his lightbulb flashed E equals m

times c squared, accounting for

the extra energy created when neutrons

begin to multiply like radioactive rabbits

during an angry nuclear excursion.

But, sacre bleu, m stands not for mass

but for money, c for collusion, not

collision, to Albert’s embarrassment.

George Gamow also badly missed

the target when he envisioned his lewd

Big Bang Theory, aka the Beginning

of the Universe and related destinations.

What he didn’t understand was that

it was Mom and Dad who mothered and

fathered Big Bang, creating G.G. himself.

Leonardo da Vinci was so befuddled by

scientific nightmares that he painted

his most lasting enigma, the curious

smile on the placid face of Mona Lisa,

a peripatetic prostitute and soothsayer.

Mona of smiling face soothsaw that she

and Leo would get serious, freezing for-

ever that smile so beloved by multitudes

of adoring Japanese tourists to the Louvre.

My own theory, in all humbleness, is that

Albert and George and Leonardo would

have made strange bedfellows in today’s

world, their gifts to science ignored by

modern Super-Thinkers – Leonardo di

Caprio, George W. Bush and Albert

Capone, all fiduciaries of the Big Bang.

(Published on 6/21/10 online by Marquis Cafeteria Round Table)

Note:  Just a piece of fluff, the “science” of the piece garbled on purpose.  Long ago, I did attend a lecture by Mr. Big Bang himself, George Gamow, at George Washington University.  It was curious to see how a genius operates:  though brilliant, Mr. G. smoked while onstage (a no-no), didn’t know how to tie his shoes and had to have assistance to blow up a balloon.  I ran into many folks like him – and thank goodness for them! – while a consultant at the infamous Los Alamos Laboratories in New Mexico.

in 1939, then my sister in 1941,

born in the same maternity ward,

our parents’ upstairs bedroom at

1245 35th Street in Georgetown,

northwest Washington, D.C.

I watched at Dr. Donald McDonald,

known to me as Dr. Donald Duck,

pulled first brother Jimmy from his

worn medical satchel, then sis GeeGee

from that same satchel a year and

a half later, like a magician pulls

a fluttering pigeon from his top hat.

Within a few months of GeeGee’s

arrival, the Japanese pulled their

infamous sneak attack on Pearl Harbor,

announced to us on our enormous

upright Zenith radio, causing my Dad

to cry like a baby, so Mom followed suit.

We were all crying, we kids because

earlier in the day we learned of

the passing of famous Dr. Donald Duck.

One more sister, Bee, was born three

years later, near the end of the big war,

a new doctor coming to do the honors,

no magic from his satchel, just all

business, no slight of hand – the price I paid

for being a big shot, all of eight years old.

Note:  This is a new poem, recently minted (like yesterday), to prove that the memory is still intact….though I can’t always remember where I left the car keys.  Yes, I thought babies were delivered by doctors from their worn black satchels.  Well, at least until I was eight and knew better (wink, wink).  ‘Twould be a far, far better way of knocking them out, instead of the long, tedious nine-month waiting period.  I recommend to all who read this to take up Dr. Atul Gawande’s books, especially his second one, titled Better:  A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance.  There’s a chapter later in this important book titled “The Score,” which everyone – especially all men! – should be made to read.  It’s about childbirth and it will open your eyes to some revelatory facts.  If all men read this lone chapter, the rate of childbirths in the world would plummet by at least half, within a year.  Enough said.

for three squares a day

and didn’t hurry back,

afraid they’d be eaten.

No, we couldnt even afford a stray cat.

We dressed in each other’s

hand-me-down clothes – threads

by the time they got to me.

My best friend was a skinny cockroach,

too weak to crawl to the neighbors.

We told each other bedtime tales -

his about crumbs, mine about delusions.

A teacher threatened to send me home

one day when I fell asleep in her class.

She relented when I told her my folks

had sent me off as their only hope.

I was so thin I fit in the pencil sharpener,

couldn’t slap chalk from the board erasers.

Then, the miracle meat Spam was discovered.

A cure?  If only we’d owned a can opener.

(Published in the Fall 2005 issue of the Parnassus Literary Journal)

Note:  Hyperbole?  Of course.  Or was it?  We were poor, but in those days, the late Thirties and early Forties, almost everyone was poor.  We just didn’t know we were, all of us pretty much lookalikes in the neighborhood.  One advantage I and my siblings had over most:  we ate well each day, our mother a wonderful cook, Dad the provider.  Our days often started with a huge mound of boiled rice, topped with butter, salt, pepper and crunchy bacon rolled into bits with our hands.  An Oklahoma luxury, we were told.  Got us going in the morning, sustained us throughout school hours.  Oh, yes, we did befriend the cockroaches and mice, all non-paying boarders in Mom’s boarding house.  Seemed to go with the territory there in D.C.  All of us survived tough times, mice and roaches included.

to ride a cactus.

