Everson Walls

I saw people I had known exhausting their final reserves clawing their way in the direction of a wall, one that lingered lazily, whose eternal reaches lay well outside of anything that any of them might hope to achieve. When I was four, I saw some of it; the rest I saw when I was sixteen and most of the rest when I was nineteen . We used to stand in awe of it, this wall. Sometimes, you know, some southern kid or someone from a place you couldn’t imagine existed—somewhere in Missouri or a place like that—like a place from where anyone in his right head could only hope to escape---some kid like that used to carry broken baggage with him..a limp or a dragging slow sidecar….or a slut you can’t shake….,I think that some of the worst things you’ll ever see are my neighbors.

Man or Dog? Why one over the other?

They talked the man from the ledge, and he climbed unsteadily back onto the roof to safety, amid the cheering of the crowd below. It took a while, but he made it there. Now on firm footing, the man seized a small dog that had followed him onto the roof, and hurled it over the edge.

Should you stumble upon this lonely blog of mine, you might detect a note of darkness. If you enjoy that sort of thing, soldier on, for you might detect little sprouts of black humor, which is the most satisfying kind.

By way of experimentation, which of the following two jokes do you find funnier?

Joke One:

A man walking along the sidewalk comes upon a boy and a dog.
"Does your dog bite?" the man asks the boy.
"Nope," the boy replies.
The man bends over to pet the dog, and the dog bites his hand.
"Ouch! I thought you said your dog doesn't bite?"
"That's not my dog."

Joke Two:

I saw a man approach the bar dressed in shorts, orange rubber flip-flops, and a Hawaiian shirt. He ordered a drink.
“How’s it going?” I said.
“Terrible. I just came from a funeral.”
“Dressed like that?”
“It was only a rehearsal. Hospice case.”

If the second joke strikes you as the funnier of the two, heaven help you.
And keep visiting.

Life's Conversations

The post office is open today. You said it was closed.
I didn’t say it was closed; I said that the mail hadn’t come yet.
Well, how could the mail come if the post office was closed? Answer me that!