oak meadow oil pastel 14 x 17
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
an eulogy: at a private funeral
Eulogy at A Private Funeral
“Dear Charles, who is regretfully remembered as a sinner , a happy one though, had passed away on March 8th, 2011, the international women’s day, an occasion he predicted of his death, because of his abusive ways to his previous wives. He died at age 87, the oldest bank robber in American history, survived only by his victims of such crime. He had remained an incorrigible criminal all his life but never got caught, which is the only reason why that he was able to carry his enterprise to the end of his life. He had been successful for more than 20 well-spaced bank robberies over life time, the last one being the most easy. He just walked into the Bank of America, wearing sun glasses and with a walking cane that had a short shot gun incorporated to it. His tall fragile frame lent misleading charm to the bank clerks, and they looked at him with amazement while he calmly demanded all the cash from the registration girl. With great joy of almost getting away with a few thousand dollars in cash, he stepped out of the bank into sunshine. The heat outside stirred up his joyful heart to a faster and faster beat which pumped large volume of air and blood into his brain and back to his expanding heart. He fell to the paved side walk before the police got hold of his arms. His nose was bleeding while his heart stopped beating. It was not a peaceful passage into heaven, given the circumstance, and his bag of cash fell into the police hand as the smoking gun. He deceased before he was able to get into his own get-away car. He was not charged with the crime, pardoned by the governor as having senior delusion, and as an effort to reduce the legal cost. Dear Charlie refused to leave us no legacy and his unrepentant way of life marked him out as the most consistent example of original sin. His greed had been a result of personal failure and societal neglect, and to which all his friends feel the burden of pity. Even he left without the chance of returning the money to the victimized bank himself, the bank had showed profound grace not to sue him, since all the money was returned to the bank by the police. Of this, all the indignation felt by the suffering people through association are now ebbing away. We have come to say, you, dear Charlie, are forgiven and you remain forever in our prayers that in heaven, your chances to resort to the same behavior is next to zero since there are no banks in heaven. All you miserable wives are there, and all your three sons, who had received their blessings before electrocuted are there to meet you. You are the last one to come to the merciful fold of our beloved Father and his son Jesus, to join your deceased members. As the sole recognized hero of a unpunished bank robbery, you will remain a mythical icon for the many people after you and your mug shot the most treasured image in our heart of the oldest grandpa bandit of our time. In your death, you have cheated fate and outsmarted the police and our well-designed legal system and prison practice. May your spirit hover high in heaven and never to return to earth. Amen.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
fantasy : a rap
Fantasy
I am No. 1
Under the sun,
Wherever I go,
I am having fun.
Kiss the nuns
Spank her buns
I shook her up
With my gun.
I went to the bank
I pull out my gun
I shouted loud
Bang Bang Bang.
The police are coming,
I start to run
They shut up the door,
I am on the floor.
I can’t reload
My pants are torn
Indecent exposure
They hold their fire
The chase is over
No one is hurt
Money is nothing
I am no money man
I am not so Kosher
That is not so bad
I am just a loafer
Darker in the sun
The police left
I am still No. one
The magic word is
I can, can, can.
I am No. 1
Under the sun,
Wherever I go,
I am having fun.
Kiss the nuns
Spank her buns
I shook her up
With my gun.
I went to the bank
I pull out my gun
I shouted loud
Bang Bang Bang.
The police are coming,
I start to run
They shut up the door,
I am on the floor.
I can’t reload
My pants are torn
Indecent exposure
They hold their fire
The chase is over
No one is hurt
Money is nothing
I am no money man
I am not so Kosher
That is not so bad
I am just a loafer
Darker in the sun
The police left
I am still No. one
The magic word is
I can, can, can.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
A Thought
A Thought
Here，
I stand，
A big coma
Between two short words;
Their capital letters
Being erased,
By last century’s advertising:
Existence, Existentialism
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
后庭宴 无题
I publish my hobby--writing Chinese poems in Song style (a style popular in the years between 960 AC and 1279 AC before the Mongols overran us.) in case any Chinese reading friend comes along.
后庭宴
无题
千部旧经，
半箱残稿。
雨声催得梅花早。
淡香轻扫粉红衣，
一生相痴一时俏。
飘零柳絮满庭，
山远水长云渺。
月升星小。
又梦相思草。
树影浅如烟，
花落长安道。
后庭宴
无题
千部旧经，
半箱残稿。
雨声催得梅花早。
淡香轻扫粉红衣，
一生相痴一时俏。
飘零柳絮满庭，
山远水长云渺。
月升星小。
又梦相思草。
树影浅如烟，
花落长安道。
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Buddhist Monk Jumps The Wall (佛跳墙）
Introduce a Chinese Vegetarian Dish
Buddhist Monk Jumps The Wall (佛跳墙）
( a vegetarian dish that lures the most disciplined )
Next door to a brothel
A Buddhist temple closes its doors
Separated by the mud wall
Monks read on their straw pads
Flower girls ready for the night
Under the bamboo shadow
When the moon is low
A pot of vegetables
Smell better than the meat stew
Tofu cuts and bamboo shots
Mushroom pieces and water chestnuts
A stew is slowly cooking
Over a fire attended by the girls
The smell flows wide and low
Wakes up the clean-shaven monk
Who is numb on the toe.
The flower girls set the table
Temptation lies beyond the wall
A dish of earthly lure
A dish to the heavenly poor
The monk gets up from his station
Sucking in his tongue
As light as a hungry cat
He jumps up the wall
All his years of self enlightening
Came undone in just one blinking
Should the monk jumps the wall
Should the monk attempts the fall
Should flower girls welcome him
Should the monk tastes the earthly lure.
The dish is a forbidden delight
The fall is a forbidden plight
Buddhist monk takes the fall
Buddhist monk jumps the wall.
Buddhist monk jumps the wall
For a dish of the earthly lure
Buddhist monk jumps the wall
For a dish to the heavenly poor.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Poetry Reading
#Poetry Reading
Mr. Poetito came to “Connected” for Poetry Reading every Monday. Connected was a place for people with mental issues to self help themselves. He came with a bottle of clear water in hand, and told Lulu, a Chinese middle-aged woman, something about his water drinking history while waiting for others to convene.
