The sealed envelope

 Fifi went to her mailbox one Friday after a busy week and found a letter addressed to her. But when she went to open it, she saw that it said “Do not open.” She wondered if that was written with her in mind or was telling other people not to open her mail.

She decided to open the letter. A thousand horrid monsters flurried out of the envelope and a gray cloud or rumbling smoke filled her neighborhood.  There was fire everywhere and shrieking flapping ghosts that screamed “it said do not open.”

Fifi did not know what to do. She felt that the envelope was addressed to her and it was her choice.  

She called her lawyer and told him what happened. 

Are there still horrible creatures swarming the neighborhood?”

“Yes.”

“Ok, what you need is another envelope that says, "open," and then do not open it, and it will lure all the varmits back into their world. 

“Where can I get a letter like that?” asked Fifi.

“I will send you one,” said the lawyer.

But it will take several days to get to me.”

“Well you need to be patient.”

Fifi stayed in a motel for the weekend and then came back to her mailbox and found her lawyer's letter.  The plan worked and when she opened the envelope, all the scary sights and sounds hurried back into the mail.

Fifi was relieved but then found another piece of mail which was the legal bill. It was for five thousand dollars.  It was worth it to her but there was something curious, which was that the envelope had the same pattern as the envelope that said do not open.  She realized it was a lawyer scam. She reported it to the better business bureau and they recovered damages worth over ten million dollars. 

The moral of this story is be careful with your personal info.

Though the Darkness Hide Thee

    On the planet Okenfolk, a young monk named Brother Stopdrop woke up early to sweep the western side of the Great Abbey.  Sunlight gleamed across the stonework floors and high walls where doors led to stairwells around the main building. Brother Stopdrop prayed his usual prayers, hummed a hymn, but dreaded part of his task that led him to the darker hallways.  It seemed that in recent weeks, some of the rooms had become engulfed by complete blackness, with shadows creeping further each day into the nearby gardens. There was an oppressive feeling of gutwrenching hopelessness just from being near the dark corridors, and all the monks knew something was wrong.

    “Should we warn the townspeople?” Brother Stop drop asked his elder during commons meeting after finishing his rounds.  He did not tell the leader that he had skipped several halls.  

    “Not yet,” said Elder Warren. “Let’s see if prayer can drive out the darkness first.”

    “Elder Warren, what if it is the Abyss?”

    “Quiet,” said Elder Warren.  “People will panic.”

    Days went by and the gaping shadows reached the stone gates at the border of the monestary. Brother Stopdrop asked God for ideas of what to do.

    Meanwhile, just outside the orbit range of Okenfolk, a spaceship led by Sargeant Cori Hopewell faced its own dangers. They had detected a black hole that swallowed three galaxies previously monitored and targeted with the most reliable exploration tech ever invented. Cori requested printed updates on the star distances every four hours, and her crew was growing weary of the vigilance.  She was growing weary of their complaining.

    Finally, in desperation, she typed a message to Okenfolk’s monestary.  “Please pray for us, there is a black hole that is in a dangerous range, and there may not be much recourse.”

    Brother Stopdrop received the message on his computer in his cell late one night as he read letters and books from his main list. The message warmed his heart with a new sense of companionship, and he quickly replied that he would pray all day the next day.

    He did pray the next day, and even wondered if he noticed the abyss recede a little bit as some love grew for his planet and people.

    Sargeant Cori and Brother Stopdrop began writing to each other every morning, sometimes steadily for hours, trying to brainstorm solutions for their fight against the chasms of nothingness that threatened all life as they knew it.

    “The black hole is rapidly gaining sky and progressing in a direction that we can’t avoid,” Sargeant Cori wrote one morning.

    “Get it, void?” replied Brother Stopdrop. “Avoid…”

    “Funny,” said Sargeant Cory.

    Brother Stopdrop and Sargeant Cory started laughing more often, and finally they admitted to themselves and each other that they were in love.  They wanted to get married but felt that they both could not abandon their duty to protect their people from the abyss and the black hole. They once again prayed and waited to see what would happen, without much hope of a solution. But right after they were engaged, data started changing.  

    The black hole started moving in a direction 40 degrees left of where it had previously been headed, and the abyss started creeping toward the ocean.  No one could believe it, but within just a few weeks, the black hole had moved completely out of range of Okenfolk’s galaxy sequence, and the abyss had fled all the way out to sea, hovering on the horizon to create a dark block of nothingness after sunset.

    “I think they like each other,” said the monk.

