Every Man Jack of Us! , livre ebook

Every Man Jack of Us!
j. samuel taylor jr.
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-11-30
Every Man Jack of Us! About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgement Author’s Prologue Being Madelyn! Under Construction Bicycling The Family Men Lottery Life How the Sausage Is Made Loin-Cloth Legacy Rendered Unto You Is Yours! Back-Pew Party Asleep at the Wheel The Confectioner’s Gull Once Broken Computing Jane and John Doe Rage! The Controvertible Truth of Effect Causality Tasting Hindi! (Eating Love) The Commons " Word of the Day" Parenting Pollyanna Faultline Living Dancing Against the Music That, I Could Not Live Without! The Belief in Seeing In a Word… Walking Backwards How So? But Only While the Music Plays Snake Eyes Gone Blind He Said, She Said (Before Said the Judge) “And Now, the Weather” “The Border Blues” The Welcome Mat, Muddied 6/12/17 * (“R U Kidding Me Right Now?!”) “A City Tumbles Down a Hill” Of Capricious Deportment The ‘Tired’ and the ‘Poor’ Cold as I.C.E. Period! For Your Viewing and Listening Pleasure Come the “Change” Colored People Jesus Fish Apple Betty Constant Counting Palace Intrigue (A ‘Who’s Who?’) Her Threadbare Dress The “Fellow American” People Watching Daughter of the Revolution On Concrete Ground La Vida Loca From What Foliage Come Your Laurels? Hurry the Night Young Wives’ Tales The Curtain, Drawn (Recount 2000!) Where Time Flies…into Your Face! My One-Man Band Forfeiting Years Autobiography of a Pimped Nation: Let’s Call It ‘My History!’ Critical Caring Metamorphosis On Quietus
About the Author
He sees the little things in people and nature in order to evaluate and understand those things in large.
He is an avid tourist of world geographic cultures and societal so-called “peccadillos”.
He is a purveyor of uncommon truths made common by everyday people.
Every Man Jack of Us is the second in a series of three books that feature selected verses about j. samuel taylor jr.’s observations and synthesis of people and systems, personal and public, that inhabit what we so freely―and all too often incorrectly―refer to as “only human” and the “nature of nature”.
The publication of this book is preceded by the first title in this series, Bitter Wears a Smile: Of Nature and of Man , and will be closely followed by his third, Tinder (a book delving into the relationships of people and things in nature).
Taylor is an educator and family man.
Dedication
This work is dedicated to my sons, James Anthony, Quincy, and Whitney, and their beautiful children!
Copyright Information ©
j. samuel taylor jr. (2020)
The right of j. samuel taylor jr. to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528983235 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528983242 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781528983259 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgement
Thank you to my family, friends, colleagues and students for providing me with the love of life and duty in preparation for writing this book.
Author’s Prologue
It is not easy to distance our behaviors, or our thinking, our contemplation of difference from the virtues and peccadilloes of others. En route to our definition of living upright and well, we are bound to one another by our yin-and-yang design. We are indelibly stamped with the mark of ‘beauty’ or ‘beast’, ‘benevolent’ or ‘malevolent’, ‘triumphant’ or ‘despondent’, ‘perspicacious’ or ‘witless’, et al., and we are quick to judge each other’s wares accordingly.
So, too, do we offer up ourselves to each other in our customs and mores, our social and economic stature, our geopolitics, and, above all, that which we find most sacrosanct―what we want for ourselves above all others.
Every man jack of us roams this earth feeding off what it has given us, manufacturing what it does not, and cultivating our personal and societal defenses that none can put asunder.
Being Madelyn!
No illusions has she
About where the sun goes when darkness visits.
Where once there was the light, comes the heavy.
Where once was the unswerving water’s ways,
Safe from commotion, now zigs and zags
Where drought curls the sediments
Of intimacy’s dry rivers and dead seas,
Those chapped beds
Awaiting rain clouds’ precip
Re-entry into the cycles
Her womanhood.
Broken loves,
Broken lives,
Broken glass beneath her feet
Informs her what cut deeply her thin skin,
Her frail bones, her fragile means
Always one step ahead of penury actual,
Accused of lesser pedigree when foraging
Those intimacies―their gossamer safety netting
So easily through which to fall.
Contrite, she is not, that heavenward
She has prevailed beyond the hoi polloi
Who ushered her toward the scruples the great unwashed.
That preponderate are her blessings,
And she is soaked with magnanimity the dirt,
The stink, the jaundiced eye her intermittent blindness.