“In my family, half of us love spaghetti, half of us love sour dough.” he took a sip from his bottle. “In food, our family has the best combination of the Italian with the French, but in everything else, the difference is as big as that between spaghetti and sourdough，” he elaborated for Lulu. Amazingly to Lulu, Mr. Poetito grew up having never had coffee. To Lulu, both his family background smelt strong coffee, his family name sounded too close to coffee--Kofferman, and he has been able to abstain from drinking it, just think of It?! This was something deserving investigation, Lulu thought to herself. Now Mr.Poetito was 64 years old. The whole world was moving in ten days into the 21 century and he had never tasted coffee in the 20th century. Wasn’t that a regret of the century? No. Mr. Poetito was positively negative on this issue. Mr. Poetito told his latest admirer, that Chinese fair lady that the reason why he had abstained from coffee was that coffee cost too much. Besides, coffee as a beverage to the Europeans was not introduced into Europe until the 18 century. People don’t have to have coffee as a drink. The Chinese, the Japanese, the early British all drink tea, and babies all drink milk. But if you start drinking coffee, you will be hooked to it, and you can’t stop it. And think of it, at least two cups of it, for say, 50 years, how much money that would add up to. So he never started. Fair Lady wondered how he was able not to have coffee in a family with a last name as Kofferman.
He said, “Kofferman does not mean man of coffee. It is a German name, a Jewish German brand.”
“What about tea?” the fair lady asked him.
“ No, never either, never, for all the tea in China.”
“What do you drink?”
“ Me? bottled water, bottled water, at present, it costs $3.75 for a case of 24 bottles. If you get it at the Hot Dog Stand run by that Jewish guy Ralph，it would cost you 1 dollar a bottle. But think of 24 bottles at $3.75 a case plus taxes. The government will soon charge us taxes for drinking water and toilet paper. That is the price you pay for wiping your “Pope’s Nose.” Mr. Poetito was indignant.
“ Taxes, how I hate the very single word of it, not to say the plurals. We are a government of taxes and sexes. You watch my words. Why are you here, by the way, Ms. Fair Lady?”
“ I really don’t know. I thought I would like to hear the English spoken by the Americans and to learn how the English language has evoluted.”
Such was the afternoon tea conversation in a small reading room at the “Connected“-- a self-help center for the mentally disabled. The term is now being universally toned as “diversely challenged” or “culturally disadvantaged”, or “spiritually diversifiablely yoked.” Whatever the names or terms one is thrown at, the encounter of minds, sane or less sane, is what conversation is all about. For the last 6 weeks, the Poetry Reading group is neither attracting nor losing participants. The three persons dedicated enough to be there never missed one reading. Every Monday at 12:30 noon, the reading started with Mr. Poetito played a little mystical tune on the piano. The only difference now was that Fair Lady had brought snacks and when asked to spare 50 cents, she eagerly went through her purse to find 10 pieces of “Mr. Lewis & Clark”. People, now 4 of them, never introduced their names. It seemed that people knew each other. Here, everybody used “You, please” as a common request, and turned heads to the person intended. Mr. Poetito wanted to read to the group members the greatest one liner he judged to be, and he wished to read it the way the old English sounded in the 1400 during Chaucer’s time, when the old man told “amusing dirty stories in Irish accent”, according to Mr. Poetito.
“I can’t read it like this, I need to write the line down and read it aloud.” So he took a piece of paper from his bosom pocket, which had a few small stacks of paper slips separated by different color of pencils. The pocket budged out and balanced back by long sharp pointed pencils. He wrote with great effort that he had to shut out his eyes with each stroke, as if the very alphabet was too old to be dragged out of history. Lady Another and Gentleman Another looked intensely at him, with eyes narrowed in case the old spirits conjured out of the page blew fires. Eventually, and verily, Mr. Poetito finished and holding the slip of paper high against the ceiling light, he first cleared his throat by bellowing his empty tummy and then with his one hand in the air, he blinked his eyes towards the sky and shouted,
“Out of your grave, I will not save.”
“Explosive, explosive, impressively explosive,” Mr. Gentleman Another hammered one of his hand in a tight fist into the palm of another hand, “very Irish indeed, very Irish.” Would you read it again for me, I don’t think I quite get it.” Ms Oriental Fair Lady demanded with excitement, her face turned red, but hard to say from what: the embarrassment of not being able to get it, or the awareness of being impressed.
“Oh Yeah? you want to hear the greatest one liner again? In a sound 400 years older?”
“Oh, yeah, but how you know how it sounds like 400 years ago?” Lady Another asked.
“I don’t wish to burden you with the how’s. People spend all their life tracing the development of accents localitalically authentic. You don’t want to know, verily, you don’t.”
“Oh yeah! But I do, I want to know and I really, truly, sincerely want to know.”
“Oh yeah? You simply don’t know what to want , be careful what you want. We on the other hand, have no time. We are living on borrowed minutes and we are already 14 minutes into our countdowns. Let’s forget how and let me read you the greatest one liner that sounds 400 years old.” Mr. Poetito wagged his head from left to right and from right to left. He read it aloud again and waving his hands. Fair Lady still could not get it, and she would not rest the issue.
“Would you enact it in present local English, so I can appreciate the glorious splendor of the line?” Ms. Oriental Fair lady insisted.
“You are tough, you are truly a poem lover, I can see. Well, it runs like this in local English. In the grave, I will not save.”
Fair Lady followed his sound and exclaimed that she know the difference now. “If you replace the vowel of “ei” with “aa” then it sounds like the ancient English, which sounds like the Irish English. For instance if I wish to say Oh the great red flame of fame, I will just shout like this-- oh the great, read flaam of faam? Do I sound like Chaucer??”
“Blerrdy, blerrdy red,” Gentleman Another exclaimed and stomped his feet.
“That is some serious local accent to get used to if I am to understand that ancient Irishy English. I am here only 10 years and trying to investigate how the American speaking English, and the English Americans are speaking is totally different after more than two hundred years of independence from the British. Like in Chinese. We can understand Cantonese, and that is the oldest Chinese, got 9 different tones, instead of the 4 tones in Mandarin Chinese.”
“Well, deep, verily deep. We don’t want to get into that. We are the living local English, county wise and state wise, and coast wise.” Mr. Another commented.
“Do you mean to say colloquial English?” Fair Lady asked with a lot respect to linguistic sensitivities.
“Well, a sort of, being local is being colloquial. without the local, how can you have the average, daily, uniquely distinguished flavor of an English from the British ?
“Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.” Fair Lady nodded. “May I read one of my own poem? It is a limerick. I really don’t know the rules of limerick, but I just found one little book of limericks, so I copycat the formula and here I have a retake of the limerick; would you like to listen to it?”
“We would appreciate it if you read us your piece.”
“Ok, ready, here comes my Irish limerick, though I could not replace all the ei’s with aa’s unless I write them down. But I don’t wish to sound 400 years old. I will just read it in local accent and here is my HotDog Praise:
“A little background information first. I used to sell hotdogs at the corner of 4th street, and one day a guy came and he produced a 50 dollar bill and asked me for “Hebrew National”. I understand the “national” and looked at the 50 dollar bill, and somehow I thought he wanted to donate the money to the Hebrew cause. So I just asked if Hebrew National is some kind of Jewish political Party. He said no. It is a brand name for a hotdog.”
