Luckily, I’m More Forgetful than I Used to Be

  
I can’t tell you how many times (although my wife probably could) that I’ve put something on the stove, or in the oven and forgotten all about it …until a cloud of smoke caused me to suspect that perhaps I was cooking something. Well today would have been number something or other in that long series of mishaps, but luckily evolution in its slow, but ever prudent manner averted what could have been another smoky disaster at my house.

You see, about an hour ago I put some fancy jalapeno bread on a cookie sheet, grated some cheddar cheese over the top, and flipped on the broiler. Then I filled my coffee cup and wandered off to the computer to do a little reading at Craneleg's Pond. Well, a little reading led to a little writing, and the next thing you know I thought I smelled smoke. So I ran into the kitchen and flung open the oven door. I know readers, I know ..."you’re not supposed to close the oven door when you’re broiling, blah, blah, blah," but that little lecture is wasted on me. I always close the oven door. I've convinced myself that “with the door closed, whatever’s in there will cook faster and be done before I can forget what I was doing and wander off.” What? …you don’t see the brilliance in that? Okay, I’ll concede that point.

Note to self: From now on …uhh …something about an oven door.

Now where were we? Oh yeah! I flung open the oven door and only a tiny puff of smoke came out. Where was the usual head enveloping, eye watering, cough inducing, billowing black behemoth that I’ve become so accustomed to? ...and where was the carbon lump, and ruined cookie sheet that should be in there? It’s gone! Where’s my cheesy bread?!

Oh, there it is …sitting on the counter by the coffee maker. I forgot to put it in the oven. Well how’s that for Darwinism at its best! You see, forgetful Randy may have nearly burned the house down again, but super-forgetful Randy merely preheated the oven to the Hell setting. Well to make a long story short, I popped the cheesy bread under the broiler, shut the door and came in here to tell you all about how I almost ...Oh crap!!!
 

Unfinished Letters

  
A pencil whispers secrets to the page.
A pen scrawls out in bitterness and rage;
while typewriters plink, and clink,
and hammer at their ribbon’s ink,
catapulting words at paper walls,
sending soldiers running down the halls
with orders stuffed in envelopes
dashing everybody’s hopes
that they may all be home before the fall.

A Private writes his fiancée a poem.
His Sergeant scribes an angry letter home.
Then rockets shake, and bullets rake,
and walls collapse, and windows break,
and blood runs o’er the words of each man’s page;
o'er the truth about the waste of war they wage.
But it’s in plinks, and clinks as cold as ice
that we’ll read of their sacrifice,
then fold our paper, sip our coffee, disengage.
 

A Cowboy in Time Square

  
Along the sidewalk he strode,
'Neath the shade of a well worn Stetson,
Past a thicket of women.
They beckoned to him.

As tempting as a clump of August blackberries,
And seemingly as juicy and sweet.
Their smooth plump fruit,
Hanging swollen in the hot sun.

But he imagined the vines were tougher,
The roots more hardy,
And the thorns even sharper,
Than the blackberries he knew from home.

So he kept on walking.
Though he had to look back and wonder,
What it would be like,
To pick just one.