Joe Mathlete Improves Famous Poetry

This Is Just to Say
(William Carlos Williams)

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so yummy
Mmm-mmm yummy plums

A Dream Deferred
(Langston Hughes)

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun? Yuck!
Or fester like a sore--
And then run? Double yuck!
Does it stink like rotten meat? Yuck City USA!!!
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet? NOW we're talking!

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

I hope it crusts and sugars over like a syrupy sweet.

The Road Not Taken
(Robert Frost)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And a grizzly bear ate me.

Haiku Corner

"Untitled Haiku For Grandchildren"

As you are right now
So too was I, long ago
Still, please hush up now


"Untitled Haiku For Grandchildren no. 2"

Stop picking your nose
There are no more boogers there
What is wrong with you


"Untitled Haiku For Grandchildren no. 3"

When I was your age
I wasn't such an asshole
Sure, go tell your mom

The Grone Protocol: The Alabaster Mask of Iniquity, Chapter 008

Like most of you, I am a popular writer of highbrow thrillers and suspense novels in my spare time. For your entertainment and erudition (both of which I care about so much it gives me night terrors), I will be serializing my latest work, THE GRONE PROTOCOL, here in my “blog” (short for “web blog”) every "week" (seems more like bi-monthly now, but whatever). Here’s the eighth chapter, which should more than fill your daily quota of gripping intrigue. If not, just google "gripping intrigue" and leave me alone.

008

Chi Chi Caraniveggilio stepped out onto the balcony like a butterfly fart. As the party carried on inside the living room, she sighed and lit a tampon from her purse, believing it to be a cigar. After putting out the tampon and realizing she had left her cigars on the coffee table, she sighed again, twice. "Mama Mia," she thought. "I've really burned the spaghetti this time."

Chi Chi was an Italian, from Italy, and she liked to smoke cigars. She had been a world-famous local celebrity in her hometown of Genoa, the host of the gourmet cooking show "La Camera Squisita Grande di Come Circa Lascili Mangiano un Certo Molto Buon Alimento Oggi che Caratterizza il Vostro Chi Chi Ospite" ("The Big Delicious House of How About Let's Eat Some Very Good Food Today Featuring Your Host Chi Chi"), a program whose revolutionary approach to microwaving and ludicrously cumbersome title made her an international superstar in Genoa and its surrounding villages. Chi Chi relished her fame, but she gave it all up to come to America, where she lived a life of quiet, cigar-filled anonymity.

Chi Chi loved her life in the States, and loved regaling her new American friends and acquaintances with tales of microwaving damn near everything she felt like. But Chi Chi had a secret. A secret that she was totally never ever going to tell anybody in a million billion years, even her Mom or her very best friend in the world or postsecret.com. A secret that, if revealed, would no longer be a secret.

As she walked back into her neighbor's nephew's bar mitzvah to retrieve her cigar bag, she paused. A thought crept into her head: "Provengo da un paese differente che sono dentro ora ed ancora penso occasionalmente in lingua della mia nazione precedente," which means something in Italian. If she was from the future instead of Italy, she would know that no matter how untranslated her thoughts were, they weren't untranslated enough to prevent what was about to happen.

Five specific things I remember about five Kurt Vonnegut books I don't really remember

Kurt Vonnegut (totally RIP) has been my favorite author since I became a teenager. With the exception of Happy Birthday Wanda June, a copy of which I was never able to find (granted, I didn't look too hard, but regardless), I exhausted his canon before turning 18. It wasn't so much that I was a tremendous reader back then; I didn't read nearly as much by any other author, and to tell you the truth only finished one single book I was assigned by a high school English class (two if you count Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House, but I'd read it years before so I don't. The other was a book about boxing in South Africa, and it was awesome and had badass fight scenes so I stuck it out). Basically I was just a really big Kurt Vonnegut fan, and after I finished one of his novels I tended to want more.

I recently reread my copy of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, one of the first books of his I ever read, and was surprised as hell that I remembered so little about it. Granted, it has been close to a decade, but I realized soon after beginning it that I didn't have a clue as to how it ended, and save for a few choice bits there were large chunks throughout that were almost entirely foreign to me... It was sorta weird.