“Oh, Oh, my God, if only I have money I would buy Hebrew National, they are the best, they are so good. Oh I wish I had the money.” Mr. Poetito rubbed his hands very fast and intensively as if he tried to start a fire between his palms.
“I will buy you a Hebrew National after this reading,” Fair Lady said, “all rise, and attention please, here comes the Hebrew National, the Praise of the Hotdog.”
Everybody withdrew their breath for a second and she started to read her limerick in her legal alien’s English:
Hebrew National, dogs at their best,
Blessed before processed.
Baptized before dressed,
In red and yellow, ketchup, mustard, oninion and tomato,
Kotcher style butcher,
The oppressed, not depressed, is delighted, .
“Bravo, Halleluiah, Jesus Christ, Holy Mary. Shot, darn it, smashing,” the two gentlemen were wild with appreciation and kept their emotion freely expressed for a long minute.
“The oppressed, not depressed, is delighted, , is the killer line, a winner punch.” Mr. Poetito blinked his eyes faster and faster, as if the onion smell was sipping out of the hotdog buns.
“Baptized before dressed, just right to the stomach, a good splash, dropping a Franklin in a boiling water tank. But I am not against Baptism and I am Jewish myself.” Gentleman Another commented, at the same time helping himself to some of the cookies Fair Lady brought to entertain the group.
“Science did some study to approve that after certain age of using one language, your brain is wired in such a way that switching to another language is almost impossible. You say you are here only 10 years?”
“In September, yes.”
“Well, beat me. You are certainly pushing our language very far. Who teaches you, you got a tutor?”
“Carl Marx,” said Fair Lady.
“Carl Marx, that German Jewish who wrote the Capital?”
“Yes, you are right.”
“He did? oh yeah, he certainly did a good job to liberate you from the shackles of proper English. You write with heavy accents of Chinglish.”
“Oh, yeah, you are absolutely right.”
“Oppressed but not depressed. That sounds exactly like the mental well being of the hotdog consumers who are snatching a quick bite from a corner hotdog vendor and put on a satisfied smile on his face and put his tie straight and walk full stomached back to his clerical duties. A good slice of hotdog, very tasty, very amusing. Walhalla.” Mr. Poetito raised his legs and kicked his heels and again robbed both his hands very intensively and delightfully.
Gentleman Another looked at the clock and reminded the group that only two minutes were left.
“Maybe another limerick for a teaser to end today’s very entertaining poetry reading?” Ms. Oriental requested. Mr. Poetito turned his head to Fair Lady and smiled his childish smile. Oh yah! Another one, here you go。
Ms. Fair Lady cleared her throat:
Johnny’s Mom loves limerick lyrics,
She always cracks up at the end kicks,
Johnny’s dad sings blues and grass,
He’s the best guitar picker,
But Johnny has the biggest baby pecker.
Mr. Poetito’s jaw fell and he paused in his breath and then burst out laughing.
“Hai Hai Hai, a good stretch of the form and smell real Irish. What are you? Any Irish connection?”
“No. Pure Oriental, a bit of Huns, if you insist. I have curly hair. My teacher Carl Marx said one has to totally forget his own mother tongue so he can learn another one. And he has to use the second language the way he uses his money. If he does not use his money it is paper. Unless he speaks the language, it is not his language. That’s how I speak the American English.”
“Good, good, jig your butt, jig butt, jigbutt, jitbug jitbug.
Mississippi one, Mississippi two, mississippi three Mississippi four, Lord I am five hundred miles away from home.” suddenly, the door swung open and a girlish woman came in, while rapping. Her pants were below her dorm of belly flop and her hair up shooting in two pigtails on top of her head. She was very welcome before the 20 seconds left of the reading. But she insisted that since no other events scheduled, the group might continue for another 15 minutes until they were ousted by other interest group.
“Yes, oh, yeah, let’s do it, let’s have another Brockovsky.” Gentleman Another was excited and he reached out for his thick red covered Brockovsky. He was a dead hard admirer of Mr. Bro, “admired him to death,” as he said. He enjoyed Mr. Bro’s “serious shit-- very vocally expressed holy shit of a poem. His poetic output smells adult stinkiness, fermented by drug, alcohol, cigarette, and whore…”
Fair Lady looked at Gentleman Another with jaw jarred, and eyes bugging out. She could not quite understand why and how Gentleman Another could keep his own skin so cleanly pale and agelessly soft. He looked like a baby fed on formula bottles, nothing of the food of vice has ever contaminated his look.
“May his soul just as cleansed as his face. By reading the dark poems of the great crusaders against the mainstream culture, he may purge his own dark shadow into the winds.” Fair lady murmured.
As new enthusiastic advocate of the poetry reading, Ms. Jitterbug Another, slammed her hands on Mr. Poetito’s lap. As if he was being executed by electro emotion, he jerked his legs and said with great self control,
“No touching Missy. No touching Missy.”
“I am sorry, I am terribly sorry Sir, I didn’t mean to. I don’t like to touch people, they give me lice in the hair. Well, I’d better keep my distance but this is a poetry slam, itsn’t it, your poetry is slamming good and I just could’t help to slam your lines. No offence.”
Mr. Poetito opened his eyes and focused them onto Missy Whatwhoever, “I have got no lice.”
“Yes, no lice, no lice, only fried rice, Jesus Christ, cheese and rice, serve you right. They kind of rhyme…”
Fair lady shouted and put her hands together in a Buddhist greeting. “Serve you rice, serve you rice, your highness.”
The clock struck 1.45pm and everybody looked at the clock hands, the long one first and then the short one after that and sat themselves straight and ready.
Gentleman Another declared that the poetry reading was over and the group was being very self-motivating.
Mr. Poetito was putting all the poetry collections into his brown paper bag. Fair lady offered to give him a kaphf cloth bag with red lettering “ French Kiss” printed slant on the side.
He looked at it and said it looked too expensive and seductive for his contents in the bag to escape theft. “ My brown paper bag is a virtue by choice, the poorer you look the safer your property. Of course no one can steal my idea in my mind. No, that’s not quite true anymore, I mean. Only I keep my ideas inside my mind and never leak them out, then it is safe. Otherwise, stealing from the brain is a very rampant crime not punishable in most of the cases. Someone will say Einstein hit the formula of relativity at the same time that his girl friend hit it too. Who will be able to make out who stole from whom? Be careful of the people who wish to get rich by stealing from others. Poetry is very easily accessible to theft.
“Thanks for the instructional comment, Mr. Poetito.”
“By the way, Marquisette of French said that the Chinese women are terrifically prolific, is that so?” asked Mr. Poetito.