Under Construction
Hammer-driven, my life as a nail.
Bone-crushed by circumstance, unreconciled
By the prayers that cover me.
The agency of every day against life’s deadline
Cost overrun budget crunch, the construction cost of me.
Relentless, my weathering’s inclemency―excessive injury,
Physical, mental, emotional―my wet rain-soaked housing,
Traumatized by thunderous delays:
Reported “Time Lost” finding comfort in my skin
But ages me, still the same.
LIVE! This hard-hat blueprint unfurls,
Reveals my
“Village Under Construction - NO TRESPASSING”
Domiciled in childhood security’s blanket
Beat down by calamity ad infinitum:
Divorce,
Dearth of family, friends, and significant others,
Death.
Future on the brink―the danger of “Daily.”
Work Permit expiring; squatters with vows cycling thru;
‘Eviction’ noticed by one and all who
“Feel my pain,” the constant labor
Of building a shelter to survive the storm.
Bicycling
They move in tandem
As one on a bicycle front and rear.
Acolytes unto togetherness
Tether to vows that delimit their love
For riding.
They indulge, cheek by jowl,
The sustenance of together : Pancakes & Syrup, Milk &
Honey, Sugar & Spice
―biking’s saccharine ardor
bestride the harmony of straightaway “commerce,”
Bacon & Eggs, Beans & Rice,
Peas & Carrots―existentialism’s
R ecommended D ietary A llowance (RDA)
of endearment to keep what is theirs
balanced and true.
They travel pathways countryside and city,
Marry uphills, downhills,
Cutbacks, and merging roads ―cycling’s “meat and potato” Courtship with peddling, always touching in/on
The same plate, on the same fork or spoon,
Until their bodies fatigue―endurance challenged,
And their bellies-full appetites go missing
From one another.
Hand in glove , in unison, in concert they move
Together through life, together through love.
Severally to cycling’s end, they come to rest.
The Family Men
The artful dodger, is Hubris.
He rounds corners on two wheels
When four should make do.
He speaks in flowers to some seasons,
Until yellowing leaves
Make clear the truth about gardens.
He laughs at pain, untamed,
When grimace hails a piteous wail.
He is the deceit, the conceit, the effete pro tem:
Ephemeral façade men build
When courting hegemony
Over a house of women.
The man he is, naïveté
That women know him by his true name:
Lothario! Gigolo! Libertine!
Philanderer! Lecher! Rake and Rome’!
The debauched is he―familiar,
Paramount to their gladness
―apparently dispensable to things salient:
Her “Nuptial Oblige,” as it were,
Her progeny,
Her abetting a family tree.
Lottery Life
The stink of old age hobbles
On crippled limbs under drooping britches
And incontinence pull-up butt bumps
In the room,
Like a drunken bar stool refusing to fly
The nest of least resistance,
The fear of aloneness
Is provoked by its almanac’s obsolescence.
The scandal of its impertinent!
To think that its varicose veins,
Its urine-soaked vintage dress
Hides an imperfect youthfulness nearby relevance,
That down Everyman’s pike,
Where the obvious sneaks like a cat
Burglar where once the unblemished of the living
Cannot clearly see the blotchy veneers
Of Liver Spots and Matching Change Purse,
Picked-over scabs of time’s lacerations,
And crow’s feet massacres at the soul’s windows,
It goes hopelessly unsaved by the charlatan cavalries.
See it there, hoarding its break-of-day groove
In grocery coupons for prunes and flatulence relief,
Scratch-n-dented bingo paraphernalia addiction,
And day-before restaurant desserts―handkerchief wrapped.
Hear the disharmonious medical walkers screech
Slow dance music to the pathetic swan songs it croons
To full-breasted nurse corps for reassurances
Its mumblings through perfect teeth is as theirs.
Asleep at the wheel in its hi-tech chairs,
The feeble is propped up in its sleep,
Drooling down its polyester alternatives to nakedness
Of imminent dependency a world fast and dry.
Cold as Climate that Changed
Before anyone told it, Pop chased Big Band away,
And cultures-bygone “took a dive”
Into Medicare, Assisted Living, and nebulous Reverse Mortgages.
Its pennies pinched to save a gov’ment nickel,
Bought a ticket to win a million’s transient nature.
Won life’s lottery, instead.
Struck it rich!
How the Sausage Is Made
The butcher’s stock-n-trade squeezes charcuterie into
The translucent casings empty vessel
The many secrets we keep about meats we plate:
The re