Let Us Pray
[excerpt from Mike letter, @1980]
...Yesterday, we had an incident in the building - Apartment 110 greeted the morning light with a crude visage, caked with Jimmy Dean pork sausage, with the empty patty roll on the carpet nearby. The carpet was filled in its shag with red sausage meat, and the raw same hung from the knob and the numbers and it had been used to write something unreadable across the door. And they didn't evict the person, through they say he's an S.O.B. and a speed seller and murderous pimp and deserved this.
If the neo-nazis found out about this place, they'd love it. That was sure a murder image, that red meat on the door and floor. A good man is hard to locate. But I still have love in me! For you, and Mom and Eric and Thurl and others. I even love your pets, sight unseen. I get down on my knees and kiss the little graves when they spy death.
Translate, with all your might if you would do right by the People in their Town. Walk across the little bridge, hard by the bus depot downtown and there you'll be, and go around busily sticking your work up with your name and you will be heralded and you may even find out that you are.
Here's my poem from today, which I wrote in 1987:
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THE TIME I ALMOST
Seized up from my drink
By hands on my shirtfront - what did I do?
One minute watching a book,
The next choking at the hands of an invisible mob.
Finally Superman grabs me and saves me,
Using the Heimlich maneuver to
Pop the ice cube from my epiglottis
Like a cork from some fine wine.
Turn around and it's my little brother.
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It's funny that Superman has to use the Heimlich. But what else could even he do? Reach down your effing throat and grab it out? Reach through yo chess and git it?
Yesterday, I finally sent three polished manuscripts to an agent. I accomplished my goal of polishing and rewriting and preparing four stories over the December break. On February 16, I get a grant check and I'm going to buy a computer/word processor, and get down to brass tacks. I may change my aim from journalism to history teacher, if I see I have the aptitude and depth of scholarship. My main history prof asked me to have coffee with him yesterday, and told me my questions were a fundamental addition to his courses. Yesterday I asked him if animals have ever been known to worship in any form......
Mike -
I had a little cat once who prayed for pizza. Your little brother and his friend came to the house with a pizza and spread out across the couch chowing down in front of the television. I sat in the lounge nearby, with the little cat in my lap, holding him back from fretting with their food, as was his clear intent. He MAOWED at your Eric to give over. No dice. Then he stretched his neck and MAOWED at Eric's friend, to hand over the meat. No dice. He twisted around at the waist and MAOWED frantically into my face, but I continued to restrain him. Then, he turned his face to the sky (ceiling) and MAOWED the most vehemently of all, straight up to Heaven.