Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Scruffilosophy


i don't know how profound it is,

i only know it's true;

it doesn't matter what you'd rather,

only what you do.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Who's steering this thing??

Scruff Fricken sat on the bench in the back of his canoe and watched the Sun rise on his thirty-eighth year. It looked remarkably shiny and smelled fresher than he thought it would. The day that is, not the canoe but then, sunrises usually did. He liked sunrises. Better than sunsets anyway. They had such a hopeful tone to them. Of course he could safely think that because he had never been the victim of a dawn attack by raiders bent on pillage and rape. But then, the dawn probably looked pretty and hopeful to the raiders on those occasions too. So maybe it was just a matter of point of view.

Scruff Fricken was hopeful too. This was remarkable as well for in all actuality he had no concrete foundation for such an airy frame. He was unemployed for the first time in seventeen years with a family to feed. He was deeply in debt because of a house that he would most likely never be able to finish or sell. He was too old and too beat up anymore to continue in the only field he was trained to do and he wasn't particularly gifted at the management side of it. A man has to know his limitations and where planning and logistics were concerned, Scruff was a dog on a short leash. In short, he was in a leaky canoe at the top of the falls and he hadn't packed a paddle.

Scruff Fricken had other talents to be sure and maybe it was the chance to see what he could do with these that lent him his hollow hope. But the label, "starving artist," kept punching holes in his hull and the roaring of the falls made it hard to be creative. The reality of the situation was that he had no work ready to publish, no portfolio, no contacts, no prospects and no idea where to begin.

Scruff Fricken had a sunrise and he had Hebrews chapter eleven, verse one: "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." There was some disturbing stuff around that verse about suffering, prison and confiscation of property so Scruff figured he was being warned this was going to be a bumpy ride. Going over the falls usually was, he reckoned. He supposed there was a chance that God would rescue him before the falls but that wasn't what he placed his hope in either.

Scruff Fricken was going over the falls but Jesus was sleeping in the front of the boat and the falls sure looked pretty in the morning Sun.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

From the fricken on the roof

Two things, no, make that three distinctly separate forces have driven this fricken to a roof top perch. An aerie of imagining if you will for i have come here with but one purpose caught in the craw of my kidney bean brain:

To write!

Three forces conspired to drag me from the breezy beachhead encampment i have occupied since our arrival here in the sun soaked lands of saute'd N'Yawkers. First came hordes of fearsome dark clouds from the west. Grim and laden with malice they swept over bay and the flimsy rows of homes between and reminded me that a beach is an awfully foolish place to tempt a storm. So with perhaps more caution than valor i retreated to the relative safety of the house. Frickens are big chickens.

There, in the cool but unreliable comfort of the air conditioning, i encountered the second force to move me heavenward. More of a shock than a relentless storm. More thunderbolt than wind. More fart than food poisoning. i was eating my lunch and wishing for bacon when it hit me. No, not food poisoning. The nasty realization that i was nearly done my thousand page book! With two more days of beach bummery ahead of me, this would be a tragedy! i might be forced into desperate action! To borrow one of the house books which i may not be able to finish (a small blessing since the vast majority seem to be romance novels.) But unless the novel be fetid drumfish then it is abhorrent to me not to finish it and i've even choked down my share of rotting fishflesh. My only other option would be to go get another book but that presented an even more abominable choice: a quest into Rehoboth! While certainly a step up from its vile cousin city Wildwood. They are of the same ilk and bear no joy for a fricken for whom filth, fools and frivolous frittering are fiends most foul. What loathsome lout designs a tourist city in a America with no parking? It boggles the imagination and that is but the beginnings of it's bilious boorishness.

No, drastic measures must be taken! i would have to ration my reading time. But what must i do instead? This is where the third force came. As is sometimes my habit, i looked over my blog. As a rooster inspects his hens to see how their getting along. In this way i decide whether i've been remiss in my writings. Usually i find there is a shortfall in the storehouse. Not much fodder for the flock. This is ordinarily the result of two other shortages: time and shmarts. But today i found, not a shortfall, but a windfall! Like a storm at sea that washed up all manner of refuse i found the Coop littered with lines, polluted with poesy, varnished with verse! Where had all these poems come from? Nearly a whole month's worth of it?! Was i going soft? Was there nothing to rail at? No humorous anecdotes to stretch into longwinded stories with no point? No aimless alliterations to assmeble? As i pondered these questions the answer rose like an angel from her nap...

nope. But that's never stopped you before.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Misnomer

Dragonfly over a concrete pond
Chilly welcomes on sweaty days
the sweetest place on earth

Strangling the choking urge
Permissive peasant's child royalty
the sweetest place on earth

Locked doors in ugly walls
Acrid fumes in yellow air
the sweetest place on earth

Babble interrupting public address
Noise interrupting noise over noise
the sweetest place on earth

Savoring the magic moments means
Retreating into fair fiction's leaves
in the sweetest place on earth

Friday, July 02, 2010

The Fricken Blues

(This took several days to thump out. Think i could have gone on writing this forever. For y'all's sake, i stopped;)

Oh, Jeremiah Fricken was a sad, sad chicken,
there was no one sadder than he.
He was bluer than the sky before a storm in July
He was lower than a worm's left knee.

No, no one could lament like old Jerry would vent
he was the king of melancholy.
There was just one hitch in this chicken's dark pitch
He had no cause for his malady.

He was married to a hen that was the envy of men
All over the vicinity.
Who thought she was no prize (but she was in his eyes;
Just cause she tried so hard to be.)

They had two fricks of their own, one big, one just half grown
they were proud of quite naturally
There were never two roosters ever more true, sir
Than ol' Jerry's fine, young pro-di-geny.

The Coop that they lived in wasn't that grand but then
It had spare room for company
So they shared it with a duck who was down on his luck
And his bevy of fair chick-a-dees.

Though his friends numbered few, in his heart Jerry knew
They were of a breed most trustworthy
And he could count on them all to come if he called
In blessing or adversity.

He worked hard for his money, gave it to his honey
And had enough for necessity
But what he could never find was a job that worked his mind
spirit and soul with vitality

All he does is survive, only one-eighth alive
dying incrementally
Trading in his health for a paltry sum of wealth
hoping someday to be free

Y'see Jeremiah Fricken is a praying chicken
to the God of Mystery
And he knows that he is loved by his Father up above
So he can wait for something he can't see.

But while Jerry waits for Him he's been growing kind of grim
patience ain't his speciality
and the tunnel he's going through has a light, that much is true
it's the gap before the next one he can see.

But he'll keep slogging on until this life is gone
With a heap of grace and charity
Then once he stops a kickin', Ole Jeremiah Fricken
Will find peace in eternity.