My children are asking me to write something "funny." They tell me that I am too dark and
brooding and that I should lighten things up a bit. I don't know if I know how to do that.
I can be a funny person face to face but my writing has always been a way for me to let out the
monsters. I'm not sure if I'm funny or just eccentric, although they seem to derive a great deal of
pleasure from my one liners. I just don't know how to write about them.
Now, my girls, they are funny. They can make me laugh so hard it hurts. They are witty and
clever in a way I could never be. Maybe it's their youth, it's certainly not genetic. Let me put it this
way, I can see humor in many things, I can be witty and a wise ass. I just can't write humor. Comic
writers of the world have no need to fear. Here is something written a long time ago out of cynical
frustration with my allergies. Is it funny? Maybe.
Fluff
I hear the cottonwoods coming
after me.
Silent, little puffs of fluff searching
me out,
– they have no sympathy.
My eyes swell shut.
My nose closes; it is attempting
to run off my face.
I cannot swallow, cannot taste,
coughing, wheezing,
there’s lead in my veins.
A David and Goliath match if one I
have ever seen.
Goliath’s going down, again;
taken out by something so very
hard to see.
How much would the story change if
it went this way instead?
Goliath died from allergies, not a
rock to the head.
He did not see it coming; he had
closed his eyes to sneeze.
So, maybe it's cute. Let's try another.
The Cat in the Chinese Hat, and the Consequences
Came out the door, stepped out of my flat, what should I
see, but a cat,
in a Chinese hat.
I walked quickly away, trying not to look back; I really
didn’t know what to
think of that.
I moved down the street as I picked up my feet, mumbling
aloud, afraid of
what else I might see.
I thought to myself as I ambled along about other things
that could have
gone wrong.
If all you meet at the start of the day, is a cat on the
steps – probably a
stray – wearing a hat from a country far away –
Tickle his chin and rub his back, what does it matter he’s
wearing a hat?
Smile smugly as you look around your street, how lucky for you
that you both should meet.
Pray tell my friends, how many have you met, that could tell
the same tale without embellishment?
You are lucky; fate has smiled behind your back. I know few others who have met the Chinese
Hatted Cat.
So, hatted or not, give him some milk. You will probably never meet another of his
ilk.
When he leaves and goes wherever hatted cats go – you my
friend, will smile and glow –
For having met this Chinese cat, you now hold the secret to the
facts of his hat.
