REVERSE PHONE LOOKUP

I got a call but he missed it. It was a missed call. Fortunately, the number was on my phone when I pushed the button to retrieve the missed call. The number didn't have a name with it, which means that it wasn't the number of one of my contacts. I put the phone back in his pocket.

Why didn't I hear it ring?

My phone's on vibrate. Why didn't I feel the vibration?

Is my phone on vibrate or has it been silenced? I checked. And the phone logo with two lines on each side indicating motion let him know that his phone was on vibrate.

Why didn't I feel the phone?

I was walking to work and movement of my legs might have caused vibration enough to counter the vibration of the phone, or the movement with the motion makes sensory impossible.

I continued to walk, crossing streets heading down sidewalks through neighborhoods and across the bridge the whole time wondering who it was who might have called.

Could it have been an employer? Someone to tell me they wanted to interview me? Could it be someone to tell him he had been passed up for a job he had inquired about? That's possible but didn't they leave a message, or at least I hadn't felt another vibration, an indication that a
voicemail was left by the caller, but I hadn't felt the phone ring or rather vibrate in the first place, so not feeling the phone vibrate, which it does once indicating there's a message, was more likely that feeling the phone vibrate. I pulled my phone out of the pocket a second time
to check for the logo but he didn't see it. They didn't leave a message whoever the they was.

CHOOSE YOUR BATTLES

I remember when she first understood the expression, you've got to choose your battles. Her mom said it to her talking about her little brother, who wanted to watch something on TV or eat something he probably shouldn't. Mom could've put up a fight or let him have what he wanted. She thought about that: Choose. A cute innocent smile was left: you can't have everything. You will lose something to gain. She was about to make one of these choices.

There are choices that I'll always remember making and other people making. How they've come to alter our realities. Without regret I'll look back and think that one, oh, there. When I did that or this. The battles that I chose and the ones I let work themselves out. The ones I ignored. And the ones that defeated me. The ones I won.

There are no winners in war. That's what I think when I hear someone on the radio say that we are trying to figure out a way to still win this war, a culmination of battles. When we put down our guns and finally walk away will we come out on top? Will anyone? The are those that are left. The winners are those that didn't have to see it all the way through. Those that bowed out early or were killed. Those we might consider losers.

COMPLETE THE CIRCLE

Do you have a place to recycle? she said holding up to me her paper coffee cup
complete with lid and wraparound brown corrugated sleeve.

There's a trash can behind me. I thumb over my shoulder. I'm not here to take trash
from strangers' hands and don't want them to get the idea that I am.

But it that recycling? she wants to know, waving the white cup in front of me. Really, she wants me me to take it from her. Her problem = my problem.

I don't know if you can recycle those cups (with plastic lids and shiny coated insides), I offer.

She doesn't get it. She's holding onto the cup, turning away from the black-bag lined trash, which is on the ground perpendicular to a blue bin with paper in it and a white triangular recycling logo.

I continue to see her, she's walking around with her empty coffee cup. I want to stop her and tell her to stop drinking out of paper cups or come to terms with the fact that as of consumption
waste must get thrown away in the trash and taken to the landfill. Stop feeling like just because you place trash in recycling you are doing your part to save the earth.

A piece of paper I begin to throw away reads:

A sip is a thought
not now
but one I'll think later

Right now I think whatever

I take a long drink-- many sips
which makes this worse
a more intense thought
only later
not now
now my thoughts are of you
with you,
Blue

---

Never has one beer meant more

mind set
so set
can't think
of anything
positive
so drink
makes it worse

Right now
then then
like going in reverse

A relapse
of sad thoughts and I'm caught
in my head's
Web

... into the bin

Missing year book pages

I went to afternoon kindergarten while both my parents worked. (Both still work. Times are tough; their health is good.) I lived three houses from the kindergarten but bussed from La Petite Academy, where I was dropped off by my mom in the morning, to Mitchell Elementary, where my brother was in third grade. (As of December we were both still in school.) La Petite I remember little about, but Mitchell was my primary school for the next six years. We were the Mustangs. (I've been a Mustang, a Hawk, a Truckin(?) Eagle, an Aggie, and a Viking.) My kindergarten teacher's name was Mrs. Hamilton. She had a son my age named Eugene (like the town in Oregon). On Halloween he dressed up like a robot and I was a hobo. There was a costume parade. Ernie, though, was my best friend (I was Bur) then but I have no memories of him after that year. My best friends forever would come in the following years. (I've since lost touch with most all of them.) Christine was the first girl I kissed in the back of the white La Petite bus which drove us to afternoon kindergarten from the Academy to our public schools; she went to a different school, Comanche. I never saw her again either. Or remember for sure if that was her name.

