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THE BELTWAY
Not sure what your idea of hell is, mine's driving around endlessly
on the Beltway outside D.C., barely moving, not knowing exactly
where to get off for Dulles Airport.
My early start didn't matter anyway: for some unearthly reason traffic
stalled and just crept along so slowly the speedometer didn't register,
causing me to miss my scheduled flight.
Also, I had to pull over three times, rush into the bushes and trees,
through mud, to relieve myself, not thinking a single cup of instant
coffee could produce so much waste product.
Ruined the shoes, ruined the carpet in the rental car, ruined my day,
agitated my wife when I called to let her know I'd be late and we'd
miss the symphony that evening.
Besides, I didn't get the job offer I'd come seeking, though I knew that
even before the interview was over. The bitchy Veep rolled her eyes
the three times I excused myself to pee.
MY THEORY ON CHIMPANZEES
A woman who lived with a 200-pound chimpanzee in Connecticut proves
my point, sort of: male chimps aren't meant to live with human ladies.
This lady trained the chimp to perform all sort of tricks and clever things,
often getting him bit parts in movies, though never the romantic lead.
The chimp ate at the table with this lady, three squares a day, forsaking bananas
for Wheaties, croissants, peanut butter, ham sandwiches and steaks.
This clever fellow could even hold conversations on a par with teenagers
on cell phones, though I haven't heard the chimp owned a cell phone.
Alarmingly, the chimp bathed daily with the lady - he scrubbing her back,
she scrubbing his, and whatever else got lathered in their private bathtub.
My theory: chimps are happier living with other chimps, not ladies. It's said
this lady had a boy child by the chimp - the kid answering to "rush limbaugh."
A FASHION PLEA:
PLEASE BRING BACK THE NECKTIE
Didn't know how much I missed them,
neckties, those frivolous silky
adornments us men used to cinch
around our necks most mornings as if
practicing for a hanging party at work.
Then, quite slowly and mysteriously,
they began to disappear all over the country,
except of course in the big cities
where hangings are still the norm
in board rooms and social clubs.
Had I to wear one, to my funeral, for instance,
I wouldn't even know how to tie one on -
a tie I mean, not a big drunk which someday
will probably be my means of escaping
this curious world of fashion abnormalities.
But I want the necktie to come back, I do indeed.
Not for the reason you may suspect.
Oh no, not to be worn around the neck.
Rather, to be used as a belt after raising boys'
pants about eight inches to cover up underwear.
Fortunately, we had a variety of engineers
in narrow-gauge, thin-walled stainless
Couldn't make it work - the wall kept collapsing,
Oh ho, one of our Engineers piped up, let me
Hmm, mused one of our floor engineers, a farm
I'm not sure what this says about engineers
All they wanted in recognition was a dozen
So, I decided to take off, leave them.
With few options, I opted to suit up as usual
I climbed out the back window, onto the second
Bill Roberts is a retired nuclear weapons consultant who dreams of a day when all WMD are extinct. His poetry has appeared in well over a hundred small-press and online journals over the past thirteen years. Bill lives with one domesticated wife and two untrainable dogs too near the edge of bucolic Broomfield, Colorado. If he could turn back the clock, he'd strive to become either a ballet dancer or an opera singer, having no talent at either endeavor. (August 08, February & September 09)
ENGINEERING INGENUITY
At the infamous nuclear weapons plant where
I once labored, we encountered a multitude
of engineering problems associated with
our nefarious plutonium products.
on hand who could fix just about any
problem that came up, such as this one:
we needed a sharp ninety-degree bend
steel tubing, a critical item for one
of the new designs entering the engineering
phase of our lengthy, tedious operations.
wouldn't hold its shape in the bending process.
Ah, the Los Alamos Engineer cooed, I'll take
care of it, returning two years later with a fix.
get my hands on that. And he did, coming back
two months later with the right answer, twelve
times faster than the better-educated Los Alamite.
boy with a high school education but someone
who'd handled every kind of imaginable problem
on the farm. He had a solution in just two hours.
from various spawning grounds, but those floor
engineers, with a small "e," were our unsung
heroes, saving many millions of dollars for us.
donuts next day from the guys with the big "E".
It WASN'T GOING WELL
It was pretty obvious to me, even at age eight,
that it wouldn't last, their brawling advancing
to brutality, more threatening words and more
objects thrown, more appliances damaged,
a marriage between parents doomed to fail.
There were streetcars and buses, but they
didn't go far enough and looped back around
to their starting points. Airplanes and helicopters
were all in use in battles in Europe and Asia.
in my Captain Marvel outfit--faded bathing suit
and ragged towel, tied of course around my neck,
to aid me in steering a flight through uncharted
heavens to a safer place, maybe Grandma's.
story roof, looked down at the littered alley, up
at the welcoming cloud-filled skies, and jumped.
I neither screamed upon take-off or landing.
Trash haulers carried me home, flight aborted.