The Puppet by Johnny Welch

This poem was originally mistaken to be written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez as a farewell message to all his friends at a time when his health was failing him. It was actually written by a Mexican ventriloquist, Johnny Welch, and dedicated to his puppet. Which actually makes more sense, but I suppose makes it less poignant.

Either way, I think it has some lovely imagery.

The Puppet

If for a moment God would forget that I am a rag doll and give me a scrap of life, possibly I would not say everything that I think, but I would definitely think everything that I say.

I would value things not for how much they are worth but rather for what they mean.

I would sleep little, dream more. I know that for each minute that we close our eyes we lose sixty seconds of light.

I would walk when the others loiter; I would awaken when the others sleep.

I would listen when the others speak, and how I would enjoy a good chocolate ice cream.

If God would bestow on me a scrap of life, I would dress simply, I would throw myself flat under the sun, exposing not only my body but also my soul.

My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hatred on ice and wait for the sun to come out. With a dream of Van Gogh I would paint on the stars a poem by Benedetti, and a song by Serrat would be my serenade to the moon.

With my tears I would water the roses, to feel the pain of their thorns and the incarnated kiss of their petals...My God, if I only had a scrap of life...

I wouldn't let a single day go by without saying to people I love, that I love them.

I would convince each woman or man that they are my favourites and I would live in love with love.

I would prove to the men how mistaken they are in thinking that they no longer fall in love when they grow old--not knowing that they grow old when they stop falling in love. To a child I would give wings, but I would let him learn how to fly by himself. To the old I would teach that death comes not with old age but with forgetting. I have learned so much from you men....

I have learned that everybody wants to live at the top of the mountain without realizing that true happiness lies in the way we climb the slope.

I have learned that when a newborn first squeezes his father's finger in his tiny fist, he has caught him forever.

I have learned that a man only has the right to look down on another man when it is to help him to stand up. I have learned so many things from you, but in the end most of it will be no use because when they put me inside that suitcase, unfortunately I will be dying.

Sometimes You Just Need A Hug...or "I want my mommy"

Contrary to the popular belief and conventional wisdom that men must be courageous, strong and brave all the time, sometimes us men can just get overwhelmed and need a great big hug by a set of enveloping arms and maybe even be able to, dare I say it, shed a tear from time to time.  Today was one of those overwhelming days for me.  Not because anything in particular happened; the stars aligned, the tides were right, the barometric pressure was just so, the phone rang once too often and the pot just kinda boiled over, creating one of those I need a hug days.

I wish I knew how to prevent these events, but most of them are totally and completely beyond my control.  Life changes with the ring of the phone and, unfortunately, I have no choice but to answer the damn thing.

I have reached the point of losing it completely three or four times in my life.  A couple involved women and, I admit it, I cried like a baby.  In one case I have a witness.  Life, as I knew it, was over.  I was crushed, my heart broken and left a pile of spineless flesh.  The truth be told, I brought these instances on myself and I probably, no make that almost certainly, deserved it.  On one occasion a man actually tried to kill me and my brain was not able to wrap itself around this event.  It resulted in my beating a man into hospitalization.  The shrink called it a "psychotic break" apparently a part of something called Acute Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I am not a big man because I was able to beat a man senseless and under different circumstances, would have been criminally charged.  I actually feel it was an act of cowardice on my part, but I shall save that for another time.  The final time I was just overloaded, having investigated every dead child that had occurred in a rather large county for five years straight.  I knew something was terribly wrong when I was able to point to every photo of every child on the bulletin board on my wall and tell you their names and birthdays.  Do it long enough and you will snap, trust me.  If you don't snap, you will eventually become so dull emotionally you will become the moral equivalent of a zombie.

Today was just one of those days I would have liked to have been able to come home to a kind, strong, loving and understanding woman with a set of outstretched arms and a few kind words who would have done nothing more than listen to me complain, bitch, piss and moan.  Having such a person in our lives is not an option, it is a requirement, a necessity and as needed as food and water at times.  It is something that keeps us sane and, yes, it is nothing more than a carrying on of a man's need for his mommy.  I am not ashamed to say that I have been in situations of absolute, abject, life-threatening terror that I have screamed for my mommy.  I have screamed a few other words during the initial shock, but once the bone-chilling fear took hold and the reality of the fact that I might just die in a moment or two set in, I called out for my mommy.  Although, not quite the same, what more comforting feeling can a man have than when hi smother hugs him.  It is the ultimate protection, followed closely by pulling the covers up over our head.

