Saturday

They don't make memories like that anymore.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Galapagos

“I'll tell you something," she said. 'I'm not sure I ever really liked him."
"Adam?" I said. "I don't blame you." 
"Not Adam," she said, struggling to swallow a greedily chomped chunk. "God.”
--Glen Duncan, I, Lucifer

We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.
--Robert M.Pirsig, Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.
--Pat Conroy, The Prince Of Tides

What Would Freud Say?
Wasn't on purpose that I drilled 
through my finger or the nurse 
laughed. She apologized 
three times and gave me a shot 
of something that was a lusher 
apology. The person 
who drove me home 
said my smile was a smeared 
totem that followed 
his body that night as it arced 
over a cliff in a dream.
He's always flying 
in his dreams and lands 
on cruise ships or hovers 
over Atlanta with an erection.
He put me to bed and the drugs
wore off and I woke 
to cannibals at my extremities. 
I woke with a sense
of what nails in the palms 
might do to a spirit 
temporarily confined to flesh. 
That too was an accident 
if you believe Judas 
merely wanted to be loved. 
To be loved by God, 
Urban the 8th 
had heads cut off 
that were inadequately 
bowed by dogma. To be loved 
by Blondie, Dagwood
gets nothing right 
except the hallucinogenic 
architecture of sandwiches. 
He would have drilled 
through a finger too 
while making a case for books 
on home repair and health. 
Drilling through my finger's 
not the dumbest thing 
I've done. Second place 
was approaching 
a frozen gas-cap with lighter
in hand while thinking 
heat melts ice and not 
explosion kills asshole. First 
place was passing 
through a bedroom door 
and removing silk that did not
belong to my wife.
Making a bookcase is not 
the extent of my apology. 
I've also been beaten up 
in a bar for saying huevos 
rancheros in a way 
insulting to the patrons' 
ethnicity. I've also lost 
my job because lying 
face down on the couch 
didn't jibe with my employer's 
definition of home 
office. I wanted her to come
through the door on Sunday
and see the bookcase 
she'd asked me to build 
for a year and be impressed 
that it didn't lean 
or wobble even though 
I've only leaned and often 
wobbled. Now it's half
done but certainly
a better gift with its map
of my unfaithful blood. 
--Bob Hicok