    Sargeant Cory was finally able to return home, and she and Brother Stopdrop were married at the Great Abbey. They built a cottage near the water and sat outside every night, looking at the stars and wondering about the mysterious dark section where the glimmering ocean met the black night sky.

two poems

poem 2

Doing what you want to is just fine if you are good

And doing what you should will work if actually you would

So pick a helpful strategy and do what you insist 

It’s usually not enough to only bother to exist.

Poem 1

You scarecely can’t believe that things would work out for your best

but there’s another miracle that’s better than the rest

The way things also work to serve God’s glory for his name

But hardest to conceive is that those ends would be the same

Party Cheese

     As my friends started to arrive to my house for the Halloween party, I had a worrisome fear growing in my mind.  I had thought it would be funny to invite Freddy Kruger and now I was feeling like it was the wrong thing to do. Most of the people there were my coworkers from my bookstore job, but I told them that I had a few other friends who would be there.  Some were from my church, and one girl named Emily James was already friends with Jenn C from work.  They were happy to see each other, and my anxiety subsided a little bit as I listened to them catch up cheerfully.  Jenn had dressed up as the thing from Nightmare Before Christmas, and Emily was dressed as Dorothy from Wizard of Oz. I had on a dark garbage bag stuffed with newspaper. It was an idea for a raisin costume that I had been using off and on for many halloweens since I first learned the idea in elementary school.  

    “I should have been one of those abstract costumes,” I said, “like a philosophy idea.”  My friend John started brainstorming ideas as jokes but I could not think of anything.  I was too worried about whether Freddy Kruger was going to show up.

    John’s costume was a devil costume, which was kind of funny because we were both really religious and saw it as him pretending to be Satan.

    Another friend of mine named Kathy came in her Harry Potter crystal ball reader costume that she had worn to the harry potter party at our bookstore.  It was kind of an honor for her to be there because she was older than us and a famous textbook writer.

    Someone answered the door for me and my stomach plunged. It was Freddy Kruger.  Or at least it looked like him. I then realized it was actually my friend Ryan who had dressed as Freddy Kruger.

    I didn’t know whether the real Freddy Kruger would just show up as himself or if he would wear a costume as something else. I looked around to make sure he wasn’t already there. When I went to the kitchen, I found that Freddy Kruger had actually arrived much earlier and was at the counter chopping up apples with his razor hands.  He arranged the apples in a circle with some caramel dip. On his head were some pumpkin deedelly boppers that my friend Mickie gave him.

    "Thank you for inviting me,” he said.  “I’ve never felt included before and I have decided to accept Jesus as my savior."

A stretch of the imagination

If all the humans on earth

ever agreed on one thing 

we could all have 

I bet it would be

a giant piece of taffy bigger than the sky.

 

People say why not world peace.

Well it’s like irony,

you agree on the taffy 

and then there’s the peace. 

In fact, all along, we just spelled piece wrong.

A Snappy Comeback

Fifi decided to go to the Thai restaurant a mile from her house. She had vowed to eat there once when she walked by on her way home, so finally one day she stopped by for a meal.  She ordered chicken curry and a snapple. The snapple looked cloudy in the sunlight and it made her think of a recent kidney problem that caused certain symptoms, which is to say cloudy urine.  Fifi chuckled to herself and thought about how it would be funny to say that in polite company. In fact, she started imagining a scenario where she would go out to eat with a date and meet his parents, and then say to them, this snapple reminds me of cloudy urine from kidney problems.  

Fifi hopped online and started an account on a dating site.  She set the location radius to very nearby so that she could meet someone close to the Thai restaurant.  That way, it would be believable when she invited his parents to eat there too.  It would take time to set it all up but it would be a really funny story to tell friends some day.

A guy quickly found her profile and started a communication.  Fifi said she was interested in meeting up, and they arranged a date the very next day.  It was, of course, at the Thai restaurant.

To Fifi’s surprise, the guy ordered snapple.  Fifi used a lot of self control to save her joke for when she could say it in front of other more proper people and embarrass this very person.

But when the waitress brought out the cold large glass of pink snapple, and one for Fifi as well, the guy said, Gosh, it’s cloudy. It reminds me of the pee from my kidney problems.

Fifi could not believe it.  “you have kidney problems?”

“Yeah,” said the guy named steve. “Soon I will have to go to dialysis.”

Fifi looked at Steve and felt her life change.  “Do you need someone to go to dialysis with you?” she said.

“Yeah,” said Steve.  “I would love that.  But you don’t have to.”

“I have kidney problems, too,” said Fifi.

