What’s Wanted

 [Written in about 2003]

What’s Wanted

     D. O. (of the Nameless Nannies)

“People are hungry for characters,” my sister informs me in the restaurant as we sit down in the corner booth at the Marion Street McDonald’s. The waitress behind the counter has just barked at us, implying who knows what, like maybe that I should have ordered at least the Sausage and Egg McMuffin meal instead of just Egg McMuffin with nothing else. The waitress, who is fifty or so, informs us (my sister having initiated the conversation by asking her a question or commenting to her about something) when she delivers a few packages of hashbrowns to the next table a few minutes later, that this is her last day here. She’s quitting after thirteen years. 

     My sister exchanges pleasantries with her.

“It’s hard leaving a place isn’t it,” my sister says in a loud voice. The waitress agrees. “She is hurt today. That’s why she’s so loud,” my sister informs me in quite a loud voice herself when the waitress leaves. “She doesn’t mind being loud and hurt and making people feel uncomfortable. The world needs characters,” my sister says again. “We are hungry for oddity.”

     Is the world hungry for blind characters? People don’t like blind people. Not even if they are characters. Especially if they are characters. A blind character wouldn’t get the time of day from anyone. He’d be immediately forgotten, if not ignored from the start. People don’t tolerate blind people. It makes no difference if they are characters.

     Or short people. Even if you have a short person who is a character. Let’s say he’s three foot four and wears the most gaudy ties and vibrantly-coloured, expensive, leather shoes, red one day, green the next. Say he leaps up in class and shouts questions of a provocative and intelligent sort at the professor who is shy and not outstanding in any way at all. Who will care? Who will be his friend? Will the girl in the front, the very pretty one who wears those tight earth-toned sweaters and who has those twinkling eyes the colour off blue slate, take notice of him? Will she turn around, make eye contact, and after class arrange to meet him for coffee to see what sort of guy he is? No, she won’t. Of course not. She is not interested in characters. Especially not short ones.

Sight

 Sight

     by D. O. R. E. Imer

In northern Manitoba, a hundred miles from the nearest road or habitat, an indigenous man sat in the snow with his back against a tree. He sat so still for so long that animals in the forest began to wonder and grow bold. This is a trick, they thought, and watched carefully. First, close to the bend in the path far from the human, a fly buzzed across the trail in full view. The other animals bated their breaths. Nothing. The indigene batted not an eye or moved a muscle. 
     “Ah, he couldn’t see him,” nodded the owl, peering at different animals with a smooth turn of the neck. Next, a weasel, brave for his size, and quick as quick can be, snuck to the edge of the path, paused, and then scurried across. And even then no sign from the still form. All the animals began to feel ease and courage. Closer to the resting man now, a rabbit hipped over the trail, then a snake slithered right by the human with his eyes fixed on his face. Then, in quick succession, a wolf loped, a fox crept, a bull shimmied, a moose meandered and a spruce hen fluttered across. Not a hair stirred on the man’s head, nor an eye blinked. 
     “Let’s do something crazy,”Toad croaked, his smile ear to ear. They all nodded together wisely, then they snickered, laughed, whinnied, hooted, howled and crowed in glee and pleasure at the thought of engaging in something fun together. 

The Lonesome Hobo Song

[Written in 2012]

The Lonesome Hobo Song

     by Luckless Lame Ronny Leimer 

1

Ma’am, don’t loan me any money

Sir, don’t give me any cash

Don’t reach deep into your pockets,

Cause you’ll never get it back.

I’m a hobo I am a stranger

With this stick and with this sack

I’ve walked this road a thousand miles

And I won’t be coming back

Lord, I’ve walked this road a thousand miles 

And I won’t be coming back.