“Yes, child bearing and poetry writing are the result of leisure for women in ancient China. I myself believe that’s what that is meant.”
“I did not know Chinese woman wrote poems beside having more babies than women in the previous Roman empire?” Mr. Poetito kept his inquiry going.
“Shame on you, you told me you started to read Encyclopedia of Britannica when you were 10 years old and you haven’t come to the topic of woman poets in ancient China?” Fair Lady retorted.
“which volume?”
“I don’t know. I don’t read E.B. I only read Mark Twain. and Bernard Shaw.”
“Well. I have been reading books in Berkley library 14 hours a day and I am too tied to remember anything at all now. But don’t assume I did not remember. It will pop up when the spark of enlightenment hit the fuse and re-connect the circus of thoughts. So Long.”
“Wait, Mr. Poetito, won’t you go with me next time to get some hotdog? Here is a few singles, take to get you some bottled water in the Grocery Outlet, they sell 24 bottles at 3.75 a case”.
Mr. Poetito took the 5 dollar bill from Fair Lady and did not even say thank you.
Fairlady waited and no thanks forthcoming. So she packed up her poetry book and left with a last evil look at Mr. Poetito and left without saying Goodbye to any one.
Mr. Poetito came to “Connected” for Poetry Reading every Monday. Connected was a place for people with mental issues to self help themselves. He came with a bottle of clear water in hand, and told Lulu, a Chinese middle-aged woman, something about his water drinking history while waiting for others to convene.
“In my family, half of us love spaghetti, half of us love sour dough.” he took a sip from his bottle. “In food, our family has the best combination of the Italian with the French, but in everything else, the difference is as big as that between spaghetti and sourdough，” he elaborated for Lulu. Amazingly to Lulu, Mr. Poetito grew up having never had coffee. To Lulu, both his family background smelt strong coffee, his family name sounded too close to coffee--Kofferman, and he has been able to abstain from drinking it, just think of It?! This was something deserving investigation, Lulu thought to herself. Now Mr.Poetito was 64 years old. The whole world was moving in ten days into the 21 century and he had never tasted coffee in the 20th century. Wasn’t that a regret of the century? No. Mr. Poetito was positively negative on this issue. Mr. Poetito told his latest admirer, that Chinese fair lady that the reason why he had abstained from coffee was that coffee cost too much. Besides, coffee as a beverage to the Europeans was not introduced into Europe until the 18 century. People don’t have to have coffee as a drink. The Chinese, the Japanese, the early British all drink tea, and babies all drink milk. But if you start drinking coffee, you will be hooked to it, and you can’t stop it. And think of it, at least two cups of it, for say, 50 years, how much money that would add up to. So he never started. Fair Lady wondered how he was able not to have coffee in a family with a last name as Kofferman.
He said, “Kofferman does not mean man of coffee. It is a German name, a Jewish German brand.”
“What about tea?” the fair lady asked him.
“ No, never either, never, for all the tea in China.”
“What do you drink?”
“ Me? bottled water, bottled water, at present, it costs $3.75 for a case of 24 bottles. If you get it at the Hot Dog Stand run by that Jewish guy Ralph，it would cost you 1 dollar a bottle. But think of 24 bottles at $3.75 a case plus taxes. The government will soon charge us taxes for drinking water and toilet paper. That is the price you pay for wiping your “Pope’s Nose.” Mr. Poetito was indignant.
“ Taxes, how I hate the very single word of it, not to say the plurals. We are a government of taxes and sexes. You watch my words. Why are you here, by the way, Ms. Fair Lady?”
“ I really don’t know. I thought I would like to hear the English spoken by the Americans and to learn how the English language has evoluted.”
Such was the afternoon tea conversation in a small reading room at the “Connected“-- a self-help center for the mentally disabled. The term is now being universally toned as “diversely challenged” or “culturally disadvantaged”, or “spiritually diversifiablely yoked.” Whatever the names or terms one is thrown at, the encounter of minds, sane or less sane, is what conversation is all about. For the last 6 weeks, the Poetry Reading group is neither attracting nor losing participants. The three persons dedicated enough to be there never missed one reading. Every Monday at 12:30 noon, the reading started with Mr. Poetito played a little mystical tune on the piano. The only difference now was that Fair Lady had brought snacks and when asked to spare 50 cents, she eagerly went through her purse to find 10 pieces of “Mr. Lewis & Clark”. People, now 4 of them, never introduced their names. It seemed that people knew each other. Here, everybody used “You, please” as a common request, and turned heads to the person intended. Mr. Poetito wanted to read to the group members the greatest one liner he judged to be, and he wished to read it the way the old English sounded in the 1400 during Chaucer’s time, when the old man told “amusing dirty stories in Irish accent”, according to Mr. Poetito.
“I can’t read it like this, I need to write the line down and read it aloud.” So he took a piece of paper from his bosom pocket, which had a few small stacks of paper slips separated by different color of pencils. The pocket budged out and balanced back by long sharp pointed pencils. He wrote with great effort that he had to shut out his eyes with each stroke, as if the very alphabet was too old to be dragged out of history. Lady Another and Gentleman Another looked intensely at him, with eyes narrowed in case the old spirits conjured out of the page blew fires. Eventually, and verily, Mr. Poetito finished and holding the slip of paper high against the ceiling light, he first cleared his throat by bellowing his empty tummy and then with his one hand in the air, he blinked his eyes towards the sky and shouted,
“Out of your grave, I will not save.”
“Explosive, explosive, impressively explosive,” Mr. Gentleman Another hammered one of his hand in a tight fist into the palm of another hand, “very Irish indeed, very Irish.” Would you read it again for me, I don’t think I quite get it.” Ms Oriental Fair Lady demanded with excitement, her face turned red, but hard to say from what: the embarrassment of not being able to get it, or the awareness of being impressed.
“Oh Yeah? you want to hear the greatest one liner again? In a sound 400 years older?”
“Oh, yeah, but how you know how it sounds like 400 years ago?” Lady Another asked.
“I don’t wish to burden you with the how’s. People spend all their life tracing the development of accents localitalically authentic. You don’t want to know, verily, you don’t.”
“Oh yeah! But I do, I want to know and I really, truly, sincerely want to know.”
“Oh yeah? You simply don’t know what to want , be careful what you want. We on the other hand, have no time. We are living on borrowed minutes and we are already 14 minutes into our countdowns. Let’s forget how and let me read you the greatest one liner that sounds 400 years old.” Mr. Poetito wagged his head from left to right and from right to left. He read it aloud again and waving his hands. Fair Lady still could not get it, and she would not rest the issue.
“Would you enact it in present local English, so I can appreciate the glorious splendor of the line?” Ms. Oriental Fair lady insisted.
