Food Stuff Consumption And Miscellany

Sunday, July 29, 2007

lg mocha coffee
1 hash brown (net wt. 2.5 oz.)
1 sausage/egg/cheese on biscuit sandwich
pint of lager
4 pints of lager (*) diff. location
pint of lager (diff. location)
can of beer (16 fl. oz.) brown bagged
1 serving of steak with side of mashed potatoes and broccoli
slightly more than a pack of cigarettes

(*) additonal pint of lager


more poetry:


How To Paint a Perfect Christmas

Above, you paint the sky
delicate as maidenhair.
Below, pour a little darkness
heated to room temperature
or slightly more.

With a cat's claw in the dark
scratch out a little tree,
the finest tree in the world,
finer than any forester
could ever imagine.

And the tree itself
will light up
and the whole picture purr
with green joy,
with purple hope.

Right. But now you must
put under the tree
the
real big thing,
the thing you most want in the world;
the thing pop-singers
call happiness.

It's easy enough for a cat,
a cat will put a mouse there,
Colonel Blimp will line up
the largest jet-propelled halberd
which shoots and bands and salutes,
a sparrow will gather
a few stalks for its nest,
mister junior clerk will submit
a stuffed file tied with red tape,
a butterfly will put there
a new rubber peacock's eye,
but what will you put there?

You think and think
till the day grows grey,
till the river almost runs out,
till even the bulbs begin to yawn,
you think

and finally

there in the darkness you blot out
a hazy white spot,
a bit like a florin,
a bit like a ship,
a bit like a Moon,
a bit like the beautiful face
of someone (who?) else,

a hazy white spot,
perhaps more like emptiness,
like the negation of something,
like non-pain,
like non-fear,
like non-worry,

a hazy white spot,
and you go to bed
and say to yourself,
yes, now I know how to do it,
yes, now I know,
yes,
next time
I shall paint
the most perfect Christmas
that ever was.


Miroslav Holub (translated from the Czech by Ian Milner and George Theiner)