I thought about it some more, and it turns out that there are a number of other books I've done an even worse job at retaining details about than that one. Here are five Kurt Vonnegut books that I read and enjoyed years ago, and the only things that I can really remember about them today.

Deadeye Dick: Somewhere at the end, someone tells the main character (Deadeye Dick, I guess) that the Ku Klux Klan is secretly in charge of the United States, and cultivates their image as powerless nutjob extremists so that nobody will suspect them of anything.

Hocus Pocus: Someone's mother, who has some sort of brain disease or illness or something where she's kind of dim, calls a fish "humongous," and this choice of words is remarked upon as unusual. Influenced my frequent use of this word to this day.

Sirens of Titan: There are some statues on a desert island on one of Saturn's moons (Titan). No idea what they were doing there.

Player Piano: A woman gets caught on a future train for many days because she misses her stop and it won't let her off because of dystopian efficiency.

Galopagos: People turn into seals because the world ends. There is a little computer that quotes poetry. (this is actually all I really understood about this book, possibly my first encounter with Vonnegut, when I initially read it)

I've got a lot of re-reading to do.

The Grone Protocol: N Is For Murder, Chapter 007

Like most of you, I am a popular writer of highbrow thrillers and suspense novels in my spare time. For your entertainment and erudition (both of which I care about so much it stings), I will be serializing my latest work, THE GRONE PROTOCOL, here in my “blog” (short for “web blog”) every week (unless I forget or something like last week). Here’s the seventh chapter, which should more than fill your daily quota of gripping intrigue. If not, well boy howdy... I'm fresh out of ideas.

007

Fender Davenport was a man at the end of his rope. It was not a very long rope, nor was it extremely thick. He had been at the end of it for a long time, longer than he would have liked to admit. And there was no other rope anywhere in sight that he could transfer to. It was a blue rope. Navy blue. A man's blue. Fender Davenport was a man. A man's man. At the end of his rope. A man's man's rope. Man man rope ropey rope man rope ram mope.

For seventeen years, Fender had served as Executive Administrative Executive for Vermillion and Felch, the largest ad agency in the contiguous 48 states (there was a larger firm in Hawaii, and seven even larger than that in Alaska) and a subsidiary of the Grone Corporation. He had overseen dozens of ad campaigns in his time, including Nike's "We Make You Run Good" TV spots, Arby's "Forty Pounds Of Undigestable Roast Beef In Your Colon = Sexy Town" radio promos, and Coca-Cola's award-winning "Fuck Pepsi To Hell" billboards. In later years, he even picked up a few government contracts, not the least of which was the Food and Drug Administration's "Got Food and Drugs?" campaign.

With a list of achievements longer than the rope at the end of which he was, Fender Davenport should have been on Cloud Nine, snorting blow off an angel's titties. Instead, he was at the end of his rope. Still, no matter how at the end of his rope Fender was, he didn't have a snowball's chance in a fat guy's pants to predict, let alone prevent, what was about to happen.

The Grone Protocol: Remembrance’s Deceptitude, Chapter 006

Like most of you, I am a popular writer of highbrow thrillers and suspense novels in my spare time. For your entertainment and erudition (both of which I care about so much it hurts), I will be serializing my latest work, THE GRONE PROTOCOL, here in my “blog” (short for “web blog”) every week (unless I forget or something like last week). Here’s the sixth chapter, which should more than fill your daily quota of gripping intrigue. If not, go down to the library and start yelling “MYSTERY BOOK MYSTERY BOOK I WANT A MYSTERY BOOK!!!” until somebody helps you.

006

Sassafras Jones had been through plenty of troubles in her time, but she had also had her fair share of worries.

She fancied herself happy in her position at the Grone Corporation, doing office type things in an office amongst office people, but she found her thoughts often returning to her childhood. The youngest of three children in her family, she was also the eldest of six others, ranking third out of eight total. She loved each and every one of her brothers and sisters more than anything in the world, though she often entertained the notion that they were all robots, part of some sort of grand psychological experiment devised by her parents, the government, or worse. Lately she had been able to convince herself that this was, all things considered, fairly unlikely.

