Sunny

Sunny thought that he was the Birdman
of Alcatraz
but it was only five months in the county slammer

The day that his girlfriend, Miss Sunshine, came to retrieve him
from his dank cell
was dark and gloomy
but their two children, the girl, “Bright,”
and the boy, “Glare,”
lit up the back seat of their battered old Cadillac
so intensely that that they blinded three other drivers,
(one who’d been drawn to them like a moth and was tail-gating)
and caused three serious accidents.

Miss Sunshine had left their adult child,
“Solar Eclipse” at home,
where he was working on his private research project,
critiquing local meth dealers’ product

He thought that his father, Sunny, was a “lame-o,”
and wasn’t looking forward to seeing him rejoin them
in their dilapidated abode.

While in lock-up, Sunny had been making plans to do some renovations,
but lacked the funds.
He was hoping that his kids would get jobs.
Bright, he thought, would make a good counter girl at the local Dairy Queen,
which was only two blocks away.
She was so cute, he thought, that she would attract new customers
who would want to lick her body but,
in an American adaptation,
would settle for soft-serve

Glare, he thought, would make a good construction worker,
though his arms and legs were painfully thin.
In fact, Bright and her girlfriends, even the skinniest one,
whose hair was green and purple,
beat Glare in arm-wrestling contests
whenever he challenged them

Though Glare was regularly humiliated in this way,
he didn’t mind, because it gave him the opportunity
to hold hands with sexy girls,
who otherwise would refuse to have him touch them.
Still, Sunny’s idealizations of Glare had him swinging a hammer.

Sunny wanted his house, which was a wreck, to get unwrecked
so when he died, he could leave it to his kids
and feel that he had done something in life.

Sunny was in poor health and his stints in dank jails
weren’t doing him any good.
He’d never been to a doctor in his life (though toothaches had driven him
to a couple of tooth yankers), so, though he had no official data to support his belief,
he felt he was likely to depart this world at any time,
hopefully without much pain.

Then his kids could sit in their bedrooms,
lacking lamps and not needing them,
their own self-generated light strong enough to peel paint from the walls,
and they would realize that Sunny was a much better dad than they
had ever given him credit for.

Japanese Beetles

Japanese Beetles, I capture them
and, though the Buddha warned me not to,
I put them into a killing jar

This plastic “jar” once held pretzel nuggets filled with peanut butter,
part of my wife’s efforts to sabotage her weight loss regimen
and mine

Once the pretzels were eaten,
their caloric content assimilated into our flesh,
I repurposed their container.
I filled it quarter-full of water
and added a little Dawn
When I drop in the Japanese Beetles, they are helpless—
they cannot get away
and, silently, they die
I wonder if they have the capability to feel fear or regret

I kill them because they molest my beloved Virginia Creeper vines,
condemning the leaves to ragged lace

The beetles are not “fit”—
they lack survival skills
To capture them, I only need to hold the open container
under the leaf on which they sit
and tap the leaf or gently shake it
and the beetles tumble into the soapy water

When I do my killing rounds, many of them are in the process of mating
and I find it poignant that while engaged in procreation
they meet their doom, tumbling together into the jar
Do they feel love, attachment, excitement, jealousy? I doubt it
Still, the Buddha told me not to kill any sentient beings
A few of them cling to the leaves, resisting capture
(The Buddha said:
Nothing is to be clung to as
I, Me, or Mine)

but my will is greater than theirs
my power is greater
I am Vladimir Putin considering the Ukrainians
but unlike Putin
I have not suffered major set-backs in my campaign
and, for the sake of my project,
I have not sacrificed 70,000 of my countrymen

Toward the end of their season, a few of the beetles fly away at my approach—
has it taken all these weeks for them to figure out
that they can take advantage of their power of flight?
It doesn’t matter–if I don’t capture them today, I’ll get them tomorrow.

The Buddha told me not to kill, so I feel some remorse
Is the aesthetic pleasure I get from the vines
more important than the beetles’ lives?

(By the way,
Japanese beetles are beautiful,
their bodies concise
their wings shining with pretty colour)

The Buddha observes my activities
and frowns

Bad Dreams

Martin Luther dreamed Protestantism
every man his own priest
communing with God and Jesus in exactly the way
that suited him

There was no way Luther could view
the Deep Future
and see a huge new country filled with idiots
who call themselves “Christians”
but committed genocide on the Great Spirit’s
sons and daughters
and enslaved dark folk seized from lush jungles
and mistreated them mercilessly,
who waged war on innocents abroad
and exploited whomever they could
while praising Jesus
but worshiping money, guns, drugs, celebrity, entertainment and possessions

Then MLK Jr.
idealism coursing through his blood
mercy permeating his flesh
ensconced before a congregation
of the descendants of slaves
had a dream
a deep dream
in which love permeated the souls of persons
and they were judged by their characters
and not by trivialities
like the colour of their skins

but there was no way he could see
into the Shallow Future
where his dream would be corrupted

I had my own dream
a hollow one
in which I was a famous writer
respected and revered for stripping down
human life to its essentials

but my hands were manacled by a Chinese finger puzzle
in which the more I pulled with one hand
the more I reinforced my feelings
of worthlessness
that enslaved my other hand
There was no way I could see into the future
to understand that even if my dreams were realized
I would feel no better about myself than
if I had failed
In fact, I would likely feel worse
like David Foster Wallace
whose acclaim only made him feel more of an imposter
until he killed himself
while still in his forties
(his wife found his body hanging)

So there sat Luther, Luther King,
and the arch-villain Lex Luther who lived inside me
all of our dreams broken, curdled or abandoned.

Catholic priests sitting in their confessional boxes still rule the world
justice cannot be achieved
and language is a poor substitute for Life

I sit at the edge of a vast field of grass
Interspersed heavily with clover
and at the other edge of the field
the surface of the vast inland sea
known as Lake Superior
sits silently
waveless

My mind is blank
thoughtless, mindful
also at peace
though not nearly as fluid as the lake
because, after all,
I am only human

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over fourteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, is based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. His new poetry collection was published in 2019, The Arrest of Mr Kissy Face. He lives in Denver, Colorado, USA.

You can find more of Mitch’s work here on Ink Pantry.