GOOD FRIDAY

GOOD FRIDAY

April 19, 2019


by Randy Smit


Always look on the bright side of life.

- Monty Python's Flying Circus



Gray skies, raindrops. Perfect.


On a cross, of course, one can

Still never be found without options.

Haven't the Masters taught us, "Despite

Whatever is happening, we always have choice."

Without a wink we can think and feel and say and pray whatever

We want. To the liberated, death is a hiccup found between

Two unending sighs of freedom. Take that


To heart and

I'll bet you soon have a list of your own

To take to your next crucifixion. Sometimes

Over the noisy din of the pounding nails or

the God blessed scoffers in my ears,

[Insert mocking those mocking here] at

times like these, like so many other journeymen healers,

I'll ask my personal care attendant to quietly unfold

The wrinkled scrap paper on which I was lucky enough

To scratch down a list of these few beauts

for those most ferocious moments, the God

damned ones, the Oh, the hell on earth of it! ones…




Emigrate.



Never leave home.



Think of what's her name… no really,

Remember that one and that other one and that other one



Recall the bile! Again and again and Vomit straight into your enemies eyes and crush the skulls of their infants – AS SOME ONCE SUGGESTED – and

Scream your fool head off for someone, for Christ sake to take you down and stop the bleeding and cover you with a blanket!

[Insert tears here.]


Be the pain. Hold its hand. Kiss its cheeks.

Serve it up a velvety bourbon at a blues bar on a lonely Friday night… Yeah, with a cigarette.



Invite it back for the holiday to meet your folks. Make it a

casserole and be sure to share plenty with the starving schmucks on either side of you.



Savor the wisdom you had the day you finally decided to

skip driving out into the cold drizzle to find the perfect $10 card

at the Family bookstore.


Make the world your family. Eat

with them, help them to the restroom, watch their kids and play

without ceasing, grab them some groceries, tell your

own dear kin we can, yes we can – and that us against the world is

against the world and that's not us, not ever.


On the cross, at the worst

Dissolve into light and fluid and feathered and holy.


Notice the perfect.

Adore the gray skies,

Love all the raindrops.

IT'S POETRY MONTH

It's time to listen to the moss in the backyard beneath the maple tree without its leaves as yet but snow flurries just yesterday two days after 60s, go figure.

We have Sonny, my favorite Labrador nephew while my brother and his kids are down with mom and dad in Florida of course where it's warm and in the 80s. But seriously I hope they have fun.

It is time to see if Michigan State can make the final four and to finally try the instant pot we opened back at Christmas, no I am not kidding. I think we're trying porkchops first.

It is indeed time to get out paper and pencil and sketch new worlds with words and phrases and sentences and paragraphs of reason and folly and feverish intensity or grotesque, minuscule preoccupation or the inane, the ever vague and vacant monosyllabic

Whah? Huh?

Who? Wha?

Huh? Whah?

And then you go eat dinner and think "Yummy, and it's poetry month!"