“You are tough, you are truly a poem lover, I can see. Well, it runs like this in local English. In the grave, I will not save.”
Fair Lady followed his sound and exclaimed that she know the difference now. “If you replace the vowel of “ei” with “aa” then it sounds like the ancient English, which sounds like the Irish English. For instance if I wish to say Oh the great red flame of fame, I will just shout like this-- oh the great, read flaam of faam? Do I sound like Chaucer??”
“Blerrdy, blerrdy red,” Gentleman Another exclaimed and stomped his feet.
“That is some serious local accent to get used to if I am to understand that ancient Irishy English. I am here only 10 years and trying to investigate how the American speaking English, and the English Americans are speaking is totally different after more than two hundred years of independence from the British. Like in Chinese. We can understand Cantonese, and that is the oldest Chinese, got 9 different tones, instead of the 4 tones in Mandarin Chinese.”
“Well, deep, verily deep. We don’t want to get into that. We are the living local English, county wise and state wise, and coast wise.” Mr. Another commented.
“Do you mean to say colloquial English?” Fair Lady asked with a lot respect to linguistic sensitivities.
“Well, a sort of, being local is being colloquial. without the local, how can you have the average, daily, uniquely distinguished flavor of an English from the British ?
“Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.” Fair Lady nodded. “May I read one of my own poem? It is a limerick. I really don’t know the rules of limerick, but I just found one little book of limericks, so I copycat the formula and here I have a retake of the limerick; would you like to listen to it?”
“We would appreciate it if you read us your piece.”
“Ok, ready, here comes my Irish limerick, though I could not replace all the ei’s with aa’s unless I write them down. But I don’t wish to sound 400 years old. I will just read it in local accent and here is my HotDog Praise:
“A little background information first. I used to sell hotdogs at the corner of 4th street, and one day a guy came and he produced a 50 dollar bill and asked me for “Hebrew National”. I understand the “national” and looked at the 50 dollar bill, and somehow I thought he wanted to donate the money to the Hebrew cause. So I just asked if Hebrew National is some kind of Jewish political Party. He said no. It is a brand name for a hotdog.”
“Oh, Oh, my God, if only I have money I would buy Hebrew National, they are the best, they are so good. Oh I wish I had the money.” Mr. Poetito rubbed his hands very fast and intensively as if he tried to start a fire between his palms.
“I will buy you a Hebrew National after this reading,” Fair Lady said, “all rise, and attention please, here comes the Hebrew National, the Praise of the Hotdog.”
Everybody withdrew their breath for a second and she started to read her limerick in her legal alien’s English:
Hebrew National, dogs at their best,
Blessed before processed.
Baptized before dressed,
In red and yellow, ketchup, mustard, oninion and tomato,
Kotcher style butcher,
The oppressed, not depressed, is delighted, .
“Bravo, Halleluiah, Jesus Christ, Holy Mary. Shot, darn it, smashing,” the two gentlemen were wild with appreciation and kept their emotion freely expressed for a long minute.
“The oppressed, not depressed, is delighted, , is the killer line, a winner punch.” Mr. Poetito blinked his eyes faster and faster, as if the onion smell was sipping out of the hotdog buns.
“Baptized before dressed, just right to the stomach, a good splash, dropping a Franklin in a boiling water tank. But I am not against Baptism and I am Jewish myself.” Gentleman Another commented, at the same time helping himself to some of the cookies Fair Lady brought to entertain the group.
“Science did some study to approve that after certain age of using one language, your brain is wired in such a way that switching to another language is almost impossible. You say you are here only 10 years?”
“In September, yes.”
“Well, beat me. You are certainly pushing our language very far. Who teaches you, you got a tutor?”
“Carl Marx,” said Fair Lady.
“Carl Marx, that German Jewish who wrote the Capital?”
“Yes, you are right.”
“He did? oh yeah, he certainly did a good job to liberate you from the shackles of proper English. You write with heavy accents of Chinglish.”
“Oh, yeah, you are absolutely right.”
“Oppressed but not depressed. That sounds exactly like the mental well being of the hotdog consumers who are snatching a quick bite from a corner hotdog vendor and put on a satisfied smile on his face and put his tie straight and walk full stomached back to his clerical duties. A good slice of hotdog, very tasty, very amusing. Walhalla.” Mr. Poetito raised his legs and kicked his heels and again robbed both his hands very intensively and delightfully.
Gentleman Another looked at the clock and reminded the group that only two minutes were left.
“Maybe another limerick for a teaser to end today’s very entertaining poetry reading?” Ms. Oriental requested. Mr. Poetito turned his head to Fair Lady and smiled his childish smile. Oh yah! Another one, here you go。
Ms. Fair Lady cleared her throat:
Johnny’s Mom loves limerick lyrics,
She always cracks up at the end kicks,
Johnny’s dad sings blues and grass,
He’s the best guitar picker,
But Johnny has the biggest baby pecker.
Mr. Poetito’s jaw fell and he paused in his breath and then burst out laughing.
“Hai Hai Hai, a good stretch of the form and smell real Irish. What are you? Any Irish connection?”
“No. Pure Oriental, a bit of Huns, if you insist. I have curly hair. My teacher Carl Marx said one has to totally forget his own mother tongue so he can learn another one. And he has to use the second language the way he uses his money. If he does not use his money it is paper. Unless he speaks the language, it is not his language. That’s how I speak the American English.”
“Good, good, jig your butt, jig butt, jigbutt, jitbug jitbug.
Mississippi one, Mississippi two, mississippi three Mississippi four, Lord I am five hundred miles away from home.” suddenly, the door swung open and a girlish woman came in, while rapping. Her pants were below her dorm of belly flop and her hair up shooting in two pigtails on top of her head. She was very welcome before the 20 seconds left of the reading. But she insisted that since no other events scheduled, the group might continue for another 15 minutes until they were ousted by other interest group.
“Yes, oh, yeah, let’s do it, let’s have another Brockovsky.” Gentleman Another was excited and he reached out for his thick red covered Brockovsky. He was a dead hard admirer of Mr. Bro, “admired him to death,” as he said. He enjoyed Mr. Bro’s “serious shit-- very vocally expressed holy shit of a poem. His poetic output smells adult stinkiness, fermented by drug, alcohol, cigarette, and whore…”
Fair Lady looked at Gentleman Another with jaw jarred, and eyes bugging out. She could not quite understand why and how Gentleman Another could keep his own skin so cleanly pale and agelessly soft. He looked like a baby fed on formula bottles, nothing of the food of vice has ever contaminated his look.
“May his soul just as cleansed as his face. By reading the dark poems of the great crusaders against the mainstream culture, he may purge his own dark shadow into the winds.” Fair lady murmured.