Chorus 

I am a lonesome hobo

The road’s my only friend

I’ve walked it for a thousand miles

And I’ll walk it once again

If you’ll spare a cup of coffee,

Then I’ll be on my way

I thank you ma’am

You are too kind

I tip my hat and say

That I am just a lonesome hobo

Now I’ll get out of your way

2

Don’t pass me any handouts

Forget the golden rule

Don’t feed me bread and chicken

It’s just wasted on this fool

When I was still a young boy

I wondered what I’d do

But I realized it was useless

Money’s for the lucky few

Lord I realized it was useless

Money’s for the lucky few 

Chorus 

I am a lonesome hobo

The road’s my only friend

I’ve walked it for a thousand miles

And I’ll walk it once again

If you’ll spare a cup of coffee,

Then I’ll be on my way

I thank you ma’am

You are too kind

I tip my hat and say

That I am just a lonesome hobo

Now I’ll get out of your way

3

This road I’m on is it lonely

I wonder where it goes

I’m nearly always hungry

And I’m cold from head to toe

Though it’s hard to make my living ma’am

Don’t worry about my state

Each morning finds me still alive

Knocking at some gate

See, each morning finds me still alive

Here I’m knocking at your gate

Chorus 

I am a lonesome hobo

The road’s my only friend

I’ve walked it for a thousand miles

And I’ll walk it once again

If you’ll spare a cup of coffee,

Then I’ll be on my way

I thank you ma’am

You are too kind

I tip my hat and say

That I am just a lonesome hobo

Now I’ll get out of your way

“The Hapless Sailor” song

(Song: written in 2005)

The Hapless Sailor

     by Dangerous Moug DeGrew

Allegro, but still elegiac, instrumental prelude C/F/G

1

Come people won’t you listen

To a story I would tell

About a hapless sailor

Who went on a ship

To take a trip

When he was only twelve

2

He thought that he would travel

For a year or maybe two

But thirty years went by 

Before he got back to

The place he’d left

When he had begun to roam.

Chorus 

He said that when this trip was o’er

He’d turn around and go back home

And never more would roam

He said that when this trip was o’er

He’d turn around and go back home

And never more would roam

He’d never roam

3

He often would remember

How he left the family farm

His mother in the kitchen

Father in the barn

And sister milking cows

4

And then he’d also think about

What it’d feel like getting home

How he’d walk in through 

That old screen door

And call the names

Of all the ones

He’d loved before he roamed

Chorus

He said that when this trip was o’er

He’d turn around and go back home

And never more would roam

He said that when this trip was o’er

He’d turn around and go back home

And never more would roam

He’d never roam

5

Then one glad day

When they drew near

The harbour lights of home

A pirate came acalling

For their ship to stand

And give him room

Or he would blow

Them all to kingdom come

6

The captain he fought bravely

And the sailors they did too

But when the day was done

The hapless sailor lay

Upon the deck

With all the crew

And none were going home.

Chorus

He said that when this trip was o’er

He’d turn around and go back home

And never more would roam

He said that when this trip was o’er

He’d turn around and go back home

And never more would roam

He’d never roam

Instruments

Dark Whistling

 Dark Whistling
   by The Worried Happy Whistler

          whistle while you work
          whistle while you work
          whistle while you work away
          whistle while you work 

