{"id":8879,"date":"2015-02-23T09:00:45","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T14:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=8879"},"modified":"2015-02-27T10:24:28","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T15:24:28","slug":"but-i-pulled-out-valium-and-other-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/but-i-pulled-out-valium-and-other-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"But I Pulled Out\u2026, Valium, and Other Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"norman<\/a><\/h3>\n

BUT I PULLED OUT…, OR MANY FINE MESSENGERS HAVE DIED TRYING<\/h3>\n

Last night I danced with the shadow of a woman
\nin the moonlight of my wet dream.<\/p>\n

Afraid I would multiply I pulled out
\njust in time to save the human race,<\/p>\n

then fell asleep on the side of the road
\nwhile three tortoises \u2013\u2013 Jos\u00e9, Renaldo, and<\/p>\n

Filemon, respectively \u2013\u2013 tiptoed past me
\nsniggering like the little bastards that they are!<\/p>\n

VALIUM<\/h3>\n

It wasn\u2019t love, exactly,
\nbut Valium, and I
\ntruly loved everything
\nand shouted it to all
\nthe world: I love
\ntelephone poles and
\nparked cars and
\nboarded-up homes and
\ntraffic jams and
\nI love you too, mister,
\nyour sun-burnt face, and
\nyour cardboard sign and
\nthese coins I
\nplace in your hand.<\/p>\n

TV DOES MAKE YOU LOOK FAT<\/h3>\n

The Meteorologist makes more money than I.
\nHe tells me that Saturday will be partly cloudy
\nand that Sunday will be partly sunny.<\/p>\n

When I call to ask the Meteorologist,
\nwho makes more money than I,
\nwhere the sun will be on Saturday,<\/p>\n

he asks how I got through to him.
\nHe says the Meteorologist is not his real name
\nand that his family is out of town.<\/p>\n

Before I can ask about Sunday,
\nhe hangs up the phone, this,
\nthe Meteorologist who makes more money than I.<\/p>\n

PEEING IN PUBLIC<\/h3>\n

Rather than process me
\nthey took me home to my mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should have taken him
\nto jail,\u201d she told them.<\/p>\n

\u201cMa\u2019am,\u201d they replied, \u201cif we
\nlocked up every young man<\/p>\n

just because his mother
\ntold us to<\/p>\n

we would have no
\nroom for them all.\u201d<\/p>\n

DEATH<\/h3>\n

I too have thought, while ironing, about death.<\/p>\n

It drifts in on the air, dust motes of death.
\nFlies on the windowsill; pork in the crockpot;<\/p>\n

three-day-old bunnies our dog death-sniffed out
\nbeing digesting at this very moment; a mouse trapped<\/p>\n

in the pantry, still twitching in its trap; the dead man
\nnext door won\u2019t be discovered for six weeks;<\/p>\n

a book by that good gray poet that lay open
\nto the low and delicious word death,<\/p>\n

and again death, death, death, death, a curious warble;
\nour son\u2019s beta fish we are reluctant to flush<\/p>\n

until he comes home so that he can death-face one of life\u2019s
\nhardest lessons; my daughter upstairs with her friends,<\/p>\n

pre-teen girls with everything to die for, watching
\nthe season premier of \u201cThe Walking Dead\u201d and I,<\/p>\n

I am ironing doilies for my in-laws\u2019 50th wedding anniversary,
\nand we, Vive la bourgeoisie!, <\/em>carry on as if we shall never die,<\/p>\n

as if we could live all day and possibly tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\n

Norman “Buzz” Minnick<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>is a poet and playwright. His second full-length collection,\u00a0<\/span>Folly,<\/span>\u00a0is published by Wind Publications. He is the editor of\u00a0<\/span>Between Water and Song: New Poets for the Twenty-First Century<\/span>\u00a0(White Pine Press, 2010). He has not yet written a play.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It wasn\u2019t love, exactly,
\nbut Valium, and I
\ntruly loved everything
\nand shouted it to all
\nthe world: I love
\ntelephone poles and
\nparked cars and
\nboarded-up homes<\/p>\n

READ MORE.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":259,"featured_media":9042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,219,199,217],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8879"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/259"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8879"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9054,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8879\/revisions\/9054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}