Fifi and Steve knew then they were meant for each other and they faced their declining health together.

This story was sponsored by Snapple.

Bread

Work is worth it, years of toil

Things to live for on this soil

Wages, people, status, land.

Earning things in high demand.

You want the houses boats and cars

But some nice things just come in jars

Through all life’s goals that seem so tough

Strawberry jam might be enough.

“Now York City”

I wonder what New York City is like in heaven.  

Is it all the neighborhoods preserved, 

or different time periods lined up in a row?  

The bible talks about the new Jerusalem.  

I wonder if that is where everyone lives 

or if some people can live in the new new york city. 

So maybe they did not brand that well,

Because it would say “new” twice.

Well maybe there is a lot of newness to it.

Or maybe we should call ourselves Old York now.

Biophysics Theory

Something that I was wondering about is how maybe the planet orbits create a time loop and our future is also in our past.  And something funny that could happen in the year four thousand is that there is a black hole that people mistake for a solar eclipse. The people are going to see it in the sky and say hey there is an eclipse, but then they feel a force and the earth is sucked into the black hole.  This becomes the main seal of the time loop, where time becomes a continuous loop with no break whatsoever.  It is kind of scary because to imagine it would seem like one of those drawings where a snake eats its tail.  And in the Bible when it talks about the beginning of time, there is a snake in the garden.  Could that perhaps refer to this time loop and everyone is trapped in the “snake age” stomach as we live our lives?  That would also match the idea of salvation in the bible. Probably I should start telling my theory to the scientists and theology people.  One of my friends teaches college Physics and I thought about telling him my other theory about the universe expanding and how everyone thinks of it all expanding uniformly but in the paper towel commercials when they spill the orange kool-aid, it makes an uneven shape. That is why after I explain these theories to everyone, I will serve kool-aid.  Well something like that has happened before, hasn’t it.  Yes it has, and maybe it is because of the time loop.

The Little Princess Laugh

It’s chuckling from a homeless person

that sounds too insightful,

like the inner joke is too clever

and has a whole education behind it.

Like in the Little Princess book 

when that child notices the tattered coat 

must once have been from a high quality life,

as if some people aren’t meant to be poor,

and some people are.

Let’s get serious, this is about predestination,

the remnant of pre fallen man

a conscience that surely must be the homing device 

no one suspected still had a signal.

The church, the damsel in distress,

saved for later

with a reminder to keep reading.

Obliterating Any Semblance

I apologize to my family for trampling on their graves.

It’s true if I win the Nobel prize 

I’ll melt it into a knife and start killing people

But there was already a band called Rancid 

so I don’t know what else to do with myself.

The giant baking squirrel

I was mad when the bakery hired a giant squirrel to help with the baking. Partially it was because of how strict the sanitation guidelines were, and how we had to wear gloves and wipe down counters constantly, and everyone knew the giant squirrel just woke up from inside his sequoia cavern, hopped on the bus, and showed up to start scooping muffin batter. One day he looked me in the eye, tried to put on the gloves, and showed me how the plastic just ripped on his paws. Then he started scooping muffin batter beside me, daring me to call DHEC.  I didn’t.  To tell you the truth, I was so tired of the cleaning standards that I was happy to have someone to blame.

After a few weeks, I started offering the squirrel some of my ration of free muffins because I knew that he needed more food.  Finally I suggested to the boss that we make whole cakes instead.  She said we could make lemon loaf cakes.

 

I kept working like normal but at break time I saw the squirrel crying in the breakroom as he ate one of the lemon loaf cakes. I gave him all the loaf cakes in my bag and from then on only took home the almond croissants.

 

The giant squirrel is now assistant manager of the bakery and we have stores in 51 states and  30 different countries.  Animals and humans are working in harmony and lemon loaf cakes are the national food at the space station.  Our country recently received threats from an alien society, and the giant squirrel sent a letter and said, let’s try sending them some lemon loaf cakes. I did not tell anyone how proud I felt, but I know the squirrel knows that I know he knows.

Slime rhyme

Fighting your own weaknesses expose an inner beast
That sometimes gets the better of your life to say the least.
 
But as you build your strength to win that constant fearful war
The other foes who swarm the earth will also live no more.

Candy Necklace Poem

 

Worth words

I like that daffodils poem by wordsworth
And tried to teach high school English
So other people would also understand,
But what can I say, it didn’t go well.
Everyone in fourth period needed a bathroom break
And a teacher from the coven in the main building
Found my joke crucible test on the copier 
And got me fired.
So that’s why I lost my job I guess,
Or something else I cant figure out
No matter how oft upon my couch I lie.
Maybe my students wouldn’t get that joke
But what is one lost reference
From a poet in the wrong field.