I find that the next best thing is to just write it down here and share it with the greater world.  This is my version of the Doogie Hauser diary of the T.V. series of the same name.  I think that struck a chord and I am living that portion of wisdom in my own life.  I feel better now.  I still could use the hug, but now I can go on better without it.

Who I Want to Be

I want to be so many things, really.  I have been fortunate to have been so many things, but I am not a poet, nor songwriter, nor singer.  It is not for lack of inspration it is lack of ability and in the immortal words of Harry Callaghan, "A man's got to know his limitations."  So, I let the people that have the skills to do these things speak for me sometimes, for they do it and say it so much better than I ever could.

Once in my life, for one special woman, I want to inspire her to feel the things in this song.  She may not be able to write them or express them the way Carrie Underwood can, but she will be able to feel them for certain, and I want to be the man that makes her feel this way...

Mama you taught me to do the right things

So now you have to let your baby fly
You've given me everything that I will need
To make it through this crazy thing called life
And I know you watch me grow up and always want whats best for me
And I think I found the answer to your prayers

And he is good, so good
He treats your little girl like a real man should
He is good, so good, he makes promises he keeps
No he's never gonna leave
So dont you worry about me
Dont you worry about me

Mama theres no way you'll ever lose me
And giving me away is not goodbye
As you watch me walk down to my future, I hope tears of joy are in your eyes

Cuz he is good, so good
He treats your little girl like a real man should
He is good, so good, he makes promises he keeps
No he's never gonna leave
So dont you worry about me
Dont you worry about me

And when I watch my little baby grow I'll only want what's best for her
And I hope she'll find the answer to my prayers
And that she'll say

He is good, so good
He treats your little girl like a real man should
He is good, so good, he makes promises he keeps
No he's never gonna leave
So dont you worry about me
Dont you worry about me

Mama dont you worry about me

Dont you worry about me

Bumps and Holes

I have met some pretty strange people in my life; we all have, probably.  It is okay to think some people are weird.  We have established certain norms within our society that provide us with guidelines regarding what is socially acceptable.  We have laws.  These are the most formalized norms that define our society.  These daysm we find ourselves in a terrible battle betwen societies today regarding norms that define two different societies.  Fundamnetalist, Radical Muslims believe that if you are not a Fundamentalist, Radical Muslim that thinks exactly how they think, they can kill you, for you are an infidel.  We, the American society, generally believe in religious tolerance.  We believe in live and let live, and that all people have the absolute right to believe what they want.   The active word here is believe.  There are Baptists that believe I am goung to go to Hell because I am not a Baptist.  They want me to convert, but they accept that I have the right to believe what I want and make the choice, in their opinion, to go to Hell.

This is one of the most well-defined, formalized examples of the differences between people.  The ones that each of us have to deal with on a day-to-day basis are more subtle.  We have societal norms that we use to judge.  The homeless man or woman with all of his or her belongings in a shopping cart are generally looked down upon and judged harshly by most, but not all.  There are people in our society that have different beliefs about what is acceptable behavior sexually.  We have a loose underground group of people in our society that beleive in sex as a recreational activity.  In years gone by they were referred to as "swingers."  Most people do not understand this lifestyle, and they judge harshly, much like the homeless.  Of course there are differences between the comparisons, homelessness is often not a choice.  Swinging, group sex and complete sexual freedom is viewed as a choice.  It may not be for some people, but that is how it is viewed.

Have you ever thought about them; the odd among us, setting their oddities aside?  Most of these people are different.  They act different and behave different and that is what makes them odd.  Have you ever considered how one odd person finds another odd person and a relationship begins?  And once they find each other what is that makes them stay together?  I contend that people that operate outside the norms of our society are able to fit together.  One of them has holes in her head, another has bumps in his.  The key is when they put their heads together, the bumps in his head fit the holes in hers.  Ya, they are both weird, strange and otherwise out there, but they fit together.  They compliment each other and, to use the hackneyed words of Jerry MaGuire, they "complete" each other.  When  they are together they are whole.  When they complete each other, they make a whole that is greater than the sum of their respective parts.