City slickers

feel the stickers.

Real cowgirls and cowboys

don’t make the OW! noise.

They ride ‘em hard,

never get scarred.

You too can ride….

if you have a tough hide!

(Published originally in the wonderful children’s magazine, Cricket, quite a few years ago when I used Bartlett Boswell as my pseudonym)
Note:  I often use this poem to warm up an audience when I recite.  To get them in the mood, I suggest they imagine themselves as six-year-olds again, wearing a cowboy/cowgirl outfit, sixshooter tucked in a sagging holster, staring up at one of those gigantic saguaro types of cactus with its many prickly arms, and the cactus stares down at them, repeating this poem of warning.  Would I enjoy being a kid again, say, just for a few minutes?  Wouldn’t we all?

the rectangular gap in the ground,

a jury of crows,

judging perhaps which of us

will take the next available opening.

Could be any of us,

all older than the chap this day

being permanently sealed underground.

Crows know a ripe crop

when they see one.

The old man wearing a cross and

speaking in tongues

also qualifies as a candidate,

but the crows favor eying me.

Perhaps it’s my shuffling gait.

Could be the squawking hearing aids.

They know all the signs,

as I try to ignore them,

singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

They nod, join me in the second chorus.

(Published online in the November 2009 issue of Chantarelle’s Notebook)

Note:  Today as I enter this poem it’s a beautiful Thanksgiving Day.  So, what do I give you but a deeply dark poem.  At least there are birds in it, just not the edible kind.  This is one of my nightmare inspired poems, of which there are many.  So many nightmares, so many poems.  Maybe inspired too by all the crows hunkering about the neighborhood.  I love Chantarelle’s Notebook, which is courageous enough to occasionally publish my material, not all of it dark.  Let’s be thankful for what we have, what we’ve been given.  And as Julia would say, Bon appetit! But please – don’t eat crow.

moist red eyes, heavy-lidded,

puffy face, eternally frowning,

chins double, triple, quad,

shoulders caved forward

as if in defeat, probably defeat,

breasts slouching without muscle,

bellies in the tenth month

of another pregnancy,

butt with no definition whatever,

wrinkled skin on legs,

purpled with varicose rivers,

feet nearly always bare,

toenails yellow, untended.

What must they think of them,

these once wondrous specimens -

the charming guys they married,

their once beautiful wives?

NOTE:  A poem to misguide the reader into thinking I’m describing the aging female of couples when, lo and behold, it’s the males who most often dissipate with age.

I finally list to a halt at your grave,

Clarence A. Reverski,

killed in action on June the 6th, D-Day,

1944, on the sand below the nearby cliffs,

perhaps on ominous Omaha Beach.

Your sleek, rounded alabaster cross

is one of many, interspersed by the occasional

six-pointed star, all arranged in precise

mathematical geometry in this vast, pristine

cemetery containing the remains of 9,387

noble Americans who sacrificed their lives.

You were a young sergeant from Michigan,

I read on your cross, causing my emotions

suddenly to well over, my stifled sobs

unnoticed by hundreds of other visitors

paying their quiet respects on this somber day

as a pale sun illumines tidy, close-cropped

grass at Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy.

I collect myself, glance at a cross behind yours,

its inscription reading simply:

Here Lies In Honored Glory

A Comrade In Arms

Known Only to God.

How great was your courage,

how near impossible your task,

how valiant your final moments.

To you, Clarence, and your fallen comrades,

Hail!  I salute you.

Your valor in battle so profound,

our pledge, Never Again, so shallow.

So shallow.

(Published in the June 2009 online issue of Long Story Short)

This poem came to me in a flash when my wife Irene and I made a return visit, forty years later, to the emotion-charged American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, in the fall of 2007.  I was weary, maybe lacking nourishment, and suddenly overcome when I stopped at Sergeant Clarence A. Reverski’s grave.  War is not my choice as an answer to threats, negotiation is.  However, World War Two was a just war, and our warriors, as they always do, fought valiantly, particularly during and after the D-Day invasion, facing terrible circumstances.  You must visit the invasion beaches (or, as the French prefer to call them, Liberation Beaches) and see those terrible cliffs, atop which the Nazis were so formidably entrenched to understand the focus of that vast battle.  I highly recommend a visit.  My hope is to return again someday, to visit loved French friends and beloved noble Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice.  I keep them in my prayers.