It must be the old hippie in me: camouflaged in a sports jacket and whistling a show tune, when I’d walk past beat cops, carrying a lid to a friend’s party.
But entering our favorite breakfast place, and seeing three cops forking in eggs and laughing at a story one of them has just told,
the old fear bubbles up, and I’m holding an ounce of Panama Red, or that crumbly Lebanese hash I loved, the aroma beckoning like the arms of a belly dancer.
I can’t stop glancing over, fixated on the nights I prayed their brothers wouldn’t suspect I was high as the pigeons roosting on the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge.
“What’s wrong?” Beth’s forehead creases concern over her menu. And as quick as I got stuck in that time loop, I snap out of it: old enough to see the police as allies, and anyway, they’re decades and decades younger than me.
Robert Cooperman’s latest collection is THE GHOSTS AND BONES OF TROY (Aldrich Press), which posits what if Odysseus came home at last, but with a horrific case of what we’d call PTSD.
Cheery-eyed jackdaws screech The testament of change. Mother Nature, like a dominating madam, Clad in tight leather and chain, Cracks her whip bringing the seasons To heel in submission. Spent summer yields to The fickle days of autumn. Forests burst into a splendor of color Only to taunt us by slipping into A dismal, bleak world reminisant of A sick mind and severed ear.
On impulse, I dive headlong into a pile of leaves. Laughing and thrashing about, I am shocked back to reality when Beaten with rakes by angry yard workers. I had forgotten the second rule of leaf diving: Thou shalt not dive ‘uninvited’ Into the leaf piles of strangers. The first rule, I learned the hard way: Thou shalt not dive into piles of burning leaves.
Damn you, Proserpina! Could you NOT, at lest, TRY The seedless grapes!
As I stomp on pomegranate after pomegranate, With the on-looking super market night manager Fumbling with his phone….calling God knows who. I realize that it is all Pluto’s fault And swear to kick his ass. Mickey’s and Donald’s too, if need be.
Autumn…such a difficult time. But, soon winter will follow. Full of tomfoolery and too excited to wait for snow, I pull off one of my shoes. Pretending it a snowball, I throw it… Knocking the hat off a policeman. He is not amused, But gives me a ride in his squad car anyway.
Daniel S. Irwin was born, raised, and is back in town at Sparta, Illinois. His card reads: Artist, Actor, Writer, Soldier, Scholar, Priest. He has won awards for his art, acting (over 100 films and 30+ stage productions), writing (nine books and work published in over one hundred magazines and journals world-wide), retired military (Air Force and Army), graduate of Southern Illinois University/Carbondale and has attended four other universities), and is an ordained Dudeist priest with a Ph.D. in Divinity (not bad for a heathen). Once worked as a medic in an institution for the criminally insane…but didn’t notice anything strange about the inmates. Latest on-line work can be found on Horror, Sleaze, Trash Magazine and Beatnik Cowboy. He would love to move back to Europe but fears the plague.
