself to pass Leonard. As she did, she said, “By the way, my name is Martha. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She got off the front and walked westward. She was not too far from the bus when one of the roughnecks stuck his head out the window and called out, “See you tomorrow Martha.”

When Leonard glared at him, the kid said, “Oh sorry, man, I don’t want to step on your toes. She’s a little old for me anyway.”

Leonard said, “Don’t you have any respect for your elders?”

But the kid pointed to his chest where his tee shirt said in capital letters QUESTION AUTHORITY.

“Smart ass,” Leonard said.

The kid laughed. His friends laughed. Their girlfriends laughed.

Leonard had never enjoyed being the butt of a joke. In days gone by that kind of thing would have been enough for him to take some action. He promised himself if he ever came up against this punk while he was alone, he’d make him sorry for laughing.

The kid sealed his fate when Leonard got off the bus on 34th Street and the kid wolf-whistled through the window at him. He did not turn around as the bus continued on its way toward the Village, but he could hear the sounds of laughter drifting away.

The incident did not phase him so much out in the free air. He guessed he should be thankful to the kids for one thing. His response to their activity had caused the old doll to break the ice and start talking to him. He thought she must have been a stunner at one time, and not so very long ago. He was reminded how he himself used to be quite the ladies man and never found it difficult to make small talk. What was it about this dame that unsettled him? He had watched her reading every day for the last month without ever screwing up enough courage to start a conversation. He was losing his touch, no doubt, and he was only fifty-nine.

He figured she might have a couple of years on him, but she kept herself in good shape – the stylish hairdo was silver-white in a way that doesn’t occur naturally, and the way she just let the noise and bother flow past her – he guessed he envied her calm, so lacking in his own character.



The next morning, when he got on the bus, she was sitting in a seat by a window, but someone was already seated next to her. He tipped his hat when she looked up and she smiled.

A few of the kids got on two stops later, but not the wiseguy. He and his girlfriend came onboard three stops further down. It was not intentional, not really, but Leonard’s foot was a little too far out in the aisle, and the big kid tripped over it. His friends laughed as he almost fell. Righting himself, he did look a little foolish. When he screwed up his mouth in annoyance, his friends stopped laughing immediately.

Leonard said, “Jesus, I’m sorry.”

Intentional, or not, Leonard had set up the situation. They were now enemies. Rather than taking one of the empty seats in back, the tough stood over him. In any case, the bus was soon crowded and there were no available seats. The tough crooked his leg slightly and pressed his thick knee into Leonard’s bony thigh, who couldn’t move away because the man sitting in the window seat was so huge he was taking up a seat and a half.

When his thigh started to throb, Leonard said, “Do you mind?”

“Jesus, I’m sorry,” said the kid imitating Leonard, “But if you weren’t sitting next to Fatso, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Hey,” said the other man.

“Watch it, kid,” Leonard said, “You’re going a little too far.”

“I’m going to the Village. Where are you going?” the kid said. “Shouldn’t you be in a nursing home?”

“The hell you say. I’m old enough to be your father.”

“My point exactly,” said the kid, “We put the old man in a home as soon as he started getting feeble like you.”

“Feeble? Why you punk,” Leonard said. He raised himself with some difficulty and backhanded the kid across his jaw, forgetting that he was wearing a signet ring, and regretting his action immediately. The kid’s face was knocked sideways. He lost his grip on the overhead bar and fell into the people behind him. Through the gap, Leonard saw Martha looking at him. She was not smiling. Before the kid was on his feet again, the bruise was already in evidence.

The driver called out, “What the hell, is going on back there?”

“You’re dead,” the kid said to Leonard. “You’re dead, old man.”

The driver pulled the bus to a stop, and coming back through the passengers, he soon discovered the source of the ruckus. He was a big man and said, “Kid, you’d better get off here and take another bus.”

The kid didn’t argue with him, but as he exited, he said with a smirk, “You should’ve warned your boyfriend not to mess with us, Martha.”

That was too much and Leonard started towards the exit also, but he felt a tugging on his jacket. It was Martha and she was shaking her head. He looked at the kids getting off and he looked back at her. Several options were crossing his mind. The other passengers were staring at him. He was not even thinking of the next day.