Dear Reverend Sprundge,
Your assertions in the Hanover Review about the philistinism of my father, who left home (having had his eye accidentally punctured by his brother at such a young age and disliking farming) for the West Reserve for good to make a living on that side of the Red, I intend to challenge. You impute laziness and mental pallor to him for presuming permanently to turn his back on Steinbach, as if Steinbach were the New Jerusalem. Let me inform you better. 
     My father worked hard. He whistled when he worked. He whistled in the morning when he worked against time and was not getting ahead as planned. When he whistled he whistled shrilly, not in pleasure but in releasing pentupness. Being a myopic young teen, I naturally hated hearing him whistle because it made me see his walk as he did so. I’d clamp my hands over my ears. He walked briskly when he whistled, short, quick steps, because he wanted to have been on the road by now and was already an hour late and the best sales were mornings. It might have been okay if he’d been well-proportioned, like grandpa Zacharias, but he displayed all the disfavourabilities of Grandpa Reimer’s genes. Short torso, shorter legs, somewhat bow-legged, trousers just that much too short, a bit of white mustache and thinning gray hair, clothing (except for the white shirt) always in browns; caramel, chocolate, fawn, dun, coffee, mahogany. From shoes to jacket. And his blue eyes. 
     Henry James wrote a story about an entirely different sort of person in The American. In it, if my memory serves me right, a young man lives in a European country such as Italy where he becomes convicted of his own oddity, his preoccupation with money instead of things refined. Things refined includes a long list, things mercenary a short one. 
     This reminds me, before I set out these lists for you, of the thirtyish woman who acquired a handsome new male companion. His quirky behaviour did in time grow into a concern for her and she began to worry that maybe he lacked, shall we say, a certain fullness of intellectual strength. She deliberated at length by what means to address this concern, delicate matter that it was. Certainly not by direct inquiry, nor yet by accusation. Nor really by any emperical means, as in reading scholarship dedicated to the matter, and not either, strictly speaking, by lengthy observation. Finally it came to her. She turned to him in bed one morning and asked, “Duayne, when you went to public school, were you collected by a long bus or a short one?”
     Now, James himself was a short man, hardly topping five feet. There are cultures where that would not have seemed unusual, say in Korea, Japan, or China, or even in the Andies. But in Texas where he lived most of those years before his exodus from the American scene, a man could hardly be a man unless five foot eight or more. James wrote about tall men, tall men who agonized at length over matters of depth, matters such as, for instance, O’Brien and the question of his marrying the British girl in Venice where he had met her in an outdoor apparel shop and begun, despite his foreboding, to obsess over her. O’Brien had never been able to force himself to love anyone, especially someone whom he suspected of caring for his wealth, and he was a wealthy man, scion of a Wall Street financial empire. The tall buildings which housed his father’s offices and his own future living hardly concerned him those days, travelling to the continent as if he were a prince during the reign of James I.
     O’Brien lost the girl and failed to immediately find a replacement to satisfy the longing that plagued him. Instead of returning to his home country, he lived alone now along the Veridicci and wrote cloying letters to friends and family while copiously drinking the wine already infamously associated with Venice, a white named Blanco Savis, roughly translated as white saviour and suggesting in James’s narrative his protagonist‘s unrecognized (that is, by himself) preoccupation with matters religious. Much in the same general vein of preoccupation as my father whistling in the car garage while loading his Ford Fairlane station wagon with Rawleigh products for that day’s sales, anticipating his visits to farmyards around and about St. Joseph, St.Jean, Letellier or Plum Coulee, where in the morning, if he did get a good, unhindered start, he might just be the early bird catching the worm. The men would be outdoors doing chores and working fields and wives cleaning up breakfast, still half asleep, already contemplating about lunch sandwiches and supper, knowing that physical work would bring her men inside wild-eyed with hunger. His knock on their rural doors was a welcome reprieve. Him not knowing his own thoughts.
     My father was an entirely admirable man, neither given to disloyalty nor, for that matter, passion. What he received at home on his return from the days’ sales at about 10 PM was plenty for that busy spirit of his, a busy spirit that slipped the traces of stress through a timely whistling, unless of course the recipient of his evening attentions suffered from some melancholy, a glitch that happens periodically to all good wives, short and tall, quiet and loud, friendly and ricocheting. Father struck me always as a modest man of small means and admirable appetites, not given to finding reprieve from hunger in places that were not meant for him. He worked hard all his life, he played horseshoes once or twice a year, he ate well until he got diabetes, and he never spent undue time with children. He got by marvellously, and no looking back over his own life after it was nearly over. I wish he had been able to spend a year or so of it in Italy where new ideas might have set him whistling another tune.
     To make a long story short, I will just conclude by advising all of you who have not yet read James, to do so immediately without delay. His novels bear the stamp of genius and are a must for every man or woman who considers themselves educated. Good luck and all the best in your endeavors.
Sincerely,
Walter Whistler

