May 8: Dinner with my Wife, Pablo Neruda, "Your Feet"

I am going to dinner with my wife in a few minutes.  One of our favorite local restaurants where they have garlic bread that drips with butter and stuffed shells that would make Jesus weep.

I don't tell my wife I love her often enough.  Most days, the only conversations we have are right before we fall asleep in bed.  We see each other in the morning for a few minutes and for a couple of hours at night, when we're both too exhausted to carry on any meaningful discourse.

So, tonight, we will talk.  Eat.  Laugh.

Saint Marty is ordering the tortellini.

Your Feet

by:  Pablo Neruda

When I cannot look at your face
I look at your feet.
Your feet of arched bone,
your hard little feet.
I know that they support you,
and that your sweet weight
rises upon them.
Your waist and your breasts,
the doubled purple
of your nipples,
the sockets of your eyes
that have just flown away,
your wide fruit mouth,
your red tresses,
my little tower.
But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.

I may have a gin and tonic, too

July 25: Heat of the Day, Italian for Dinner, Drunken Fairy Tale

After the heat of the day, the evening came as a welcome relief to all.  The Ferris wheel was lighted now.  It went round and round in the sky and seemed twice as high as by day.  There were lights on the midway, and you could hear the crackle of the gambling machines and the music of the merry-go-round and the voice of the man in the booth calling numbers.

After the heat of today, the evening wasn't that much of a relief.  I had quite a bit to do after I left work.  In fact, I just got home a little while ago.  My wife and I had to drop a friend's car off at the airport, and then we went out for dinner at a local Italian restaurant.  Garlic bread, soaked in butter.  Tortellini with parmesan and basil.  And an apple martini that was so strong I now feel as though I'm on a Ferris wheel.

I'm really glad it's Friday.  I'm glad my daughter is coming home tomorrow from Bible camp.  I'm glad to have some time to read a book, write a poem, or watch reruns of The Big Bang Theory.  Hell, I might do all three.  I'm trying to stay focused here, but, like I said, that apple martini was about 99% vodka and 1% artificial fruit flavor.  So I might as well get to my fairy tale before I pass out at the keyboard.

Once upon a time, a lumberjack named Bono went to an Italian pub and ate garlic bread and parmesan tortellini.  He also ordered a really large apple martini.  The other lumberjacks in the pub started to tease him, calling him names like "Bonbon" and "Applebon" and "Bonhead."  Lumberjacks aren't very creative.

Bono stumbled home, very drunk and angry.  He decided to practice his ax juggling before he went to bed.  Bono threw three axes in the air.  One ax came down and chopped off his left hand.  The second ax chopped off all the toes on his right foot.  The third ax landed on the top of his head, killing him.

Moral of the story:  never write a fairy tale when you're drunk.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

Saint Marty is ready for a nap