No. 1234

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuUNfC3tTI8

Ohmygawd he grimacedsneered is this how this is supposed to taste

I suppose so

Tastes like assBobby like ass

Donknow  Dont taste good

A rum an Coke Canya fuckup a rum an Coke

Mebbe the rums not so good  Its a well drink man

Well  Mebbe its rum from a well wida dead rat in itJesus Christ 

Yawanme to call the bartender over

Nana  If he were a she mebbe  Lets assume this is how a rum an Coke tastes  Its for Bobby  I dont know howdahell he drank these

To Bobby

Yah  To Bobby

Bobby died of esophageal cancer at 40

he didnt smoke

he couldnt hold his liquor so he rarely drank

he knew hed die of cancer

they talked about it a little more often than he liked

he told Bobby a gypsy at a carnival said hed live well into his nineties
                                                        Im takin her at her word

Bobby was born in ’53 during the polio epidemic in Chicago

they pulled a man and a womanstrangers out of the waiting room to be his godparents

they baptised him

they administered Last Rites

they were wrong

a week ago Bobby had him come early to hospital  You want to be here before the nurses rounds he said

Whatimes that

Youre mobile You find out 

Bobby was virtually bound to his bed with all the tubes going in and out of him

Comon  Get in bed

The fuck Christmahn  How  All these tubes . .

. . Just pushem aside up against me and get in

Yahyah yah   A lot of tubes Bobby

Been a lottah tubes a long time

somehow they managed didnt pull anything outdidnt chink anything   

they laid side by side

Now wha

Now we wait

Wait

Yah

Were . .

. . Shaddup  Have I ever . .

. . Yah Yah yahave   Ya almost got our asses kicked after the Sectional game against Notre Dame 

Oh yeah  But who knew those Catholics would be such hotheads  Theyre taught to turn a cheek

Yer da Catholic  Yahd know better than me

Youre Catholic

Don mistake doin Catholic girls as being Catholic

You know their buzzwords You had your Holy Communion

I aint practicing  Too much in my life an thinking doesnt align with the Church

I believe

I believe ya believe Bobby

I believe in Life after Death

I believe you Bobby

Sssh   Shescomin

This is it

Thisisit

What are you two up to said the nurse as she approached the foot of the bed  You look as happy as clams in their shell

Good morning Vi  This is my best friend Joe  Joe  Vi  Her names Vivian

Goodmornin Vi

Joe   What you doing in Bobbys bed

He asked me to an aint a thing I wont do for Bobby

Wait for it 

Bobbys a pretty special guy

Wait for it 

Have you known each other a long time

He moved into Norwood in Fifth  Ive known him since that first day of school

That makes you two old friends

Wait 

We stood up for each others weddings

And youre here now  lying in bed with him  because he asked you to

Wait  for  it 

Yes  Aint a damn thing I wouldnt do for Bobby

Nice meeting you Joe but Im slipping a little behind in my rounds

Wait

Pleasure meeting you Vi

Vi ran the gamut of Bobbys tubes took his temperature blood pressure listened to his heartbeat checked her numbers to his chart and silently recorded themcommitting them among the many many pages

Wait 

walking to the foot of the bed readying to leave Vi stopped 

                                              Joe  Youre friend Bobby has an issue with his legs being bound under the sheet and blanket  Every night he kicks them free and every morning I have to tuck them in again

N0W 

Vi leaned down from her waist and wiggled vigorously as she pulled on them to straighten them out  she regrasped thempulled them taut tugging at them several times   and satisfied she worked bobbed as she retucked them under the mattress

Vi had a body on her  buxom  narrow waist  a real nice flare at the hips   her efforts worked at her blouse made it yawn  she jiggled

she mesmerised

then standing upAwright boys  Gotta go  she straightened out her blouse  smiled widely  Behind on my round Gotta catch up  Joe so very nice meeting you  Again tomorrow Bobby

Yah Vi they both sighed

Vi walked away not unaware they were watching

they were

her rump looked as if two puppies were under her skirt wrestling for a ball

Oh my

Yah  One of the perks of riding a hospital bed while   wait for it       vying with cancer

they heard a rimshot(or someone somewhere on the floor dropped a bedpan)

evening, Monday,  17  1. 17

1254,  Twosday,  18  7. 17

Big Head Todd and the Monsters  Bittersweet

Erykah Badu  Rimshot Intro  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UnxhKzSwrg

                               he was late in a strenuous lift when usually the blood in his ears deafened him and he couldnt hear a thing outside of his body

                                     but he snagged a bita line  not the music accompanying it  just the wordsthree words     my  first  glove

Eighteengasping    gaspinggaspingNineteen  gasp   gasping  gasp     Twenty   AahFUCK he groaned

softlydeliberately he laid the weights down  he tried yawning to clear his earsno luck the pitch of pounding blood  he looked up at the clock on the wall the hands read 1:23 (A B C as simple as do re mi one two three thats how easy love can be)whyd he look at the clock  it wasnt like a radio station spun the music live and he could call and they could check their playlist against 1:23 and tell him what he was listening toheard  heard   he didnt listen to the music played over the P A he was too busy shaking blood out of his armshis legstrying to catch his breathrecover just enough to hit the next lifta cardio rhythm he used for more than twenty years when he was able tonot physically compromisedwhen the weights were taken out of his hands