Poem

When I am the pope,
I am going to make Lent be Fat Tuesday,
And Mardis Gras last for forty days.

Re: Production

 

Ronald Hoover looked in the mirror and adjusted his tie.  He winked at himself and smoothed his hair.  He had changed his clothes three times now, not because he couldn’t decide what to wear, but because he liked looking at himself in different outfits.

After one final glance, he walked out the door and drove to the grocery store.  He wasn’t planning to buy anything, but instead was going to check out all the pasta sauces.

First, he found the sauces that he had tried before, and read the ingredients list on the back of each one.  Then he wandered over to see what was in the cream sauces.  Most of the ingredients were what he expected, but he did not know how preservatives and manufacturing affected each final product.

Ronald was researching the pasta sauces because of the idea he had for a company, and he knew that the product needed to be familiar.  In a way, it could have been anything, because his true dream was about the company itself.  Ronald Hoover’s plan was to clone himself and start a company made of workers who were all him and him alone.

He decided to go ahead and buy a few of the sauces, added some boxes of pasta to his armful of groceries, and went to check out.  He looked across the checkout lines and imagined if all of the workers were essentially the same person.  It made him feel a sense of urgency, like a need to hurry and achieve his dream before anyone else thought of it.

 

The next week, he met with the cloning team at the science lab associated with his old college, and he told them his plan.  They said that they could actually produce thirty duplicates of himself within just a few weeks.  But they also said, “how do you know they will all be willing to work for you?”  

“They will simply have to,” Ronald said.  “I will give them a legal document stating that they signed a contract previously.  And I will sign that contract myself right before they are cloned, so it will be true!”

The scientists smirked.  This was exactly what they had signed up for when they had endeavored to clone people.

 

The process was easy.  Ronald literally cut a lock of his hair and gave it to a scientist, and two weeks later, a bus full of himself drove up to the new warehouse and office building that he had bought for his company. 

The clones talked to each other loudly, some of them raising questions about the contract.  Ronald handed each of them a random envelope assigning them their job at the new company.  Some would be salespeople, some would be factory workers, and a chosen few would be vice presidents and corporate strategists.  Within days, the different Ronalds were showing up to work and clocking in. 

Mostly the Ronalds got along well for a while, but some had questions. “Why are we all named Ronald?” one Ronald asked.  “Why are we all the same person?” another one said. “I’m gay,” said one Ronald, and indicated that he liked one of the other coworker Ronalds. 

“I don’t believe in that,” said that Ronald. He then chased after a dame at their bingo group, but she liked one of the other Ronalds.

Some of the Ronalds started a union and tried to leverage their work for higher salaries.  There was plenty of money for it, because the company was very successful.  But the competition among workers was still a problem.  Some of the factory workers showed up in the board room one day, pretending to be the head bosses.  They agreed to give the whole company a week off and a budget for vacations.  By that time, the original Ronald was very tired, so he agreed.

He took off to a tropical island away from all the other Ronalds.  While he was there, he met a bartender named Lisa, who talked to him about his work.

“It’s just a mess,” he told her.  “I don’t know what to do.”

Lisa smiled and listened and said, “Wow, you really have worked hard in life, and I would almost say thirty times as much as most people.  I think I have some ideas of what could help you.  Also, I love you, Ronald.”

Ronald married Lisa and she shared her ideas for the company with him.  Her main idea was to clone herself thirty times as well, so all the Ronalds could each marry a Lisa.  Everyone thought it was a great idea, so they all did in fact marry their own Lisa and moved away to start new pasta sauce companies with regular workers.  The original Ronald also hired a variety of people to replace his selfish crew, or rather, his crew of selves. The pasta products, however, remained the same at all the companies. After all, it was a family recipe.

Strategy Games

The sci-fi movies show the monsters raging in the clouds,
And dragons flying through a war attacking violent crowds.

But demons go away from kinder gentler forms of strength;
It's service, love and faith that makes you go to any length.
So though you want to bravely slay the snake that flies above you
The greatest way you'll fight it is to smile and say I love you.

Your Fault

go awol on your mission in the army of rudeness

default on your loan of harrassment

declare bankruptcy in your economy of hatred

leave your spouse of bigotry at the altar

be bad at what you are bad about.

it’s the good you didn’t think of.

ET poem

My grandmother always did remind me of 

 

ET the Extra Terrestrial.

 

Just her face, really, and her grayness.