As new enthusiastic advocate of the poetry reading, Ms. Jitterbug Another, slammed her hands on Mr. Poetito’s lap. As if he was being executed by electro emotion, he jerked his legs and said with great self control,
“No touching Missy. No touching Missy.”
“I am sorry, I am terribly sorry Sir, I didn’t mean to. I don’t like to touch people, they give me lice in the hair. Well, I’d better keep my distance but this is a poetry slam, itsn’t it, your poetry is slamming good and I just could’t help to slam your lines. No offence.”
Mr. Poetito opened his eyes and focused them onto Missy Whatwhoever, “I have got no lice.”
“Yes, no lice, no lice, only fried rice, Jesus Christ, cheese and rice, serve you right. They kind of rhyme…”
Fair lady shouted and put her hands together in a Buddhist greeting. “Serve you rice, serve you rice, your highness.”
The clock struck 1.45pm and everybody looked at the clock hands, the long one first and then the short one after that and sat themselves straight and ready.
Gentleman Another declared that the poetry reading was over and the group was being very self-motivating.
Mr. Poetito was putting all the poetry collections into his brown paper bag. Fair lady offered to give him a kaphf cloth bag with red lettering “ French Kiss” printed slant on the side.
He looked at it and said it looked too expensive and seductive for his contents in the bag to escape theft. “ My brown paper bag is a virtue by choice, the poorer you look the safer your property. Of course no one can steal my idea in my mind. No, that’s not quite true anymore, I mean. Only I keep my ideas inside my mind and never leak them out, then it is safe. Otherwise, stealing from the brain is a very rampant crime not punishable in most of the cases. Someone will say Einstein hit the formula of relativity at the same time that his girl friend hit it too. Who will be able to make out who stole from whom? Be careful of the people who wish to get rich by stealing from others. Poetry is very easily accessible to theft.
“Thanks for the instructional comment, Mr. Poetito.”
“By the way, Marquisette of French said that the Chinese women are terrifically prolific, is that so?” asked Mr. Poetito.
“Yes, child bearing and poetry writing are the result of leisure for women in ancient China. I myself believe that’s what that is meant.”
“I did not know Chinese woman wrote poems beside having more babies than women in the previous Roman empire?” Mr. Poetito kept his inquiry going.
“Shame on you, you told me you started to read Encyclopedia of Britannica when you were 10 years old and you haven’t come to the topic of woman poets in ancient China?” Fair Lady retorted.
“which volume?”
“I don’t know. I don’t read E.B. I only read Mark Twain. and Bernard Shaw.”
“Well. I have been reading books in Berkley library 14 hours a day and I am too tied to remember anything at all now. But don’t assume I did not remember. It will pop up when the spark of enlightenment hit the fuse and re-connect the circus of thoughts. So Long.”
“Wait, Mr. Poetito, won’t you go with me next time to get some hotdog? Here is a few singles, take to get you some bottled water in the Grocery Outlet, they sell 24 bottles at 3.75 a case”.
Mr. Poetito took the 5 dollar bill from Fair Lady and did not even say thank you.
Fairlady waited and no thanks forthcoming. So she packed up her poetry book and left with a last evil look at Mr. Poetito and left without saying Goodbye to any one.
WAKE UP THE KING
Wake Up The King
Phil, the 57 year Vietnam veteran, has found a bed in the Paradise on Brookside. It is a shelter for the homeless run by the Catholic Charities. Even homeless, he still looks kingly, with his double color wavy hair parted in the middle and brushy eye brows almost knitted together. He has lost his shape of the teeth. Not the teeth, but the shape of them. All the teeth are ground down to leave only chiseled points and broken. They look like wolf teeth, if anyone imagines what the teeth of the wolf would be. His thin lips are protruding at the world as if regarding the daylight with disapproval. He has long and hawked nose, deep set eyes. When he looks at you, he narrows his eyes, parts his legs real wide, and raises his eye brows up and down at the same time, right, then left, right, then left. His eyes hide below his eye brows and leave a very serious impression that he is giving you his kingly regard. He speaks with a slur sometimes. Not that he stutters. He is chewing tobacco most of the time and he smiles a big chewing smile, and his chewing sometimes makes his speech less fluent and precise. He is fondly given the name “Ghetto King Phil”, to which he enjoys very much and behaves more and more in that effect. He starts to wear robe. It is not the dragon robe for the Heavenly Son of the lost Chinese Royals, nor the robe for the Kings of England or France of remote past. It is a bath robe. But it is apricot yellow, which is the royal yellow reserved for the Emperor in China before 1900. He wears his hair long over the ears, and styles his hair a bluish grey with streaks of yellow which blend strikingly with the rest of the head. He wears big rings on his fingers, big stones and diamonds inherited from his Highness mom. He is however, a king in the reform, and in the “retreat”. He is off drug for a successful three months, although his tobacco chewing habit is more established than before. Ghetto King Phil is very attentive to the world affairs and works till small hours in the morning, listening to the most democratic or less republican talk shows to stay on top of the international affairs. He has some leisure activities: watching video while eating popcorn in the TV room till lights off is one of them. He plays bass guitar too, very professionally, and attends AA meetings on many of the weekday nights. He collects many useful items such as boots and jeans, women sweaters and slippers, and generously gives them away. He rules his bed and the cases under his bed and his closet in a very sovereign, yet chaotic manner. He just let things pile up and then transfer them to the table and start to sort them out, and put them in small piles and sit for long moments pondering how and why he has so much things to rule. For all the things he has had, he one day discovers that he does not have an alarm clock. He never needs one because the shelter overseer keeps the most punctual time for the sake of the running of the place. 6.30am, the lights will be turned on, and by 10.30pm, after 3 warning off-on, off-on, and off-ons, the lights are off and within two minutes, snoring at a very large scale is heard all over the world and King Phil is drowned in his talk shows. However he has got a job and he has to wake up and get up early, no late than 6.30. Think of it, the King has to work. That kindly disgrace of the proletarian ethics.
It should not be a problem if he wakes up by 6.30 am, when the lights are turned on. But the King can’t, just as everyone else does, wake up, by the noise those lights generate. He stays in his sleep longer than the lights and if left on himself, he would never wake up until 1 pm in the afternoon. He has issued an order that he be waken up by 6.30 to the most alert resident of the Paradise, Miss Altera. She did not, however, think it necessary to carry out the decreed, since by 6.30, she assumes that the King is awake. So the King explains to her that he can’t be waken by lights. He must be awaken by her. To this order, Miss Alerta ignores. A Ghetto King has no real authority to demand her service. Ghetto King got himself an alarm clock and sat it at 6.am, to give him a 30 minutes allowance to become awaken.