                                              but no matter the reason  he really liked that the time was one two three and he heard my first glove  it made him remember suddenlyremember his first glove a first basemans glove  long  thrashed  oiled to almost black  he could fold it in halfthere was scarcely any padding to it and if he didnt catch the hardball in its webGODdamn it hurt  many afternoons he returned home from the playground and soaked his hand in iced cold water to take the swelling down 

he didnt have a choice

his parents couldnt afford a new glove

elderly neighbors across the street and down the block who tended a fantastic rose garden in their backyard had the glove sitting in their basement  it was their sons glove  he died in World War Two  when they recognised he was a lefthanded boy like their sonthe only lefthanded boy the neighborhood had ever known prior to his family moving into a two-flat with his grandmother they shared the first floor with her  the neighbors watched him and after a time they thought he would take good care of the glove  he obviously needed one for a lefty

when the kids switched out sides those kids who had gloves let theirs to the kids who didnt  all the kids were righties  his glovehand was awkward but he made it work well enough that he was always one of the first kids chosen for a side  a bat toss  whichever captains hand covered the knob chose first      

the neighbors gave it to him through his parents

                                      they said they were sure he would love the glove love it as their son did but they couldnt bring themselves to see the joy in his face personallyitd be like seeing their little boys face  their heartsheartache hadnt mended yet   their boy was their only child  they had him late in life

he became the only neighborhood kid who didnt have to share his glove

he offered

You nuts they said Couldnt make that thing work if I tried

his was the only first basemans glove on the field but he played all the positions with it 

a glove is a glove is a glove

then he learned Ernie Banks played first for the Chicago Cubs and living in Chicago he became a Cubs fan an Ernie Banks fan and the kids teased himcalled him Ol Ern because he identified with Banks skill and enthusiasm

Hes black yaknow the kids said

I dont care he said Nobody plays the game better than him

Then youre black too they said

I dont care if hes green Nobody plays baseball like him

nobody played with his zealhis relish

                               over the ensuing summers when the boys got together to play sandlot ball
the boy who won first pick always picked Ol Ern

1236,  Saturday,  15  7. 17

1300,  Monday,  17  7. 17

Jackson 5  A B C  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho7796-au8U

he couldnt figure her out for the life of him

only occasionally did he go to the brewery for a beerit was in walking distance of his place and he knew the proprietor brewerhe ran a nice family business and made very good beer  still he had never been there when she wasnt already and apparently also a couple of beers in  saucy

she always wore a loose dark athletic shirt fronted by some inked gothic image thin strappedand always her left strap was off her shoulder the fabric toppled and slouched and crouched on top of her sizable breast(theres a difference however in sizablea difference between ample and adiposea difference between fit and unfit) 

she sat on a woodseated steelframe stool before a concrete cafe table with others holding a glass stein of beer in one hand and a smoldering cigarette in the other

                                  the filtered cigarettes sticking up between her fingers seemed to him exclamation points radically confirming his observation of adipose and unfitness

when she was younger maybe her pear-shape held some allure  it was a shape his daughter named birthing hips she had a friend who was hippy and called her Birthing Hips in close company a nickname

out of high school this girl pushed out four kids by three different guys(none a man)  her parents were now raising their grandchildren as their ownwhich served them right as he saw it  they had deliberately picked fights with him on sex education and birth-control in favor of God and abstinenceon any moral conflict that would have Faith bettering reason and intellectyeah  he hoped the four kids wouldnt be inclined as their motherbut  after all  they were her parents  you reap what you sow some saint or another must have said that  hed bet theyd know  he wasnt going to ask  he wasnt a provocateur of stature to their Holier-than-thou

maybe when she was younger  she wasnt older per se  but her pear was slipping badly

her laughter was louder than anyones  and if someone did bellowthe jokethe story too funny obviously takingsurprising the unsuspecting hearer she made it a point to outbellow them as if a competition 

her athletic shirt hung down over gold-faded-to-yellowstitched black-faded-to-gray jeans

                                                                     it was a kind of uniform

he never saw her wear anything else  but thats not to say that she didnt  he just never saw

hed be negligent if he didnt remember her black braher white flesh peering through its floral brocade upper cup

if meant to be sensual  that was lost on him

the brewery allowed dogs on the leash

she was always attended by an Australian Shepherdthe kind with different coloured eyesif that was in fact an Australian Shepherdhe didnt knowhe wasnt a dog person  and since she never called the dog by a name he didnt recognise if it was one dog or different dogskind of like black people looking the same to white people and white people looking the same to black people or Chinese or Korean or Japanese to blacks and whites and they alikeback and forth and back and forth(he could be president on that skill set alone)  but then maybe not calling the dog or dogs by name was brilliant  a dog wouldnt care  it or they stayed at her cowgirl booted heel  their workedleather leash more an ornament than a utility

                        anyway  all he had on her was cursory observations

he wasnt going to knock himself out or engage her

he accepted her as a fixture

                      she was like the stained and weathered early California Republic or 48 starred America flags that hung from wires strung between upright timbers clasped by wood clothespins before old brick walls

they were satisfying  simply by their existence

         

1725,  Thursday,  13  7. 17

1755,  Saturday,  15  7. 17