HIGH DUDGEON
“The Dungeness crab, Cancer magister, is a species that inhabits eelgrass beds and water bottoms on the west coast of North America.” — Wikipedia
Catching the crabs when I rendezvoused with an ex-patient that havoc-choked sophomoric freshman year at Stanford Medical School, in retrospect 1981 was a lowlife jaundiced disaster except for luck not contracting a lovely case of Kaposi’s from her gorgeous brother who landed in county jail on trumped up bathhouse morals charges which expanded in condomless state prison where he eventually got transferred to the hospital ward in the days preceding safety syringes, goggles or dental dams — afterwards other convicts also passed there from AIDS as well as innocent doctors who died before HIV was given a proper name.
Pynchonoid Riff on Cottage Industry Scams
The tony Orlando evening we’re suspended from the high Court of Honor Florida log cabin for kicking grabbing flinging kneeing straight Eagle Scouts in the groin more’n once, my cajones began to fly in the middle of wet dreams which the a**hole of a sandman egged on — then this scowling lowly youth, instead of paying off night club powder or gambling vigs past due, powered a purloined Roll Royce parked near Mama’s Oklahoma City yurt to Fairfield Iowa’s peons’ rustic huts vs Republican upscale lodges where Maharishi U’s scam happened to pretend to train levitators; but TM bilked a coupla thousand smackaroos extra I couldn’t no way come up with by hook or crook so that was that for meditation until my latest underage girlfriend (an established guru involved
in a few mass shootings), before we got hitched, insisted that the day Maharishi Yogi
dropped his bod’s flab the two of us too should revert to out-of-bungalow experiences
although after the most recent wife and I got into a family way, those previous coked noses did a solid to the wallet grindstone as both pickpocket papas kept our feet to the brimstone to pay off squalid dick debts — hallelujah the stolid stinker fathers croaked when I got to take advantage of Sacramento’s new assisted suicide law the morning Gov Jerry Brown signed it to put them or at least me out of their misery now during which Doc Kevorkian’s con flashed in my noggin how to turn a killing into prison or a good living spawning bucks like LA’s grungy head shops/ gun lobby chalets currently do shystering from Hollywood Manson McMansions to San Berdo’s Inland Regional Center bulletholes.
UNCONVICTED LOBBYISTS AND POLITICIANS HAVE ONE KIND OF REVOLVING DOOR
Boring, frustrating, crazymaking as spending about the last nine months sitting pregnant in LA commuter traffic — that’s how it feels most every day accomplishing nothing back here in Lompoc’s minimum security prison. When out on probation, can’t get dishwasher jobs since I never pass their background checks & then they must think my rehab should
not be trusted with no pots or pans.
WHAT I DIDN’T LEARN IN PRISON
A half clever internist who just cut too many corners, after doing my hard time, I took good care of my zaftig wife after big surgery. But even though what I earn as an MD is three times an RN’s salary, she was infinitely more touched by her husband’s unexpectedly kind nursing.
ANTICIPATING THANKSGIVING ROLE-PLAYING
Grandchildren and their many cousins will gather as usual. Before supper your son may master Dungeons & Dragons with the older crew while I watch some younger ones.
Two small boys build twin skyscrapers from blocks into which the multitude’s only girl flew Lego planes. Later on they’ll rebuild each tower taller than last time. Getting down to turkey, we adults can’t imagine what is occurring around the world with our Muslim kids whose fathers and brothers and uncles are snatched by extraordinary rendition then dropped in black op holes.
Gerard Sarnat’s authored four collections: HOMELESS CHRONICLES from Abraham to Burning Man (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014) and Melting The Ice King (2016). Work from Ice King was accepted by over seventy magazines, including Gargoyle and Lowestoft Chronicle and The American Journal of Poetry, and featured in Songs of Eretz, Avocet, LEVELER, tNY, StepAway, Bywords and Floor Plan. Since then new work has been featured in Dark Run and Scarlet Leaf. For Huffington Post and other reviews, reading dates, publications, interviews; visit Gerard Sarnat.com. Harvard/Stanford educated, Gerry’s been a CEO of healthcare organizations and Stanford Medical School professor. Married since 1969, he has three children and four grandkids.
Change Seven Magazine 