The Man in the Box has a Few Things to Say

He had a rough time as a kid, a tough time as a teenager, and did hard time as an adult in maximum-security, an ideal upbringing for a Coffin Confessor, a calling Bill Edgar, the author, pioneered.  

You need balls to be a coffin confessor, a job, if you’ll excuse the pun,  he fell into. A coffin confessor gatecrashes funerals, and reads out what his client, the deceased, discloses to him on their deathbed. He is entrusted to let the mourners know the bitter truth that has been largely hidden from them all this time. There is always at least one of the mourners who receives a right royal drubbing, a public flogging by the lash of truth.

He3re is his spiel: “Excuse me, but I’m going to need you to sit down, shut up or fuck off. The man in the box has a few things to say,”

You gotta read this book. Every chapter is rivetting.

Here’s Another Nice Mess You’ve Gotten Yourself Into

after deserting me for a few days

my editor has a change of heart

and decides to return.

Yay! I say to myself.

Says he’s been reading my posts, and how I’ve been floundering without him.

You’ve pulled three posts in two days, he says. You’re sinking.

I know, I say, hanging my head in shame.

Look, he says. It’s no good fighting it. We’re a team. Conjoined twins if you like.

Like Laurel and Hardy? I suggest.

He smiles.

Same arrangement? I say.

Yes, he says. You write. I clean up the mess.

The Broom Closet

The phone rings.

Me: [chirpy] Oh Hi Lynne. Good to hear from you.

L: Oooops. Sorry, John. Didn’t mean to phone you. I pressed the wrong button.

Me: [shoulders slump] Don’t feel bad, Lynne. Most people who phone me don’t mean to.

L: Oh.

Me: It’s alright. I’ll have a little weep in the broom closet and get over it. Until the next time, that is. But just don’t ask me ….

L: [sounding worried]. What?

Me: RUOK?

L: Well are you?

I hang up.

 

 

The Girl with Incarnadine Hair

“Sorry, you have to move.”

“What?”

“You don’t belong here. You’ll have to move.”

“But I was here first. You saw me walking up and down with my multitudinous strands of hair incarnadine.”

“That’s it.”

“What’s it?”

“You can’t have ‘multitudinous strands of hair incarnadine’ in a poem about waiting for a poem to pull up like a bus.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too heavy, too overwritten. Too Shakespearean. It changes the tone of the poem totally. It’s like two colors that clash.”

“But …”

“I’m sorry. You’ll have to move. I can’t fit you in.”

“Okay”, she says, shaking her multitudinous strands in a flurry of petulance, “I’ll write a poem of my own and guess what?”

“What?”

“You won’t be in it.”

And with that she gets out her notebook from her backpack and begins writing, furiously as Lady Macbeth cleansing her blood-soaked hands in the basin.

Two Men Go Into a Change Room

There’s only one change room in the store.

I don’t check to see if it’s empty.

“Sorry”, I say to the guy who is trying on some clothes. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, do you mind?”

“That’s okay”, he says. “There’s room for two”.

I quietly disrobe and try on the gear.

Perfect fit!

“I’m good”, I say, changing hastily back.

So off I go to the counter, pay for my purchases which the assistant neatly puts in a bag, and head down the mall to  meet my mate for coffee. .

It is only when I sit down that I realize I’m wearing the other dude’s clothes.

And the Way He Glares at Me

I don’t want to face him again today. Each morning it’s the same. He’s hung over, strung out, bleary-eyed, unshaven and his hair —- it looks like something slept in it overnight. He could make an effort. Spruce himself up a bit but no, the same old, same old. Mr, Ragamuffin. And the way he glares at me first thing in the morning. Is that really necessary, moaned the mirror ?

All Fours

 

Hey! He said. Why are those bozos off the leash and I’m not?

You have Attitude! I answered.

Oh great! People with Attitude should be leashed? What about rappers, revolutionaries, politicians with morals?

There are no such things, I said, as politicians with morals.

You got that one right, he said. And anyway, what about you? You have Attitude. Perhaps you should be on a leash.

Perhaps, I smiled.

Look, he said, let’s change places, just for five minutes. That’s fair, isn’t it?

I had to concede that it was.

Hey! The collar’s a bit tight.

He loosened it a little.

So off we toddled along the beach, he on his hinds, me on all fours, the three bozos scattering seagulls.

 

An Altercation with Auto-Correct

 

When I started out on my post on Pachelbel he was, in spite of being dead a few hundred years, in pretty good nick. Now it has come to my attention that he is not well. Worse, he has undergone a frightful transformation. ‘Transmogrified’ is the word.

Literal minded, know nothing, bossy auto-correct is the villain.

Whenever I wrote ‘Pachelbel,’ auto-correct fiercely underlined it with red, saying, No, No, that is not a word.[it is doing it now]. Then what word am I after? I asked. The word you are after it asserted was — wait for it! — ‘Bellyache’. What? Are you mad? I said. How do you get ‘Bellyache’ out of ‘Pachelbel’? Auto-correct became belligerent and I’m sad to report we came to fisticuffs. Finally bruised and black-eyed I over-rode auto-correct. There was no way soothing Pachelbel would become painful Bellyache! Afterwards though I did have a good belly-laugh over it.

Auto-correct is no longer speaking to me.

 

Have you had similar problems with auto-correct?

A Cadaver of Red

 

What is your wish? said the genie.

A cadaver of red, please.

A cadaver of red? Don’t you mean a cask or bottle? Or perhaps a magnum? I’ve had a glass or three myself. I’m feeling generous. How about a jeroboam — I’ve never granted one of them — or, maybe even, a nebuchednezzar?

No, thanks, mate. A cadaver of red, said the lazy vampire

 

Poem with a Great Last Line

I have just written a poem.

I read it to my granddaughter.

“Hey! Great last line,” she says.

“But what about the rest of the poem?” I say.

“Great last line”

I go back to the poem.

Read it a few times.

It is a great last line.

So what I do is this: I jettison the rest of the poem and keep

the last line,

I read it a few times.

I read it to her.

She hesitates.

I read it again.

It seems to lack something,” she says.

So I put the poem back together like it was and read it to her.

“Great last line,” she says.