Daily Archives: March 4, 2012

Hero of a Forgotten Republic

Joe Stalin he might be
Fingers drumming green felt
Calculating his next purge
Fill an other gulag
With Ukrainians
Finger tapping
Focus on the down cards
Other players
Cardboard faces
Pasteboard numbers

Shouts past me
“Double down! Double down!”
Tired first base trucker
Parlaying his bets
To survive another hand or two
In this hell-camp.

Stalin tosses three greens
Past me to the trucker
From his four inch high
Stack of blacks and greens
“Double down! Double down!”

Astonished trucker pushes back
A weathered straw hat
Gazes at the green chips
The dealer upturned six
And his own sixteen
And doubles down.

On and on
Same vein
Stalin winks at me
At second base
Throwing chips past me
The driver promptly loses
But always looks now
To see what Stalin
Thinks is best
While downstream
In third base Stalin
Plays three hands all at once
Table max 200 on each place
And wins wins wins

Speznatz tattoos
On chubby knucklebacks
Stalin and I exchange small talk
And knowing smiles
Once advised
The other side of a line
I was on this side of
Did his final tour in Afghan
Got out first chance he could
When things got shaky
And the walls went down

Now he hauls produce
From east to west coast
Always stops here in-between
Shouting orders
“Double down! Double down!”
To the bloated capitalist pigs

Grumbles price of fuel
Trainloads of Chinese goods
And tyrant highway cops.

Old Jules
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A Bit More About What’s Not Happening

First off, The Invader Cat’s not becoming a fixture around here.  It’s just hanging around getting meals and paying the fare by being bullied by chickens and the other cats.  It has a home somewhere.  I’m certain of it because sometimes it vanishes for a couple of days.

But it’s not a fixture and it’s not becoming a fixture.  Even though when I was putting the piece of the can of feed I’d saved for it down last night, it came within a couple of feet of me scratching it behind the ears.

Secondly, if you’re among those trying to figure out what’s not happening by tracking Ganymede, you’re a day late and a dollar short.  Ganymede looks great at first, but the further you hone things down the more you’ll conclude something’s missing.  I’d suggest doing some dizzying calculations correlating Ganymede positions with with the position of Mercury.  Which, if you run through enough ways of measuring where they are, will give you a lot clearer view of what’s not happening.

Thirdly, I worked a lot on the brush dams in the ruts on the road coming down here yesterday in hopes of further rainfall runoff forcing the hill to give up more of the dirt it’s been bringing down from above.  Over the years it’s gradually been filling the worst blow-out-a-tire, high-centering ruts.  Now if we can keep getting a few of these male rains I think this will finish it off. 

Which is to say, spectacular erosion won’t be happening and past erosion will have reversed itself somewhat.

Lastly, despite your hardheadedness on the issue if you’ve got any, cold weather isn’t happening.

If you’re going to be a part of what’s happening you’re going to have to switch from felt to straw.  If you try to hang on to your outdated good-times idea about felt you’re going to have sweat running down around your eyelids and getting into your ears next time you go to town.  And you won’t be happening.

Just saying.

Old Jules

Edit 8:37 am:  I neglected to mention earlier while talking about Mercury and Ganymede that Saturn seems to be happening a little bit.  Even though it’s way to hell and gone off the other side of things where you’d expect it to have to be.