Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Monday, July 29, 2019

Sunday, July 28, 2019

Friday, July 26, 2019

Thursday, July 25, 2019





    ...Earthling...
“He   saved  the planet.”
It is a phrase I’d like to see 
carved into my tombstone. 
But at my age, and 
with time running out,
the chances that something
massively catastrophic 
   of a celestial nature
transpiring upon my watch is 
   pretty much next to nil.

But if it did…
If by chance some pending doom loomed
at precisely 2:22 tomorrow afternoon,
do I have the skill-set 
to actually save the world?
Would I have had the precise 
doohickey gizmo thing-a-majiggy 
there in my skin-tight leotard
that’s required to counter-tweak 
   the nipple of    annihilation?
Do I?
Does my wee noggin possess 
   sufficient intel-quotient
to ponder potentially precipitous
pedantic equations such as      say…
E=mc…    um…
E=mc…   Damn !
I told you I was the 
wrong guy for the job.

Squared!  For as with any 
circular shaped apocalypse;
you need a squared peg hero in that 
   deep   rabbit    hole.

Ah, the connection 
between rabbits and
total world      annihilation?
Well if you knew your 
intergalactic space history,
you would be aware 
that the greatest threat
we Earthlings    
ever encountered
came from the 
dark sinister hands of
‘Commander X-2’.

What?    
No drop to your knees in a 
catatonic spasm of abject terror?
Surely you know the name.
Surely you are aware that
there have been moments in 
the space-time continuum when 
   earth blocked the view
   of Venus   as seen from Mars.
Surely you’re aware of the
‘Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator’.
Seriously    sinister stuff     indeed.

Commander X-2 zipped around upon
an ominous spaceship nicknamed
   ‘The Martian Maggot’.
And he could fry your brain 
at a moment’s notice
with a disintegrator gun  
cuz this dude was prone 
to getting a  tad  angry.
Very, very tad angry.

And so yes, he had this heinous plot.
In the name of
greater interplanetary vista,
he would vaporize our beloved earth.

And just who was it that
stepped in at the last second
to avert total world obliteration?
NASA?     No.
The United Nations?     No.
The Uncanny X-Men?      No.
Other comic book characters such as
the Fantastic Four,
   Batman & Robin,
Johnny Quest or
    George W. Bush?
Come on now. 
Let’s stay serious.

It was of course  a rabbit.
Commander X-2,
aka ‘Marvin The Martian’
brought to his knees by 
some aerial eared bunny
   with the first name of ‘Bugs’.

And the year the world 
almost came to end?   
1948.   Oh and on a
get-high-note, that is also
the first year it was documented
that an Earthling,  aka   ‘Bugs Bunny’,
traveled into space and
encountered the most extraterrestrial 
   Commander X-2.
Well yes, Commander X-2
and his faithful companion “K-9”.
“K…9”       Canine.
Yep, his little Martian buddy 
was a dog.

1948 and you had mice in the moon,
   cows over the moon,
rabbits in space
   and dogs on Mars.

Correction.
I have just been informed 
that in actuality
these were all
nothing more than cartoons, 
fairy tales  and ex-presidents 
so     they don’t   really  count.

The first trueEarthling in outer space?
November third, 1957,
a female Soviet Cosmonaut 
by the name of   ‘Laika’.
She was a bitch.     A canine.
Yes, a small stray mongrel dog who 
  we officially came to know of    as  ‘Laika’
  but that was in truth not her real name.
No, the name she answered to was ‘Kudryavka’.
‘Kudryavka’:  ‘Little  Curly-Haired One’.

Four days after the Soviets 
launched her into space,
the thermal control system malfunctioned 
and the little curly-haired one 
died of heat-stress exhaustion.

And there in 1958, 
the Sputnik 2 carrying Laika
fell back to the Earth 
and burnt up 
upon re-entry.

She: the first Earthling to 
light up our dark night’s sky.

And there the following morning
those few extra particles 
of atmospheric dust
brought the slightest 
nuance of color
to an otherwise 
ordinary sunrise.

Laika.   
Did her sacrifice save the planet?
Future historians will 
likely offer arguments 
that she did,
and yet what was proven but
just how shallow the well 
of our bleak human compassion?

No, instead of the 
Earthling named Laika,
I find myself dwelling on 
the    other dog.
The one named ‘Kudryavka’.
The one who licked the hand
   of he who strapped her 
       into the capsule’s harness.