LAVA

We played lava,
a game set at the playground,
where we made the sand below us as hot as fiery lava,
and the splintery jungle gym an island of safety.

We thought it was the best game in the world because we stayed alive by
running and jumping and climbing
to different positions.

Our own little world we dreamed we'd populate.
Just us.

OPENING

When I come in in the morning
there's no one
in the room/workspace

Down the aisles
I see stacks of books
but not a soul

looking at their spines/faced-out covers

Instead, it's just me and these
authors,

some of whom don't belong here
some of whom
should be in other rooms/sections of this bookstore

I search them out, these misshelved artists
hold them in my arms to place them into the resort bin, a box made of wood

eventually, someone on this low-staff day will come and collect them

put them on a cart and cart them away
to their proper place

OUR UNIVERSAL REMOTE

When the universal remote's batteries died the codes must have gotten erased, that or when we moved because when we tried to use it in our new house after the batteries were replaced it didn't seem to work on either the TV or the DVD player and for months we had to stand up off the couch and depress buttons on top of the TV or on the face of the DVD player to get to the channel we desired or the scene or right episode, depending on whether it was a movie or a season of a particular show, which isn't as easy as it sounds because on certain DVD menus you have to move a cursor, which our particular DVD player doesn't have, and, therefore, we had to learn and try to execute a strange combination (similar to, referred to, even, as that of the once-famous (still?) hundred-lives code on CONTRA for the NES) of buttons including but not limited to: Play, Stop, Power, Power, Play, Stop, Play, Play, Play, until finally--and only if it worked--we could get to the particular scene or start of movie/episode we desired to view at the time we wanted to watch it, but what also was happening with the TV that we possess was that a menu which includes visual brightness/contrast but also closed captioning and language options as well s channel auto-programming would come up and could only be exited from if you pressed both greater than and lesser than volume buttons at the same time, but even that didn't always work and often--almost always--you could only go up with the channel dial(?) rather than up and down, which is preferred if you have a handful of channels and can't decide on which is airing the least objectionable program, so watching TV, which if you ask me is frustrating enough, became an undesirable past time even though it's supposed to be a leisurely activity(?) and is despite a recent Times article which reported that watching TV can make you sad, which according to me can be but that depends on the program because a show can also make you angry or smarter; it can make you laugh, and it can even make you share a good laugh with others if they are there with you, watching the same TV, further it can make you share a laugh much later (which can be a more satisfying laugh) with another if they watched it or were watching when it was on and are, say, at the water cooler at the same time you are at your place of business or wherever you find water coolers these days to gather around and talk about TV programs, but I digress from the universal remote's dead batteries, which, if you'll let me continue, we replaced but as I said the codes didn't work until my beautiful and talented girlfriend asked if we replaced batteries with dead batteries, which sounded offensive but proved to be true: they did not work, and then when she replaced them before looking up the remote and the TV and DVD player brands on the Internet and also the brand of the remote and re-programmed the universal remote successfully: first the TV--on, off; channel: up, down; then the DVD player: power on, power off, which we celebrated together by hugging one another, and is great for we'll have good fun with all three brand-differently-named appliances until February 17th, when television as we know it will go from digital to analog, which is supposed to improve our lives along with our reception if in fact one has a digital TV, is a subscribert to cable TV, or has in one's possession a digital converter box, which my household has none of and refuses to get, so we'll be without those channels and those programs that we could otherwise flip to and fro with the universal remote that now works again in this new year on both the TV, and did I mention DVD player? which will not be affected by the digital revolution, so if we want we could watch a DVD like Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, which we did this afternoon on our TV using the TV and DVD player successfully without a remote and with minimal problems.

NEW POST

At the bar drinking whiskey wondering.
What's this. It's new. And neat.
Beer back.
Now, this.
So what.
Drink. And wonder.
Why.
Sitting.
Standing. Outside.
Home, I wonder. Sure.
What.
Gotta leave. Where. Home.
Pipe. Try.
Light.
Puff.
Then. Puff more.
So.
Again.
Then. More.
Again.
Light.
Breathe.
Done.
Up.
Stairs.
Sleep.
Try.
Wonder.
How

PIPE CLUB

First rule of Pipe Club: Get a pipe.
Smoke your pipe.
Use matches.
See if anyone else has a pipe and wants to smoke pipes with you.
Try and get together every now and again and smoke pipes, each of you.
Trade stories, tobacco flavors, pipe cleaners.
Smoke outside, it's best.
Don't share your pipe, make it your personal pipe.
No girls allowed. They don't like pipes.
Have pipe club by yourself, that's okay.
Let smoke linger in your mouth.
Blow it out.
Puff on your pipe.