Sunken Treasure

 Song written in 2009

(In G/C/D/A7)

Sunken Treasure

     by Walbert Brickworks

Wicked weary world

What’s your goal

Where’s your gold

Where’s your shame

I find the game of sink

And swim is much to blame

Playful busy world

Swim in shoals

Sinks of gold

Hearts aflame

Love is just a game

And love is hard to tame

Chorus

Love is hard to tame

And lovers all have names

That’s the part that leaves us feeling free

We swim out to the brink

And then begin to sink 

And pray that Joan of Arc will ride

And put us in the pink

Thoughtful fighting world

Takes its toll on the whole

Soldiers lame 

Women laid down recklessly 

In leaky shame

Mindless calling world

Make your roll

Give your soul

Hearts inflamed 

Taking aim 

At inky blackness down the lane

Chorus 

Love is just a game

And lovers all have names

That’s the part that leaves us feeling free

We swim out to the brink

And then begin to sink

And pray that Joan of Arc will ride

And put us in the pink

Professors

 Professors 
     by D R. (Herr Doktor)

Professors come back from wherever they’ve been (in Macedonia for a conference on cuneiforms, at a conference in Key West because of a resurgence of interest in all things Hemingway or in Sweden attending a sacred music workshop), tanned and determined to repeat such travels (on the university dime) again next summer. They notice the long-legged students in their classes smelling of bath powder. Of course, I am too old for them, the professors say to themselves, but also think, I am, however, interesting. Consider the shear daring and distance of my travels. 
     Professors perpetually work at their computers, their office doors open. Take professor Hackles here. He’s always in front of his screen and keyboard busy doing something, visible to all passers by. Now and then he stops keyboarding and engages in a discussion with a student, or maybe with a colleague passing his door. In these instances, though his observed voice naturally is quite soft, it now takes on the cadences of authority. Usually, alone, he is a rather silent and shy, but, because public here, he now gives out with loudness punctuated by strongly stated phrases such as, “you know what I mean,” “without question,” “an egregious failure of the imagination” and “does that help?”
     He will retire in two years. He sports a tan even now, in February. Moving about now and then, his slim figure presses forward down the hall with purpose. He invariably climbs the six floors of stairs to his office. His white hair makes him resemble Walt Whitman. He teaches Romantic literature. His door proclaims that he is,
                 Dr. Gregory Happles
                           English
Underneath that the posted timetable reads,
            Romantic Literature 04.446
                  Wordsworth 04.746
     Professors and their wives give parties in their cold (in winter) three-storied, hundred-year-old homes for students in second year or later. They provide quality wine and imported beer if the group does not exceed ten. Or, if they are Cambridge or Oxford educated professors, they serve homemade wine and beer. 

Way Up in Heaven

Note: the following piece thinks of my mother’s preference in hymn genre. She loved the evangelical hymns best. This song intends to honour her memory.

Way Up in Heaven

     by the Singsong Sinner

1

Way up in heaven my saviour waits for

His many children, to come to him

His arms wide open, his warm heart beating 

Eagerly waiting, to bring us in 

Chorus 

He is waiting, and he is watching 

And he is counting the days away

He is smiling, at thoughts that he’ll meet me

And say hello, sir, come right this way

2

Twelfth century mystics, those holy women

Like St. Teresa, love pure and clear

Jesus their lover, no earthly other

Could feed their hunger, or bring them cheer

Chorus 

He is waiting, and he is watching 

And he is counting the days away

He is smiling, at thoughts that he’ll meet me

And say hello, sir, just walk right in

3

Way up in heaven, beyond the blue sky 

Beyond the white clouds, beyond the hill

There sits my saviour, in all his splendour 

Patiently waiting, to bring us in 

Chorus 

He is waiting, and he is watching 

He is counting the days away

He is smiling, at thoughts that he’ll meet me

And say hello, sir, you’re welcome here

And say hello, sir, you’re welcome here.