There is very little difference between those we think of as strange and those of us we think of as normal, in many respects.   We are always just looking for the person who has the holes in her head that fit the bumps in ours.  That is how we can define true happiness and, in my opinion, how we can also define the realtionships between the people we know that are truly in love.  I have discovered that I have a pretty bumpy head and I am on the lookout for the woman that has a pretty holey head, but the holes have to be in just the right places.

The People You Meet in Life...

The other night I spent four hours in a telephone conversation with a woman.  This, in and of itself, is not record-breaking, but is noteworthy.  What is really astonishing is the fact that there was never a missed beat nor wasted moment in the entire conversation.  It was an exchange of ideas, thoughts, impressions, opinions, likes, dislikes and deal-breakers.  That last one, the deal breakers, was never reached.  There were seemingly no deal breakers.  Now that is really noteworthy.

This woman was/is bright, intelligent, articulate, open, honest and absolutely unashamed of who she is.  This made it easy for her to talk about herself.  She likes herself and, because she does, she has no trouble being positive about herself.  She also seems to believe, correctly in my opinion, that since she likes herself and accepts herself that there is nothing to be either ashamed of nor embarrassed about.  If someone does not like her, that is just fine with her.  There are too many other people in the world to worry about just one.  It is not that she does not care about what people think of her, she clearly cares deeply.  She is the kind of person that really enjoys pleasing others and gets off on it, but she also wants to be liked and loved for who she really is, for what she really believes and what she really likes and dislikes.

My father taught me that there are four kinds of people in the world each and every one of us will meet.  There are those that will like us for the right reasons.  There are those that will dislike us for the right reasons.  There are those that like us for the wrong reasosns.  Finally, there are those that will dislike us for the wrong reasons.  He told me that those that like you for the right reasons are those that can become your very best friends for life, and have found this to be true.  Those that dislike us for the right reasons are people we are just not meant to like or with whom we will be friends.  It is okay, we cannot be liked by everyone, and there are people taht are just not meant to get along.  Don't waste your time on them, it was just not meant to be.  The people that like you for the wrong reasons are the ones you really need to watch out for.  These are the people who really don't like you for anything other than what you have, what you can do for them or what they can get from you.  Beware, they are the users of the world, and they give little or nothing in return.  The people that dislike you for the wrong reason are the people worth spending a little time working on.  You might turn turn them into good friends, then again, you might not, but they are worth an effort.

I am not one to make snap judgments, but I am also a hopeful romantic, as oppsed to a sentamentalist, and I have hopes that this women and I will become friends and maybe more.  We have very similar ideas, thoughts and feelings.  One interestiung thing is that we agreed early on in this conversation to allow the subjects of conversation to the politically incorrect topics in polite company; politics, sex, money and religion.  If you can come to an agreement on these topics, other stuff is pretty negotiable.  I also find it is so much easier to discuss these topics and be completely honest before you become invested in a relationship.  Think about it, you don't know someone, you have no relationship of any kind and you have nothing to gain or lose really.  You discuss a sensitive topic and you say something the other person does not like, what happens?  You don't lose a friend or a lover, so you can be completely honest, hold nothing back and not have to worry about incredible consequences.  On the other hand, if you go out for a while, get emotionally involved, have a connection and then you find out that the man or woman is a religious fanatic, has declared personal bankruptcy three times and is a member of the Tea Party, while you are a card-carrying member of the ACLU, these can present a problem.  You lose the connection you have and there is frustration and disappointment and maybe even hard feelings.

I will admit that there are other very important factors that are not part of my four socially forbidden topics.  These include criminal convictions, substance abuse problems, ex-wives and girlfriends, etc, but these topics can often become easier to discuss once you have shared the forbidden topics.  It is a way to break the pattern of hide and seek in developing relationships.  Hey, if they have seen you naked, figuratively speaking, the rest comes a lot easier.

It may not work for everyone, but it works for me.  You might want to try it....