These Shoes (I Dare You Challenge)

This week Jo Prescott’s I Dare You challenge at her site JM Prescott - A Reader's World came in the form of clothing..."Clothing can set the scene as certainly as a wedding dress, predict plot like a ski mask and laytex gloves, or reveal character like chaps and spurs."
Herewith, my response to the challenge:

These Shoes

These shoes have walked all over London. They have traversed Bermuda and the Bahamas. They have climbed to the caldera in the Azores and stood atop Gibraltar. They have walked all through the worst parts of Lisbon until they made my feet ache, and some of the best parts of Hamburg, where again my feet were hurting at day’s end. In Barcelona, they walked a good part of las Ramblas. They have stood on the tarmac at the little airport a short distance from the edge of the Pyrenees and taken me through olive groves and parks where flamingoes danced and balanced on one leg. They, these shoes, not the flamingoes, helped me walk all around Las Vegas to take in everything there was to see and do for free, and because my feet were sore, I credit them with keeping me from losing more than $40.US in those oh-so prevalent slots. I did pick up another pair in Denver, but they’re really the same shoes, and at the end of the month they will take me back to Costa Rica.

These shoes have walked the decks of many ships and the aisles of dozens of airplanes. They have gotten me to airports early and to church late. They have guided me through shopping malls and into cinemas and across the streets of New York City against the light. They have walked me from the Battery to Harlem, from Sutton Place to the Chelsea Piers, from somewhere to no place. These shoes have walked me from childhood to my maturity.

These shoes are my guide. They are brogues. They are sandals, boots and loafers. I have walked a mile in another man’s moccasins and returned home in these shoes. They wait under my bed to greet me in the morning and take me to new places and the same old places. They can get there without a map. They have marked the mileage and taken into account my weariness. These shoes will never fail me. They are ruby slippers and if I click the heels together three times and wish solemnly for something, well, you know where that will get me. I have not yet been to Kansas, but I understand we all wind up there one day.

I have never drunk champagne from a woman’s shoe nor has any drunk from mine but the possibility is not ruled out.

Every so often, I remove these shoes and flex my toes on a sandy beach or swim in a pool or bathe, but for more hours of the day than I have them off, I have them on. The natural condition of my feet, it would seem, is to be inside these shoes. Sometimes I wonder why we have made the earth so hard and dangerous a place to walk barefoot that these shoes are more a necessity than a whim.

I am attached to these shoes, and have contributed to the fortunes amassed by men like Thom McAn and Mr. Florsheim, if there was such a person, and if there was, he must have been very attached to his shoes. Why else dedicate his life to providing them for so many others. He had not much work convincing people they needed their shoes. Everybody takes this for granted here in the first and second worlds. We are working on those in the third world, getting them to see the necessity of shoes.

Someday, everybody in the world will admit how much they are attached to shoes. Then, we will work on hats.

© Michael D. Brown 2010

Evelyn's Club

I asked Evelyn if I could go for the Property and Casualty Insurance broker's license and she said yes. She said, "I'm always happy when someone wants to try to move themselves along. Look at Solmari."

I was looking at people like Solmari. I was hired as a wordprocessor in the Personal Lines department at a time when the the only person they had typing documents was 62-year-old Betty. Betty had been a typist and recently learned how to use a computer to get wordprocessing done. She wasn't interested in learning much more than that and she knew she would be retired shortly after the transition. I came on board with more experience in electronic document processing and at 26 years younger than Betty, I was only thinking about advancing from the position to something with more prestige. Betty was a nice woman. She would say to me, "You know kiddo, with your abilities, you're gonna go places."

Now five and a half years into the job, with Betty long retired, I was still pushing paper around and typing letters. True, I had formulated macros and found other ways to make the job move faster but in response the company felt free to take on more and more clients and to increase the volume of business they handled for the existing clients without taking on more staff to handle the associated chores and grunt work.

Solmari and a couple of others were hired early on, around the time Betty was forced into her retirement. Her chemotherapy and doctor visits required too much off-time. Solmari came on as an Account Assistant, but was pleasant to look at, never argued with anyone and took the broker's course. Within a year she was given 100 accounts of her own to handle. Admittedly, they were not the big money clients, but it was a short trip up the ladder to a titled position. For her, that is, she fit into the club. The others came and went.

