Lakewood Museum Of Discarded Art Spring 2024 Bird Show

 

Nobody Said It Would Be This Easy

                                Dreamers Awake, Bronze Sculpture by Tom Otterness, 1995

The man sitting on the bench looking forlorn, defeated

                                     Suddenly stood up

Crumbs from a maple nut muffin that he had eaten 10 minutes ago

                                          Fell to the ground as his unbuttoned coat curled open

He looked to his left, then to his right in one quick scan

His mouth appeared to be glued shut (tightly)

However, as if trying to prove any observers wrong, he soon opened it wide

                                           In what might have been a stifled yawn

Except for the ear-piercing scream that erupted from deep within his throat

                                      Like an angry foghorn arguing with the sea

If there had been anyone in the park that early in the morning

To hear the wailing cry of despair 

That crashed through the leafless branches of the dormant trees

                                      They might have jumped, or at least widened their eyes

Such as one does when one is startled or alarmed

                                           As it was, there were no people around at that hour

Not one ear heard him declare at the top of his lungs that life was unfair

No one heard him rail against the injustices he had been dealt

Except the disinterested birds and the unconcerned squirrels           

                                          "It shouldn't be this easy!"

Splittle flying from his lips as if to underscore the anger of his words

                                       Words that dissipated as soon as they were loosed

"How", he cried into his hands as they covered his face                       

"Could it be this easy to fall, after all the work it took to climb

As high as I did, over the backs of those who wouldn't or couldn't

                                        It shouldn't be this easy!"

But it was easy, and the ease with which he fell was so common

                                           That no one even noticed he had fallen

All of the friends he thought would catch him

Hadn't even noticed he had slipped over the edge

Until it was too late

                                                

                                  

Weary Travelers

 

Eldorado! Birthplace Of Beetle Bailey Creator Mort Walker!

   Drove through Eldorado, Kansas last month. It's one of 16 places named Eldorado in the United States, but it's the only one that can claim to being the birth place of Mort Walker, the creator of Beetle Bailey.

   I explored Eldorado fairly thoroughly - it wasn't difficult as it is a fairly small town - and was unable to locate anything that commemorated Mort having been born there. 

   Which is a shame, as Mort Walker created the very funny Beetle Bailey strip 73 years ago, and it is still being published to this day (since Mort's passing in 2018 it is being illustrated & written by three of Mort and first wife Jean's sons Brian, Greg and Neal). 

   At one time the Beetle Bailey strip was being published in over 1,800 newspapers and could boast over 200 million readers.

   That means that Mort Walker has been responsible for putting smiles on the faces of people all over the world every single day for over seven decades. The number of people who can be credited with that level of accomplishment is extremely small. 

   Like, miniscule.

   So, no memorial to Mort, but still an interesting little town. As you probably guessed, I took a few pictures.

   

Proposed Introductory Paragraph To A Biography Of Welsh Poet Tomas Prys

   Desperately climbing through the cold molasses lava flowing down a mountain of hot sake soaked mashed potatoes while disjointedly trying to remove the custom-fitted lavender and phthalocyanine blue straightjacket before the inverted 13-hour clock ticks off the final seconds remaining until the reprimanding Commander of the Duke's 15th regiment of disreputable adjutant-dragoons alerts the sleeping generalissimo's dog who would, no doubt, bring his escape to the attention of the Yeoman of the privy sanitation engineers, and that would just not be good.

   The above is, of course, a somewhat inventive description of the good man's retreat from the society of brigadoons and buccaneers and retirement with his second wife (the good woman Jane, a daughter of the Gwynns of Berth-ddu and Bodysgallen) to a life of peace and relaxation raising their ten children in an abandoned monastery.