 

Honestly I can’t say for sure that she wasn’t ET.

 

Memories aren’t that reliable,

 

They kind of are slippery in the mind,

 

Like ET, and like my grandmother.

 

When I get to heaven,

 

I won’t know what to say at certain occasions.

 

Do I say, Grandmother, I missed you.

 

Or ET, I knew it was you.

 

That doesn’t mean I pray to ET,

 

Or to my grandmother.

 

That is another thing 

 

that ET and my grandmother have in common.

 

I do not pray to either one of them,

 

And I don’t scatter Reeses Pieces in the backyard

 

To try to lure them both back to earth.

 

I don’t believe in that, 

 

though if I ever saw two ETs at one time,

 

I would almost assume that one of them

 

Was my grandmother.

 

Something confusing is to watch the movie ET 

 

At Christmastime.

 

Because my grandmother used to visit us on Christmas,

 

So is she really there?

 

Or is it just a movie?

 

You can say it is just a movie,

 

But why would I pretend not to know my own grandmother?

Maybe some readers don’t want to read a good poem

Maybe they want to read this poem.

 

That just says hello and then 

 

Trails off at the end with no meaning.

Poem Lesson

Not all poems have to be a zinga zing zang.

 

A ringa rang rang

 

And a glass full of tang.

 

Some poems might just want to flop,

 

Like a lop that hops to Stop and Shop.

 

For instance, this is a poem asking 

 

The government for a pet rabbit 

 

And a checkered suitcase

 

Full of magic marbles.

poem

 Today's sermon is entitled,

I guess it's all just a crapshoot

Animal Behavior

God’s going to commit suicide when he reads my poems.

 

He’s not going to believe some of the ideas I thought of.

 

That one that says, 

 

“dessert first, that’s my rule, dessert last, also cool,

 

He’s going to say, “Why isn’t this in the bible?”

 

He’s going to write a new bible that says more about guinea pigs and other rodents.

 

He’s going to say, this is why I sent my son to die on the cross,

 

For this very reason,

 

And then he’s going to create a new rule

 

Even stricter than the golden rule,

 

And it will be called the platinum rule,

 

Where you cant say anything

 

Without first eating a plate of tarts

 

And a mug of hot chocolate,

 

And then go to the mall

 

To buy a blanket 

 

for every groundhog

 

disguised as a friend.

 Poem

 

What if Judgement Day is organized

According to the high schools people went to

And it is like a battle of the bands

With points and scoreboards

 

 

Poem

 

You know how they have those churches

That are modern and are called things like

The Edge, or the Verve, or such and such?

What if there was a ministry called “Bullcrap.”

 

“Hey we missed you at Bullcrap last week.”

God knows that trick

 
when the grocery store is collecting pop tarts 
for the homeless shelter,
don't say,
"I wish I was poor."
Just buy yourself some pop tarts some time
and try to keep a job.
 
At church, don't make fun of that lady with the head tremor
by pretending you have a head tremor.
Just nod a little bit when the preacher says something about Jesus.
 
I mean, my Gosh, 
 
not everyone can work in a Tic Tac factory
and watch movies about rodents on their lunch break.
If you want gallbladder surgery,
then damage your gallbladder.
It all adds up if you multiply by eleven.

Priority Seating

People riding on the train

Some are crazy, some are sane

Who knows where they’re going now

Or when or why or what or how

But when I close my eyes I see

All that matters is not me

Jesus is the mourning star

 

Jesus rises in the east

Or in the west or where its best

Or where its worst or where its first

Or where there’s people who are cursed.

 

He spins the worlds that heaven holds

And heals the cruelest winter colds

And tells the darkness it must hide

And says he knows that people lied

 

He takes the poems that have no truth

And writes them in the book of ruth

And takes the art that shouldn’t be

And makes a better mystery.

 

He says I know you didn’t care

Except your heart is truly there

And that is why the angels fly

In God’s own glory of the sky.

Anger in the hands of a sinner’s God

 

They say we hang by just a thread

But that will sometimes cause me dread

When people need salvation fast

And I am scared they will not last

 

I feel the pressure for their case

And think the thread is my own face

And anything I say and do

Is how God chooses who is who.

 

With stuff all hinging on my life

And what I say to solve their strife

So then they tell me their demands

That cause me shackles, traps and bands

 

But that is simply not my job

To say who has to wail and sob

So next time I’ll refer them where

Our God will let me just not care.

poem

I think something 
people would not expect
Is if bomber planes
dropped a bunch of 

ploughshares on a country