For two mornings, his alarm set off as it is set and off it goes, off and off and on and on and on till about 80 measures, each measure lasts two seconds. It sounds as dou- dou- and douddoudou, doudoudou. with each measure its temper goes faster and more urgent and more demanding. It does not sound as loud as the fire alarm, nor as loud as the siren. But when the Hall is still cozy under graying darkness, the alarm sounds exactly like an alarm. It is jarring , demanding, unquieting, and alarming. It seems going on and on, and any moment it’s supposed to stop, it does not. It is supposed to alarm the King up to his sense and he will turn it off, but he is not being disturbed at all. It is a bizarre situation only to be encountered in Paradise at Brookside. For one thing, the good residents are holding their breathe under the daily conditioning of self discipline. On the other hands, out of the daily exhaustion of roaming homeless, foodless, jobless, or of being fully engaged in job-hunting, house-hunting, and food-collecting, net-working, emotional taxing, no one is yet, after a full 3 minutes of being alarmed, having any initiatives to interfere.
The shelter is dark and silent, but by no means quiet. Compared to the night tranquility thickened by different levels of intensity of snoring, the big communal living room for all the residents are heavy with disturbance. From the four corners of the building, agitation is felt, beds squeezing, bodies flipping, and then a baby’s cry is heard. It is from the two months old baby Matthew. He is the only one who is not going to hold his breathe. He is disturbed and he protests from his crib behind the closed doors of the individual dorms for the families with kids.
Two male residents raise themselves up while the alarm was in full blast. They are not, however, paying any attention. They rise from their bed to go to the rest room before rushing outdoors for their first drag of the day. The overseer of the shelter is a new recruit of one day experience. He does not know quite what to do. He just graciously waits and waits hoping any minute the alarm would wake up the King and be turned off. He seems to be thinking of whether intervention is necessary When he does nothing to interfere, other residents are not making moves, behaving like English, just wait and wait, gentlemen walk, they never run. Eventually, Navaho, one of the residents throws her blanket away and sits up on her upper bunk bed. She waits and waits, thinking any minute the King might wake up and turn that damned clock off. But nothing happens except the annoying alarm , steadily and urgently sounds its alarm. Hope is higher and higher with each measure of alarm piecing the surprised unrest. “That damned thing must be made in Japan. “ Navaho thinks. “Made in China” would have stopped at 40 measures and only the Japanese doing a hard job to keep their competitiveness longer
After another 10 measure of alarms, Ghetto King’s snore rise above the alarm. It sounds fuller and fuller, more glorious and thundering, more intimidating and unchecked by any human decency and gracious tolerance. This is too much. The alarm is becoming a crime of public offense that unnecessarily disturbs the residents. Navaho could not hold herself up any more, she looks up and down, trys to get hold of her stuffed animals. She has placed them too far to reach, so she has to pick up her pillows and throws it at the Ghetto King. But it produces no effect. At this moment, Sam, the Ethiopian prince, in a position of prime minister on a chess board, is eventually aroused into erecting himself out of his bed and put his big palm on the throat of the King and chocks the King into gasping and therefore into opening his eyes and mouth at the same time.
This trick works and the Ghetto King jerks himself into the fear of a murder or in the good consciousness of pacifying the deeply disturbed sleeping public, putting his guitar bass plugging fingers over the Damned made-in-Japan and grubbing or another 5 second to find where the off switch is. At this moment, the whole house woke up and suddenly there was a deadly silence without any sound, either from the alarm, or from the residents. The Ghetto King is resurrected from his bed and he stands on his bare feet. As if in wakefulness, he slips his feet into a pair of kitty head slippers and flips and flops to the man’s room, the slipper mows and mows like kitty while he walks in them.
The next night, or rather the following morning of the next night, the same thing happen again. The Ghetto King’s impotence of hearing is widely publicized now and he got 4 stuffed monkeys thrown at him and two more landed on the neighboring bed where German Scholar sleeps. James, President of the Man’s room, goes right up to the King’s bed, ready to straggle him up into standing up. Before he is able to enclose his hands on the King, the house overseer Mr. B.B stops him and goes ahead himself to place the alarm clock close at the King’s ear. To his despair, the King’s ears are plugged and being blasted by the radio that is broadcasting the morning news. Under such heavy volume of noise, the King is still snoring. Mr. B.B. shakes the King into wakefulness and makes the declaration of attention that the alarm clock not to be used to awake everyone else but its owner, and the King be responsible for his own alarm management. By then, the whole house is wild awake. The lights are on and the residents are on their beds watching the King being dragged out of his double layer comforter of feather by one dignified female resident who threatens to kill the King if he keeps turning an deaf ear to the noise the alarm clock make. Novaro demands that the King returns the stuffed animals she throws at him. Ghetto King good humouredly throws them back at her as if she is the wide receiver from the 49ers. She reckons him to come over and asks him why he needs an alarm clock, since he doesn’t need to get up before the lights of the house turned on .”The King does not wake up by himself, nor by the alarm clock. but alarm clock is the only way to get me up by waking someone else to wake me up.” he explains without any embarrassment.
Phil, the 57 year Vietnam veteran, has found a bed in the Paradise on Brookside. It is a shelter for the homeless run by the Catholic Charities. Even homeless, he still looks kingly, with his double color wavy hair parted in the middle and brushy eye brows almost knitted together. He has lost his shape of the teeth. Not the teeth, but the shape of them. All the teeth are ground down to leave only chiseled points and broken. They look like wolf teeth, if anyone imagines what the teeth of the wolf would be. His thin lips are protruding at the world as if regarding the daylight with disapproval. He has long and hawked nose, deep set eyes. When he looks at you, he narrows his eyes, parts his legs real wide, and raises his eye brows up and down at the same time, right, then left, right, then left. His eyes hide below his eye brows and leave a very serious impression that he is giving you his kingly regard. He speaks with a slur sometimes. Not that he stutters. He is chewing tobacco most of the time and he smiles a big chewing smile, and his chewing sometimes makes his speech less fluent and precise. He is fondly given the name “Ghetto King Phil”, to which he enjoys very much and behaves more and more in that effect. He starts to wear robe. It is not the dragon robe for the Heavenly Son of the lost Chinese Royals, nor the robe for the Kings of England or France of remote past. It is a bath robe. But it is apricot yellow, which is the royal yellow reserved for the Emperor in China before 1900. He wears his hair long over the ears, and styles his hair a bluish grey with streaks of yellow which blend strikingly with the rest of the head. He wears big rings on his fingers, big stones and diamonds inherited from his Highness mom. He is however, a king in the reform, and in the “retreat”. He is off drug for a successful three months, although his tobacco chewing habit is more established than before. Ghetto King Phil is very attentive to the world affairs and works till small hours in the morning, listening to the most democratic or less republican talk shows to stay on top of the international affairs. He has some leisure activities: watching video while eating popcorn in the TV room till lights off is one of them. He plays bass guitar too, very professionally, and attends AA meetings on many of the weekday nights. He collects many useful items such as boots and jeans, women sweaters and slippers, and generously gives them away. He rules his bed and the cases under his bed and his closet in a very sovereign, yet chaotic manner. He just let things pile up and then transfer them to the table and start to sort them out, and put them in small piles and sit for long moments pondering how and why he has so much things to rule. For all the things he has had, he one day discovers that he does not have an alarm clock. He never needs one because the shelter overseer keeps the most punctual time for the sake of the running of the place. 6.30am, the lights will be turned on, and by 10.30pm, after 3 warning off-on, off-on, and off-ons, the lights are off and within two minutes, snoring at a very large scale is heard all over the world and King Phil is drowned in his talk shows. However he has got a job and he has to wake up and get up early, no late than 6.30. Think of it, the King has to work. That kindly disgrace of the proletarian ethics.
