The Shine Journal

SOMETHING IS HAPPENING----ISN'T IT  MR. JONES . . .

Things are happening to Mr. Trueheart Jones,

yesterday his neighbor, Amin, reported him to the State

for watering his victory garden two days in a row.


This week he traded his 57 Mercedes coupe in

under the new junker redemption program & received

a $4,500 credit on a light, tight Fiat-green driving machine.


His structural analysis company was moved to China.

The new job Tsar ordered him on a permanent leave of absence.

Fluent in Mandarin, a Chinese graduate of MIT took his place.


Since he was unable to make the $5,000 monthly mortgage,

his 700,000 dollar house crashed and was valued at $250,000.

Mr. Trueheart Jones had no choice but to go bankrupt.


He is assigned by the judicial Court Tsar to work for the State.

There he collects leaves from all State parks & is designing a

smokeless leaf furnace to drive the turbines of the State windmills.


At his State mandatory medical examination it is discovered

he has cancer of the liver---the State medical transplant Tsar

determines as a leaf collector he does not qualify for a transplant.


The State confiscated his Fiat & his other assets

to pay for his permanent assignment to the

State Hospice for the indigent---where every Sat. afternoon

in good weather---his wheelchair is rolled out

to a spot above the Speedway---where Mr. Jones is allowed to drool under the sun.





ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

I don't know if you've noticed

but THINGS---themselves---have gotten A LOT MORE SENSITIVE.

I am not sure if they are new age things, or if they are things suffering some kind of linguistic

virus, or something caused by global warming, or maybe its nuclear proliferation----but whatever

it is---things are developing a bad attitude.


Think on it----people used to and still do talk about things in a very

negative and insensitive manner---for instance,

How are things?--people used to say. . . Oh...Things have gone to hell---was a common

answer. . . or things aren't so good----or things are pretty bad.

Or things never change---its the the same old stuff day after day, or how's things hanging?


Now---after years of neglect and syntactical abuse things started

having meetings, support groups, and forming unions for things.

I see some of you are smiling---now you may choose to pass this off as

simply the misuse of a colloquial word or at worst as a sign of the deterioration of language in

Western culture and conclude that I am hysterical due to wide spread unemployment amongst

lexicographers-----


But I am telling you THINGS HAVE JUST ABOUT HAD IT!


Let me tell you about what happened yesterday, as is usual, and stick with me here,

Mr. O' Reily was brow-beating his wife about the same old thing for dinner

& Mrs. O'Reilly---as usual--- complained about the same old thing in the bedroom, telling Mr.

O'Reilly that the thing in his pants was an under achiever.

Well, things had better change screamed one of them. They both clicked off their night-lights and

fell fast asleep.


At the stroke of midnight on EASY Street where Mr. O'Reilly had spent many a happy year in 

his hammock and where MRS. O'REILLY HAD SERVED LEMONADE, with a smile,

the whole mystery of THINGS manifested itself. First, the silverware clinked and

slid out the kitchen window, The blender & toaster held hands and jumped into the rose garden,

the couch & easy chair dropped their doilies and ran down easy street.

well...that did it: the floodgates burst, so to speak, for all things that hung,

or things squirreled away in shelves & drawers, gathered together & fled out the back door.

The quarrelsome neighbors pretending not to notice the mass exit attributed this vision to their

over use of cheap gin and the lateness of the hour.


In the morning when the O'˜Reillys woke---each turned to the other and asked, How are

things?----- they looked askance at their barren house----and in that moment of epiphany knew

for certain things would never be the same again.

THE READING

It came down

to a crucial question or two:

who owned the best lingerie?

More importantly,

whose ass was the sexiest in it?

Wife or husband?

After weeks of heavy drinking

this issue heats up.

Things get pretty nasty.

The end starts early on a Sunday

morning. A sniping, nagging,

argument unfolds

until drinks spill,

names are forgotten,

bottles thrown, someone tries hard

to drown someone in the jacuzzi.

Neighbors call police.

Blows land. Arrests made.

Drunken accusations,

insults and libels boil over

into city jail and spill into court.


Now she's on the phone

calling long distance

explaining

how all this results in my

not reading my poetry

at Doug's

MAJOR UNIVERSITY.

So, I tell her, of course,

I'm disappointed.

But it's not every day you lose

a reading because someone's

husband looks better than she

in push-up bras,

teddies,

black stockings,

and a red garter belt.

And as I hang up

it occurs to me reading my poetry

for the BIG BUCKS

is a little more

complicated than I thought.

Motivation: Life, Love and Losses

Bio: Steve De France MFA has traveled widely in the United States. On more than one occasion he hitch-hiked across America. He rode rails on freight trains, worked as a laborer with pick up gangs in Arizona, dug swimming pools in Texas, did 33 days in the Pecos city jail as a vagarant, fought bulls in Mexico, and dove for salvage off a small island on the coast of Mazatlan. His poetry has been published in most of the English speaking countries of the world. He has won writing awards in England and in the United States. He continues to write poetry, plays, essays & short stories.