Sassafras opened the door to the seventy-second floor's supply room gingerly, touching the doorknob the way you'd touch your grandfather while bathing him. She opened the door as quietly as she could, hoping that whoever might be inside wouldn't hear. Three weeks ago, she had accidentally walked in on one of the secretaries going down on the mail boy, and she was hoping to witness something similar. Alas, as she peeked around the door her eyes fell upon an empty room. Putting her camera away, Sassafras cursed to herself under her breath. "If I want to run a famous porn website," she thought, "I'm going to have to actually pay people to have sex and let me photograph them."

As she filled a plastic bag with chicken feed, she felt a strange longing in her heart. Before she began working for Grone, she had been a champion jockey, but it had been years since she had so much as stepped in horse poopoo. She missed the thrill of the race, the roar of the crowd, the friction between the saddle and her ladyparts, but she knew that it was a world she could never return to. However, she would always, in her heart, be a good horse riding person.

Still, no matter how well she could sit on a horse that was running, in the end it would not be able to save her from what was about to happen.

The Grone Protocol: Portrait of a Catastrophe, Chapter 005

Like most of you, I am a popular writer of highbrow thrillers and suspense novels in my spare time. For your entertainment and erudition (both of which I care about deeply), I will be serializing my latest work, THE GRONE PROTOCOL, here in my “blog” (short for “web blog”) every weekend (unless I forget or don’t feel like it or die or something). Here’s the fifth chapter, which should more than fill your daily quota of gripping intrigue. If not, go down to Barnes and Borders and ask see if they have any mystery/thrillers about secret religious orders and Renaissance paintings. No, really, do that... I honestly wonder how they'd react.

005

Chester Brombleshire watched Barry Peterson wait for the elevator on one of the many video monitors that made up the southwest wall of his study. Sipping a glass of vintage Pagalougelli Zinitininni, he chuckled softly to himself. Though he had no awareness of it, Barry Peterson was nothing but a pawn in Chester’s nefarious game of checkers.

Standing at just under four feet, Chester had built his vast fortune on the backs of men like Barry. Not one to get his wee little itty bitty hands dirty, he instead chose to manipulate those whose intelligence he considered beneath his own. Which was pretty much everybody, as Chester was hella smart. He had been the first in his class at prestigious Yole University, though in truth that was due to the fact that the class rankings were based on height. Still, Chester’s intelligence was nothing to sneeze at. So if you did sneeze at it, it’d be like, wow, you’re sneezing at absolutely nothing. Way to waste a perfectly good sneeze, jackass.

Chester prided himself upon his intellect. In 1990 he was featured in a list of the World’s Smartest Shortest Listmakers by List Magazine (“Listing the lists of our lives since 1989”), and he turned now to the framed copy of the issue’s cover on his wall. He himself was not on the cover (which instead featured platinum recording artists Jesus Jones, and the tagline “Can Jesus Jones save rock and roll?”), and as Chester gazed up at the harbingers of guitar-based music’s once-and-future salvation he wished to himself for the thousandth time that he had instead framed the article that mentioned him, or at least saved the inside part of the magazine. He shook his head, clearing his mind of unimportant thoughts and the soaring chorus of “Right Here Right Now.” “Such things are in the past, Chestie... When the world sees what I’ve got in store for them, Jesus Jones will be the last thing on anyone’s mind.”

However, Chester would soon find that his elaborate plans would crumble like a house of cards on a table that somebody kind of jiggled a little bit. Intelligence and mastermindery can only stave off the inevitable for so long, and in the end, his formidable brainpower would not be nearly enough to stop what was about to happen.

