Saturday Poetry: This Is Where That Teacher Got Shot

Time?  I don't have any.  So, another poem from Turn Left At the Dead Dog.  It's based on the 1992 murder of a beloved Brooklyn principal, Patrick Daly, who got shot in crossfire in Red Hook.
  

This, she told me

pointing with an acrylic nail

her lucky charms colliding like teenagers in love

is where that teacher died.

Some hoodlums shooting at each other.

You know, sometimes I think I seen them

coming out of the projects

They’re the ones laughing cause they never get caught.

But God knows

God always knows.

Rest that poor man’s soul.

Annie’s wand swipes the humid air

and makes those hoodlums their bullets the projects

and that early autumn day disappear for

that poor man, rushing back to school

with treats to surprise his kids when

the crimson buzz of a lonesome mosquito

bit him like it was personal

and he went down.

Look.

Go away she means.

I wish --

oh I know it’s a sin, a mortal sin --

but, I wish that their mothers had gotten rid of them

the minute their red-headed aunt didn’t come.

This Will Be Brief ...

... because -- you know -- I've got systems of linear equations to solve.

A snapshot of my life:

1.  This is my month off as a wife.  Cuthbert is visiting the family in Ireland.  This means several things -- I have to cook for myself, I'm the head Home Skooler for Lilli, the house stays, if not immaculate, at least tidy and clean, and I don't have to use my we're-in-the-middle-of-a-firefight voice.

2.  Three times a week I meet Lilli at the bus stop and we snack, read and learn.  She is doing a traffic study.  We go to the grassy knoll and she counts cars at rush hour.  Each expedition she chooses a different color -- first day red, next time gray, and so on.  She records the day, date and time and the number of cars of a certain color that passed by in 5 minutes.  When she is done with fieldwork we'll look at the data and construct a pie chart or a bar graph.

3.  This week the daily temperatures went from the low 90's to the 70's.  I suffer from summer PTSD.  The hotter it gets the more I hate life.

4.  I am cooking.  Easy stuff that I can do.  Today, having been brave and and thawed a packet of pollock.  (What a great title -- A Packet of Pollock, A Gaggle of Geese) I'm all in for cooking.  Even found an easy recipe.  So as not to repeat the fiasco of a September past I will stay in the kitchen and study while the fish broils.  I'm slow, but I do learn.  If it's good I'll ask L&L to come over for dinner.  If not, well those goddamn feral cats that use my backyard as a litter box will get their version of The French Laundry.  Anyway, what do I care?  There's always popcorn.

5.  As Cuthbert predicted, New Haven's mayoral primary was decided along tribal lines.  Tribes of race and class.  Reminds me that this is essentially a very conservative town.  What I wouldn't give to be a NYC voter right now!  Crazy Anthony Weiner?  Bill Blasé-Former-President-of-the-NYC-Board-of-Education-Warmed-Over-Placeholder Thompson?  Bill de Blasio who's got a son who looks like what Michael Jackson should have looked like at 16?  Christine-I-Woulda-Been-A-Better-Fireman Quinn?  What's not to love about that field?!?!?!

So it's study, class, gym, home, cook, clean, iron and sleep.  A quiet life.  Ciao, bella!

Before I Return to the Salt Mines of Linear Algebra

In my Google quest for who the hell knows what I read a NYTimes article about Norman and Elsa Rush.  (I'd caught the tail end of an NPR interview with him and the hook was that he broke a promise to his wife.)  A good read; an enviable marriage.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, the mantra of all women writers:  I wish I had a wife.

And.  Too.  There's a great thumbnail description of the father-son mystery:

The youthful form that honoring took was a sort of graphomaniacal mirror image of his father’s former ambitions, actions Rush has called “filial-pietistic,” defined as “the carrying out of the perceived life-project of a dominant parent, the replication of it if the project has been successful or the completion of it if it has been thwarted.” Rush began to write “because my father didn’t or wouldn’t.” 

That (and Bill Clinton's inability to control his idiocy) was why George W. Bush was our president.  And because George W. Bush was our president, the US Congress and the public it so richly represents is throwing itself all over the floor about bombing Syria.

Ciao, ya'll. 

An Urgent Plea to All My Friends

I really hope you get this fast. I could not inform anyone about our trip, because it was impromptu. we had to be in Philippines for the Pope’s visit. The program was successful, but our journey has turned sour. we misplaced our wallet and cell phone on our way back to the hotel we lodge in after we went for sight seeing. The wallet contained all the valuables we had. Now, our passport is in custody of the hotel management pending when we make payment or solve this linear system (whichever come first):

Solve each system using matrix notation. Give each solution set in vector notation:

 x        -y       + z              = 0

            y               +w      = 0

3x      -2y     +3z     +w      = 0

- y               -w      = 0

I am sorry if i am inconveniencing you, but i have only very few people to run to now. All else have peeped my shit before when I got stranded in Nicaragua on my world tour of failed socialistic states.  i will be indeed very grateful if i can get a short term loan from you ($5,000 dollars). this will enable me sort our hotel bills and get my sorry self back home. I will really appreciate whatever you can afford in assisting me with. I promise to refund it in full as soon as soon as I return from. let me know if you can be of any assistance. Please, let me know soonest.

Thank so much.  I anxiously await your wire transfer.

Yours truly,

A Nigerian Princess