Scare Me Hebdomadally

As you may recall, these are the things that I have said you need to write a poem: 1. Words. 2. A form to put your words in. 3. Something to say with the words you put in the form (this will affect how you arrange the words.)

Regarding the words themselves, there is some controversy over how many different kinds you need. Here are three viewpoints on this matter: 1. "You just need to know everyday common words. People don't have strong feelings for the others, so they tend to get in the way of whatever mood you are trying to create, so don't use them." 2. "What a crock. Poems are made of words -- uncommon words make uncommon poems, but they're still poems you dolt." 3. "So, you don't think I have strong feelings for 'martingales'? I feel so hurt and misunderstood. I'm going home to Mother, right now."

Another viewpoint says that you can sometimes discover poetry inside uncommon words -- in just the same way that, sometimes, you can discover ugly mollusks inside beautiful sea shells. With a pen or a sharpened pencil.

Lets look for mollusks inside the beautiful but uncommon word-shell "hebdomadal."

What are hebdomadals? Well, lots of things are... there's original episodes of X-Files and I Love Lucy, lunar quarters, approximately, blue collar pay days, days set aside for gods, the TV Guide, the Stranger, Monday Night Football, days of rest, TGIF, Saturday Night Live, my parents' trips to restaurants, days set aside for gods, soup kitchens at some churches, bowling days, poker nights, days set aside for gods.

OK, all it really means is "weekly". But it means it with so much more beans than "weekly" means it. If you say that you go to church weekly, it sounds like you don't care the other six days of the week. But if you say you go to church hebdomadalistically, it sounds like you're putting serious effort into it. .

Here's a poem with hebdomadals in it. I was inspired to write the following "prose poem" by the fact that hebdomadal nearly rhymes with "bomb it all", but not with much else, so don't look for any rhyme.

Charlie's Hebdomadals

by Copyright Dr. Wes Browning

Wednesday at noon used to be air raid drill time,

get off the street behind your screen door.

Charlie had to prepare for World War III

so we could all outlast the Russkies.

Then Charles went to college.

Noon Wednesdays brought the experimental film series.

An Andalusian dog met with severe abuse.

After that Charlie's Wednesday noon hebdomadals

rapidly became personal.

Once, a kangaroo escaped from the zoo

and jumped in Charlie's mocha.

Last Wednesday noon Charlie's shorts everted

while he was wearing them.

Next Wednesday Charlie will attempt to eat lobster.

He expects his food will assault him.

Let's surprise him with a tie.

I wonder how many people here in Seattle remember how frightened everyone was back in the Fifties by the threat of being bombed to death. There really were air raid drills every Wednesday noon. Though everybody knew about them and could brace themselves for them, they still sent chills up people's spines. Of course it was nothing so personal as having a zoo animal in your drink. Or like having an actual ten ton bomb dropped on your own house.

The US gets bombed once in half a century and all of the sudden we're the world's victims.

No Rest from 9-11

When I think of terror I think of Hitchcock's Birds landing on the jungle gym behind what's-her-name, Tippi Hedren. Terrorism is supposed to invoke terror, right? As I remember it, it was Mao Tse Tung himself who once said, "Effective terror is targeted terror which uses fear to immobilize the enemy. Boy, that Hitchcock Bird movie was scary, wasn't it? Know what else? The bourgeoisie suck." Not that Mao Tse Tung was into that sort of thing. He was mostly into American jazz.

So, anyway, here I am, three weeks after September 11, looking back on it, assessing how scared I have been.

Immediately after the attack I began to avoid skyscrapers. My newest insight: "Skyscrapers bad." No more Sunday picnics at the top of the Washington Mutual Building enjoying the bright, idyllic, scenes of falcon chicks as they happily feast upon predigested squab. By contrast, the Space Needle suddenly looked safe to me for the first time since 1962. Now I welcome massive 7.0 earthquakes in old "human-scaled" four-story buildings.

I started freaking out at the sight of turbans, excuse my sixty-ism, because Osama bin Laden wears a turban according to the only photo anyone seems to have of him. (What's up with that? It's been three weeks and nobody can find his high school album?) Of course, as you know, this meant I couldn't ride cabs. If someone could please find a picture of bin Laden wearing a homburg, that would improve matters a bit. I still wouldn't take cabs though (no money.)

I began running from Stans. I knew Osama bin Laden himself wasn't a Stan, but he was friends with some Stan. I couldn't be too safe -- I had to stay away from all Stans. Fortunately Stanley isn't a very common name in the circles I travel, which consist primarily of communists, former elected officials, historians, streetwalkers, and circus performers, so that only meant being afraid of one guy.

I can no longer stand to have airplanes in the house, nor can I pet them. I used to love airplanes, but now I am afraid that the big ones will turn on me and bite me, and that the little ones will dump messes on my head.

I am now terrified of box-cutters and razor blades, especially in the hands of swarthy men. Strangely, I have at the same time lost all my fear of carving knives, hatchets, bayonets, pistols, grenades, assault rifles, tanks, cruise missiles, tactical nuclear weapons capable of fitting in a suitcase, and postal carriers.

Arabic writing, or anything that looks like arabic writing, like two smiley faces next to each other, one upside-down, or a small flock of worms escaping a hot sidewalk, makes me scream like a little girl.

When I watch the Flintstones, or even just think about the Flintstones, I shudder at the very name of Barney Rubble. CNN has the same effect. Dan Rather makes the blood drain from my face and my spine tingle. No change there.

Worse than being afraid of CNN, I can't watch disaster movies on the VCR anymore. No more Towering Inferno, Titanic, Earthquake, Twister, Volcano, Dry Spell, Bees, Andromeda Strain, Asteroid-Hits-Earth (any), Backdraft, Updraft, Downdraft, Independence Day, Independence Day (worth mentioning twice), or Waterworld (not really a disaster flick, but disaster enough in itself.)

OK, I'm ready to admit now that I have been lying throughout this column. "Irony is dead," indeed. It'll take a lot more than what bin Laden's got to kill the irony around here. I am not at all as scared as all that.

Still, I suspect that some of the above may describe a lot of Americans. If so, then my one and only big fear may be realized: that Osama and his obedient terrorism-fodder have successfully bombed us back to the Fifties.