The Grone Protocol: Armageddon's Deneumont, Chapter 004

Like most of you, I am a popular writer of highbrow thrillers and suspense novels in my spare time. For your literary enrichment, I will be serializing my latest work, THE GRONE PROTOCOL, here in my “blog” (short for “web blog”) every weekend (unless I forget or don’t feel like it or die something). Here’s the fourth chapter, which should fill your daily quota of gripping intrigue. If not, mosey on down to your local Book Hut; I hear Stephen King shit out four or five new books this week.

004

Barry Peterson walked through the lobby like he was holding a pickle between his buttcheeks that he would have to eat if it fell on the floor. He was wearing a shirt, pants, and shoes, just like his favorite actor Ray Romano, who often wore shirt, pants, and shoes on his television program. Standing just over six feet tall with blue eyes, wavy blonde hair, and one of those chins that looks like a butt, he was a very handsome specimen of a man. According to a lot of ladies and stuff, I mean... I don't really, y'know, notice stuff like that about dudes. Anyway, chicks seem to dig him.

Barry fingered the manila envelope he was carrying. Inside was but a single piece of paper, emblazoned at the top with the Grone Corporation's logo, an egg with human features eating an ice cream cone and riding a wooly mammoth. It was an extremely important piece of paper, one that Barry knew he could not let fall into the wrong hands. It wasn't so much the piece of paper that was important, but what was printed on it. Sometimes Barry wished he could just throw the paper away, but he knew better than to waste such a valuable commodity, no matter how potentially dangerous it might be.

Little did Barry know that at that very moment, on the other side of the Atlantic, a little man in a flower costume was building a dinosaur out of paperclips.

Barry walked up to the elevator and pressed the little triangle that means "up." As he waited for the metal doors to part, he had the sense that someone was watching him. He kept looking at the elevator, pretending nothing was amiss, but the feeling that he was being stared at persisted. "Be cool, man," he thought to himself. "Nobody here suspects a thing. There's nothing to worry about."

Little did he know how wrong he was. There was plenty to worry about. Tons of stuff. So much stuff that if you were given a list of the things there were to worry about, you wouldn't know what to worry about first, so you'd just start worrying about different things at random.

As hard as Barry was trying not to worry, he found himself worrying anyway, worrying away like a worry bee. Still, no matter how bee-like his worrying was, it wouldn't do a damn thing to stop what was about to happen.

The Grone Protocol: Confrontation at the Gates of Conflict, Chapter 003

Like most of you, I am a popular writer of highbrow thrillers and suspense novels in my spare time. Beginning today, I will be serializing my latest work, THE GRONE PROTOCOL, here in my “blog” (short for “web blog”) every weekend (unless I forget or don’t feel like it or die something). Here’s the third chapter, which should fill your daily quota of gripping intrigue. If not, go visit your grandma and steal a book from her; I hear that Sue Grafton is almost done cycling through the alphabet.

003

Jameson P. Greeley sipped his glass of milk through a straw, savoring each drop like a kitten would vodka, if the kitten were an alcoholic and/or Russian. Greeley took twenty-minute milk breaks thrice a day, regardless of how much work there was to be done. He drank only whole milk; he was fond of saying that he would rather drink his grandfather's shit than 2%. He had considered copyrighting that phrase and selling it to the Whole Milk Advocacy Council, but discovered after some research that such an organization did not exist.

As soon as he finished his last sip, his watch beeped, letting him know that it was time to get back to his duties. He put back on his manager hat, fastening the chinstrap with a satisfying click. The hat was cumbersome and hurt his neck, but he knew it inspired respect in his employees. A manager without respect is as useless as a male prostitute with his butthole sewn shut, he thought. He paused, then fished a pen out of his drawer and wrote down what he had just thought of. He chuckled to himself, picturing the admiration he would win from his fellow managers at the next Grone Corporation Strategy Fiesta Weekend. He would have to get some motivational t-shirts made.

Little did Greeley know that he would never be attending another Grone Corporation Strategy Fiesta Weekend. A day of reckoning was fast approaching, and no matter how big his manager hat was, it would not be able to stave off what was about to happen.