It should not be a problem if he wakes up by 6.30 am, when the lights are turned on. But the King can’t, just as everyone else does, wake up, by the noise those lights generate. He stays in his sleep longer than the lights and if left on himself, he would never wake up until 1 pm in the afternoon. He has issued an order that he be waken up by 6.30 to the most alert resident of the Paradise, Miss Altera. She did not, however, think it necessary to carry out the decreed, since by 6.30, she assumes that the King is awake. So the King explains to her that he can’t be waken by lights. He must be awaken by her. To this order, Miss Alerta ignores. A Ghetto King has no real authority to demand her service. Ghetto King got himself an alarm clock and sat it at 6.am, to give him a 30 minutes allowance to become awaken.
For two mornings, his alarm set off as it is set and off it goes, off and off and on and on and on till about 80 measures, each measure lasts two seconds. It sounds as dou- dou- and douddoudou, doudoudou. with each measure its temper goes faster and more urgent and more demanding. It does not sound as loud as the fire alarm, nor as loud as the siren. But when the Hall is still cozy under graying darkness, the alarm sounds exactly like an alarm. It is jarring , demanding, unquieting, and alarming. It seems going on and on, and any moment it’s supposed to stop, it does not. It is supposed to alarm the King up to his sense and he will turn it off, but he is not being disturbed at all. It is a bizarre situation only to be encountered in Paradise at Brookside. For one thing, the good residents are holding their breathe under the daily conditioning of self discipline. On the other hands, out of the daily exhaustion of roaming homeless, foodless, jobless, or of being fully engaged in job-hunting, house-hunting, and food-collecting, net-working, emotional taxing, no one is yet, after a full 3 minutes of being alarmed, having any initiatives to interfere.
The shelter is dark and silent, but by no means quiet. Compared to the night tranquility thickened by different levels of intensity of snoring, the big communal living room for all the residents are heavy with disturbance. From the four corners of the building, agitation is felt, beds squeezing, bodies flipping, and then a baby’s cry is heard. It is from the two months old baby Matthew. He is the only one who is not going to hold his breathe. He is disturbed and he protests from his crib behind the closed doors of the individual dorms for the families with kids.
Two male residents raise themselves up while the alarm was in full blast. They are not, however, paying any attention. They rise from their bed to go to the rest room before rushing outdoors for their first drag of the day. The overseer of the shelter is a new recruit of one day experience. He does not know quite what to do. He just graciously waits and waits hoping any minute the alarm would wake up the King and be turned off. He seems to be thinking of whether intervention is necessary When he does nothing to interfere, other residents are not making moves, behaving like English, just wait and wait, gentlemen walk, they never run. Eventually, Navaho, one of the residents throws her blanket away and sits up on her upper bunk bed. She waits and waits, thinking any minute the King might wake up and turn that damned clock off. But nothing happens except the annoying alarm , steadily and urgently sounds its alarm. Hope is higher and higher with each measure of alarm piecing the surprised unrest. “That damned thing must be made in Japan. “ Navaho thinks. “Made in China” would have stopped at 40 measures and only the Japanese doing a hard job to keep their competitiveness longer
After another 10 measure of alarms, Ghetto King’s snore rise above the alarm. It sounds fuller and fuller, more glorious and thundering, more intimidating and unchecked by any human decency and gracious tolerance. This is too much. The alarm is becoming a crime of public offense that unnecessarily disturbs the residents. Navaho could not hold herself up any more, she looks up and down, trys to get hold of her stuffed animals. She has placed them too far to reach, so she has to pick up her pillows and throws it at the Ghetto King. But it produces no effect. At this moment, Sam, the Ethiopian prince, in a position of prime minister on a chess board, is eventually aroused into erecting himself out of his bed and put his big palm on the throat of the King and chocks the King into gasping and therefore into opening his eyes and mouth at the same time.
This trick works and the Ghetto King jerks himself into the fear of a murder or in the good consciousness of pacifying the deeply disturbed sleeping public, putting his guitar bass plugging fingers over the Damned made-in-Japan and grubbing or another 5 second to find where the off switch is. At this moment, the whole house woke up and suddenly there was a deadly silence without any sound, either from the alarm, or from the residents. The Ghetto King is resurrected from his bed and he stands on his bare feet. As if in wakefulness, he slips his feet into a pair of kitty head slippers and flips and flops to the man’s room, the slipper mows and mows like kitty while he walks in them.
The next night, or rather the following morning of the next night, the same thing happen again. The Ghetto King’s impotence of hearing is widely publicized now and he got 4 stuffed monkeys thrown at him and two more landed on the neighboring bed where German Scholar sleeps. James, President of the Man’s room, goes right up to the King’s bed, ready to straggle him up into standing up. Before he is able to enclose his hands on the King, the house overseer Mr. B.B stops him and goes ahead himself to place the alarm clock close at the King’s ear. To his despair, the King’s ears are plugged and being blasted by the radio that is broadcasting the morning news. Under such heavy volume of noise, the King is still snoring. Mr. B.B. shakes the King into wakefulness and makes the declaration of attention that the alarm clock not to be used to awake everyone else but its owner, and the King be responsible for his own alarm management. By then, the whole house is wild awake. The lights are on and the residents are on their beds watching the King being dragged out of his double layer comforter of feather by one dignified female resident who threatens to kill the King if he keeps turning an deaf ear to the noise the alarm clock make. Novaro demands that the King returns the stuffed animals she throws at him. Ghetto King good humouredly throws them back at her as if she is the wide receiver from the 49ers. She reckons him to come over and asks him why he needs an alarm clock, since he doesn’t need to get up before the lights of the house turned on .”The King does not wake up by himself, nor by the alarm clock. but alarm clock is the only way to get me up by waking someone else to wake me up.” he explains without any embarrassment.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
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