The Author Consults The Killer

A — if everything I write comes true, how come God never answers my letters?

K — Which letters?

A — Here (throws him a stack of envelopes tied together with string — each one stamped “Undeliverable”)

K — (unties and sorts through the stack), hmmm, “ God/ Eternity/ Postal code unknown,” “Jahweh/ any burning bush will do,” “God/ if you’re Buddha, please reincarnate in time to receive this letter/ Nirvana,” — very inventive, nice touch including the return address (rips open an envelope) “Dear God, If you’re reading over my shoulder right now, you’re not breathing hard enough.” (crumples it up and tosses it, opens another) “When you look over my shoulder like that I want you to know that suffering up close and personal and not from the perspective of omniscience and eternity is no fucking good. I don’t like suffering and I don’t need it. And while I’m on that point — I don’t think we need cruelty to delineate beauty, love can exist without hate, and landlords suck.” (crumples it up and throws it away) — you were on a roll until that last part, kind of a letter to Santa, wouldn’t you say? “God, when I watch myself writing, looking in a mirror, I wonder is that what you see, reading over my shoulder?” (pauses, sets letter aside) that one is good, closer to the truth than you realize.
Would you like to know something? When you write stuff, any kind of stuff, if you write about something before it happens and then it happens — well, then, of course it came true.
And of course, if you write it after it happened — well, that has to be true.
But other times, what you write, maybe it is still waiting to happen, and so it’s not true.
Reason is kind of pitiful don’t you think?
Did you ever consider: What you wrote wasn’t true enough? Perhaps, if you had written accurately, with greater feeling and greater conviction, God would have got your letter, and He might have been moved to reply — in which circumstance, it would be to late to caution you — be careful what you wish for.
However, for that to occur, I doubt pen and paper would suffice.
Other than that, there is no difference between you and me — we both create/ destroy — I operate on a more mundane plane — and my messes are easier to clean up.

easy chair blues

gonna take my easy chair down by the river
stars wheel through the night
down by the water where stars multiply
rock me away from here in my easy chair
gonna rock my way through the night

‘cause the one I love is so close, but so far
the river is cold and deep and wide
and the one I love — she’s on the other side
so I’ll be here, near her all night long
rockin’ away my cares, sittin’ in my easy chair

You Got Me Going Blues (a sorta sonnet)

you got me going with that thing you do
there ain’t nothing I wouldn’t do
you say I’ve been democratically selected
I tell you I don’t need Viagra to get elected

I’ll be your fence post when you need to fence
I’ll be your shotgun for self defence
I’ll put the sugar in your soda pop
Oh please baby don’t you ever stop

I need you like my car needs the road but
the cops would give me a ticket for overload
you got me going like a house on fire
you make me whole, I’m a real live wire

you got me tingling from my head to my toes
oh tell me Mama there’s more beneath those clothes

Monkey In The Middle

Monkey in the middle
sitting in the zoo
just some bars
between me and you.

Monkey, monkey says
to me “only yesterday
I saw you swinging
through the trees.”

I said “Monkey, monkey
that wasn’t me,
higher than three feet
makes me weak at the knees.”

That monkey looks at me
says “You’d look better with a tail
but you cut it off
to make you look smart.”

I replied “Monkey
if only you went to school,
you’d know it’s evolution
that made me a fool.”

Monkey said one last time,
“Every man is meant to be free.”
I turned to answer
then I realized

the monkey is me.