Now me, it's just possible I was too good at my job. I don't think there was ever any chance for me to step onto that ladder. I wasn't exactly argumentative, but I did question Evelyn a few times about the workload. When I asked about taking the course, and she answered in the affirmative, I thought at last, we were putting our differences behind us.

I discovered sometimes when people say yes, what they really mean is, "I'll agree to anything within reason to keep you from rocking the boat. It doesn't mean I'll even consider letting you get near the steering compartment." A year after I had my license, and let me tell you, that stuff was difficult to learn, I was still a glorified typist.

It was only when some of the staff, disgruntled and feeling underpaid, left, and Evelyn needed to come up with a solution in a hurry that she begrudgingly allowed me to assist one of the overworked Account Executives with her clients. She still wanted me to act as head word processor while I tried to handle a second duty which actually required more than the eight hours in a working day to complete.

I tried to juggle the two positions for a year and then gave notice. It was too much. The thing was, I had a fair amount of prestige as the wordprocessor. Quite a few people depended on me. When I left and checked back after a couple months, I learned five different people had drifted in and out of the two jobs I was trying to handle at the end.

This was one of those times when someone saying yes proved not to be a positive thing. I was reaching beyond my capabilities and if Evelyn had been a good manager she would have let me know right off the bat, in a subtle way, of course, that I would never be allowed to join her club when my prior affiliations were so set in place. She could have pointed out my lack of enthusiasm. She could have told me I was good at some things, but probably would not be able to handle the volume of another position. Or she could have just said, "No." I'd probably still be working there today. Grumbling, complaining about the unfairness of it all and producing all those beautiful documents.

God Is in the Details

The sign says the next ferry will leave Staten Island at 6:20.
Matt says, “There’s so much to do when we get home.”
“Hey, we don’t have to worry about that until Thursday,” Alejandro says.
“I was talking about my apartment, not Mexico. Since we’ve been up here, it’s a mess.”
“Ay, you worry too much. There’s time enough to straighten up everything.”
A shabbily dressed woman, hair unkempt, standing at a phone kiosk about ten feet away suddenly, repeatedly slams the receiver against the phone. Bang, bang, bang. She tosses the receiver and leaves it dangling.
Somewhere a child is calling “Mama, mama,” or could that be a voice coming from the telephone?
A man is holding a black book from which he’s reading aloud, "At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another."
The woman retrieves her two shopping bags from where she’d left them at the end of the bench on which Matt and Alejandro are sitting.
“You know it’s true,” she says, looking at Matt.
“Don’t start with me, lady,” he says.
“Matt, she’s obviously upset about something,” Alejandro says. “What’s the matter, señora?”
“Fuck you,” she says, “Why don’t you go back to Puerto Rico where you came from?” She walks away from them but keeps looking over her shoulder as if she is afraid they might follow.
“Hey, I’m Mexican,” Alejandro calls out.
Matt says, “When you’ve been here enough times and seen enough things, you’ll know better than to try to help one of these crazies.”
The man with the book continues reading aloud, "For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth..."
The woman drops her bags and pulls out newspaper sheets. She crumples them and throws them at the man with the book.
Unfazed, he continues preaching salvation, "...there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgement and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries."
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” she shouts at him, “Shut up and go to hell.”
Matt says, “You know you left a sinkful of dishes last night and your clothes are all over my apartment. I’m thinking we should have stayed at a hotel.”
“Ay, ay, ay. I’ll wash the dishes and pick my things up. What’s up with you?”
The woman, still shouting and accosting the preacher, has drawn the attention of a policeman.
“C’mon, lady, knock it off,” he says. “Let’s go and leave the nice man alone.”
“But he keeps talking that Jesus shit,” she protests.
The policeman reaches for her elbow.
“Don’t touch me,” she wails, “Don’t fuckin’ touch me.”
“All right then, move it along. You too,” he says to the preacher. “Take it somewhere else.”
The man starts walking. Without looking in his book, he continues “For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away..."
The big doors slide open. Before everyone has come off the ferry, the waiting people start rushing through the exiting crowd, to board.
"It has happened to them according to the true proverb, ‘A dog returns to its own vomit,’ and, ‘A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire.’"
“Time to go,” Matt says.
As they pass the phone kiosk, Alejandro takes the dangling receiver and puts it to his ear. “Hello,” he says, “Hello?” He shakes his head then puts the receiver back in the cradle.