The Grone Protocol: Betrayal's Serendipitous Tentacles, Chapter 002

Like most of you, I am a popular writer of highbrow thrillers and suspense novels in my spare time. Beginning today, I will be serializing my latest work, THE GRONE PROTOCOL, here in my “blog” (short for “web blog”) every weekend (unless I forget or don’t feel like it or die something). Here’s the second chapter, which should fill your daily quota of gripping intrigue. If not, head down to your local drugstore; chances are they have the new John Grisham book near the checkout aisle.

002

Sassafras Jones considered herself a happy person, but she had seen her share of hardships. Her mother raised her on her own after her father’s death in a boating accident that occurred when Sassafras was two years old. She had also lost her sense of smell in a separate boating accident several years later. Still, she did her best to keep her chin up. “Whining is for whiners, and the only thing worse than a whiner is a group consisting of two or more whiners,” her mother used to tell her.

Sassafras normally started off her day with six fried eggs and a cup of instant coffee with some cocoa mixed in. She didn’t like the taste of coffee, but each day she found herself needing her morning caffeine fix more and more. The cocoa helped mask the flavor. It also reminded her of her childhood, but not the sad parts or the parts involving boats.

However, Sassafras had slept through her alarm this morning and had to skip her morning routine in order to arrive at work on time. As hungry and groggy as Sassafras was, she was thankful that she made it to work without being late. The Grone Corporation did not tolerate such things, and coming into the office after seven AM would result in a Level Forty-Three demerit and a stern talking-to from Mr. Greeley, her immediate superior. Sassafras had only been late a handful of times during her employment at Grone, but she was determined never to let it happen again. “Punctuality is a virtue above all others; tardiness, however, is a sign of weak and feebleminded dumbfucklery,” Mr. Greeley told his employees several times a day over the seventy-second floor's public address system.

Sassafras had no idea yet, but soon hunger would be the least of her concerns. Today was the seventeenth of August; exactly twenty years had passed since that fateful night in Brussels. Twenty years is a long time to hold onto a memory, but as Sassafras would soon find out, some are unable to forget the past. Nothing she could do now could prevent what was about to happen.

The Grone Protocol: A Rendezvous With Cataclysm, Chapter 001

Like most of you, I am a popular writer of highbrow thrillers and suspense novels in my spare time. Beginning today, I will be serializing my latest work, THE GRONE PROTOCOL, here in my “blog” (short for “web blog”) every weekend (unless I forget or don’t feel like it or die something). Here’s the first chapter, which should get you as entrenched in the gripping, edge-of-your-pants plot as possible. If not, feel free to go down to the grocery store and pick up the latest James Patterson novel.

001

Barry Peterson stepped out of the sleek yellow Porsche Boxster into the harsh glare of the midday sun. He thanked his grandmother for the ride, promising to mow the lawn that weekend. Barry smiled as she drove off, squinting up at the skyscraper towering above him. A flood of memories flooded his mind like a flood: has it really been that long?

Barry suddenly found himself overwhelmed by a misspent lifetime’s worth of fragmented details and shadowy regrets: places he couldn’t name, faces he couldn’t place, names he couldn’t face, faces he couldn’t name, places he couldn’t place, fames he couldn’t plame. His destination was the seventy-second floor, the floor occupied by the Grone Corporation’s copyrighting department. She was there, completely unaware that Barry was even in the same hemisphere as her.

Sassafras Jones had worked for Grone for almost a decade now, toiling away with little chance of promotion in a bureaucratic nightmare of an office and a soda machine that only carried Pepsi and Diet Pepsi. She had known Barry since they were both children; their families had been close friends, and they had shared many summers playing cowboys and lawyers on the Jones' ranch. But that was long ago; Sassafras now found herself navigating a world of corporate snakes, sharks, charlatans, shitmongers and shenaniganslingers on a daily basis, with only her wits and a bachelor's degree in Applied Theology for protection.

Barry smiled as he made his way to the main entrance. It was a peculiar smile, the smile of someone about to fart in the bathtub, secure in the knowledge that no one would ever know. All the bachelor's degrees in Applied Theology in the Western hemisphere wouldn't save her from what was about to happen.