One of my best friends communicated a disinterest in my humble attempts at prose poetics. So I wrote a poem. After explaining that’s how the words arrive. Later, I thought what the hell, I love him like a younger brother and maybe he is not wrong. There’s that slight chance. Decided to look for the first opportunity. – JDW
***
Makes the most sense when you study it. I am either a genius or an idiot. The jury is still out. One time or another, an idiotic genius. Figure if I was genius, imagine I’d understand by now. So, peel back the onion until I get to the stinky part. And still don’t kill myself. Not in jail either. Nowhere with pale green rooms and folding chairs full of a certain type. Not the work of an idiot. I can hear you now, lot of folks don’t off themselves. Lot of folks avoid those places.
Moron. Don’t mean to be unkind. That’s them. This is me. Stinky. And lucky.
***
That’s my idea of a prose poem all clumped together. Congealed if you will. But it is an explanation of most of my daily – and many nightly – thoughts. Looking back on my life, find myself asking, what the hell was that all about? It’s synopsis. A distillation. Because – if you do ignore Satchel Paige’s sage advice and find yourself falling over a branch as you race through the wood to escape whatever the hell is chasing after you and plant face first into leaves and moss and pine needles – you are going to wonder why you did some of the things you’ve done.
Luckily, I have forgotten most of it.
***
Driving south on Interstate-Five to the fortieth anniversary Prefontaine Meet, a novelist I met just yesterday behind the wheel. We are talking about, hell, I can’t remember, probably writing or whatever. Basically life. We agreed most of it, good and bad or bad and good, stuff happens, came down to luck. Plain and simple.
Starting when you were born and to whom. Just the other day, my wife admitted she tells everybody she married Wally Cleaver. Tell her I’ve never been so insulted. Not even in the fourth grade when Jeannie Townsend told me I looked like a cartoon reptile and called me Turtle Face in front of everybody. Topaz says it’s that photograph of my family together in our Sunday dress. I rocked a fedora, think an eleven-year-old, five-foot-tall George Raft. Hadn’t yet colorized. Back in the day, a contemporaneous selfie involved a trip to the barber shop before heading to the photo studio. Not my fault my parents both had government jobs and came home every night and rode me hard – to no avail – in the hopes I’d make something of myself.
The government would’ve been better served by letting me skip those teenage years. School no place for me. On Veterans’ Day, I get thanks and I always say, thank you back, but I flunked out of college. Some problem with class attendance and operating a still in the freshman dorm. And I didn’t, absolutely not, want to be in school. And there was a war and there was a draft. My number registered in the single digits. So, Tophand drives me to the recruiting station. Wanted to be a jarhead cause I figured they’d cover my ass. Just crazy talk. Better to get your ass far away. Everybody is out to lunch but the United States Air Force. Three years, eleven months, eighteen hours, thirty-two minutes and twenty-three seconds later, an Airman First Class loiters in New Jersey watching Graham Kerr, The Galloping Gourmet, and waiting for a bus. As one commander told the National Security Agency, “Yes, sir, he’s good but he is not exactly military material.”
I spent the Vietnam War in Bavaria. Only got shot at once – I didn’t know she was married – and he missed. Pretty lucky.
***
I was at a bar, big surprise, and there’s this gorgeous blonde far across the dance floor and I take another hit of Johnny Walker and head for her and just as I get there, this raging asshole rude guy swoops in and off she goes. I was young and everybody had seen me walk all the way over there so I asked her less attractive girlfriend to dance. We were married ten years.
This might be a point to pause and consider. Actual research by actual scientists strongly suggests the human brain is not fully developed until age twenty-three, maybe twenty-five. Have to be lucky to avoid some life-altering blunders before your head settles down. Think about that. Muse cleverly.
***
In the dark. Sober. Headed cross-country. Hit some black ice as I ascended to the crest of the Blue Mountains and spun out of control like a bad firecracker. Remember looking up and seeing the massive grill of a Peterbilt, remember looking out and thinking I could see Colorado from here. Saw the railing, a ping-pong ball on skates. Another truck. Guardrail. Eastbound Interstate closed for four hours. Christmas gifts and twenty-four pounds of chicken-flavored Gravy Chow spread across two lanes. State trooper, not a young man, said he was scared to look inside my classic Bronco. Just paid off and now totaled. Incident report reports four eighteen-wheelers and two railings hit me. Injuries? Lucky. Two scars the length of your thumbnail. And a train ticket to rehab. And your buddy’s mansion. Nice to have a hide-out with an indoor pool.
***
Nobody ever dies when I am number two. Told that to the Chief Financial Officer of Fred Meyer when I got the news he’d been promoted. That’s some luck right there. So a Category Five blows through Puta Gorda, Florida. Rarely were such words more accurate. Basically the town disappeared. Wasn’t even supposed to hit here and we can’t find ninety-eight traffic lights. I am vice-president of the most powerful service club in the county and the guy ahead of me in line, his house is missing and his wife doesn’t feel so good, something about a brain tumor. Let’s jump ahead. Suddenly, I’m in the big city where I don’t live at the state convention and this most special lady who doesn’t live there either, she just got a free ticket, she comes up and asks if she can join me. Little, cute, glasses. Beavis and Butthead whisper in my ear. Heheheheheheh. We’ve been married ten years.
***
Doubtlessly, I might conjure some other examples. Oh, here’s one. Was a nightwatchman at IBM headquarters in Armonk and I would read executives’ magazines on my tours. Came across a Town & Country which ballyhooed Flagstaff, Arizona, as the last clean air in the United States. This was 1973 I got there. The last clean air because there is not much of it. Talk about the G.I. Bill paying for my high-altitude marathon training. First day, I’m in the locker room and I holler, ‘who wants to go for a run?’ and I hear this voice. “I’ll go.” Ted and me. Like Steve and Woz. Like Paul and Bill. Except for the money. Like the Wrinklegross twins.
***
Think it was the running that saved me. Even today over fives miles covered before the first beer. No need for applause. That’s you. That’s not me.
***
Another thing saved me. Always think maybe this would be a great illustrated novel. The Crazy Prospector Theory of Self-Defense. Much of what I know about life I learned watching Westerns in the nineteen-fifties.
Allow me to digress. The cool cowboy comes into town. Looks good, has transportation and money for a few drinks and a room. Decided to become that guy. Only nobody ever explained like where he got his money. Would’ve been helpful if that had got through to me. Tophand working two jobs and Smother dragging home following a commute from night school. She’s on the Dean’s List after working all day in an office. Imagine if I only had their drive. Just imagine. What did you come up with?
Back to the Crazy Prospector. In those cowboy movies, the good guys crossing hostile territory would come up upon this grizzly-faced little gnome and wonder about his survival skills. Just laugh like a horned toad and growl something about the Injuns think killing a crazy person, a demented dude, would haunt them forever in the Happy Hunting Grounds. Always worked for me. Those five guys in a dark alley backed off, thought I was a cop. I used to play pool in a nudie bar. Asian gang hangout. I was the only guy without a Glock. No problems. Now while this has never failed me, doesn’t work for everybody. Just happens I’m a black belt in Demented Dude. Sixth Degree. My crack legal team told me to tell you, don’t try this at home.
***
Luck? How about those times you lost your car? And found it pretty easy the next day right there at the third place you thought it might be.