‘Kudryavka’.
Little   Curly-Haired One. 
Little starry-eyed one. 
As they looked through the hatch
upon its moment of closing, did 
anyone notice 
the wag of your tail?

©09 Jack Hubbell
 ...Mine Vine Mind...

A broken trellis. 
A sagging arbor. 
A bed of flowers 
   obliterated. 

My mind... 
   Yes. 
My mind is like a 
   ruined garden. 

Oh, it was beautiful once. 
Am I allowed to say that? 
Is that vain? 
Well, only if I portrayed it as 
   still beautiful, 
and as I’ve just told you, 
it most certainly 
is not. 
No matter. 
I’d still like to invite you in. 
Take you for a stroll. 

Having said that, 
our stroll won’t be an easy one. 
No. I now find orientation difficult. 
Quite lacking in direction, find it 
hard to trace a path that leads to 
concise and noteworthy mental locales. 
Yes, the terrain has become somewhat obtuse. 
Alas, but how the milkweed and 
kudzu have taken over. 
Now ever-clinging vines 
choke away thoughts and 
vast overgrowth obscures 
self-realization.
Indeed, I’m…  I’m… 
   I am 
   homogenized. 
There in my brain, 
a mass of woven weed prevails. 
And all such ruminations sprout tendrils. 
Tenacious roots which 
ease their way through 
soggy folds of cortex, 
and there penetrate 
soft and decadent cerebella. 

There… just over there, 
you would have once encountered 
a multitude of rose resplendent flora. 
Heavy, ripe and dripping sanguine, 
it draws you in and there beneath…
     something to repel; 
something to make you wary. 
Oh yes. 
Yes, at one time, 
I was contradiction personified. 
And now, as you pass your hands through 
the dense blanket of overgrowth, 
you come to 
wince and recoil as you encounter the 
pained memory of my 
  former self, 
for here now, 
only thorns remain.  

Rosebuds here are withered 
and forgotten. 
All this aromatic delight 
has fallen to garden floor to become 
one with the humus of fetid earth. 
Those that remain, 
remain dormant and un-bloomed. 
Their verdant green no different 
than all that leprous ivy 
and sumac. 

Yes, my mind is a 
hateful ugly place 
and knowing this, 
I imagine you wonder why 
I’ve have invited you in. 
But here… wait… 
Before you turn and go, 
indulge me this final moment, 
for I’ve one last thing to show you. 

Assuming we can navigate past 
all those stinging nettles, 
you’ll find it there, 
just at the back of my garden. 

It’s there… Just there. 
        Look. 
Thiswas once my garden shed. 

Inside you’ll find a rake; a hoe; 
    a scythe; a shovel. 
These and that wheelbarrow, 
    ill kept and rusted.  

And again, why? 
Why do I show you this? 
Well, you see, 
I have this favor to ask of you. 


Bearing in mind the inherent 
   thistle in my thought, you 
  havemade it this far. 
You’ve made it all the way to my shed 
and having seen my 
   fall from Eden, 
I would ask of you… 
   You who might soil your hands 
   for me…

Am I truly ruined, or 
in the slightest way, 
somehow worthy of  
your gracious and 
   most merciful 
   redemption?  

©06 Jack Hubbell

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Sunday, July 21, 2019

  ...That’s Entertainment...

Ogg the Flatulent 
sets his bushy beard aflame 
and those of us enthralled Neanderthal 
gathered about the blazing cave fire 
express our most ardent appreciation 
by bouncing applause stones off 
our bruised and blemished foreheads. 

Please note that as soon as we troglodytes 
came to grasp the significant condition 
known of as     concussion, 
we abruptly came to discard 
said customary stones 
and the concept of applause 
was redefined as the spastic act 
of two hands clashed together. 

Though the burning beard parlor trick 
proved very popular, it in truth 
failed to last until the eerie advent 
of rooms called “parlors”. 

The hilarity of scar tissue aside, 
around one millennium later, 
our desire for amusement evolved 
from singed facial follicles 
to the inevitable presence 
of them who we’d call mimes.  
Indeed, as our homo sapient 
intellect came to evolve, 
self-inflicted pain to entertain waned 
and we’d soon require grown men 
acting as if they’re robots 
to put us all a titter o’ 
transistorized titillation. 

Willing suspension of disbelief, 
said mime would have us except 
the motion notion of he 
as a mechanized man. 
Oh, and doing so, 
we in mass are somehow entertained. 
So much so that upon 
the wanton climax of his act, 
we will pull coin from purse 
and place it in his waiting hat. 

He… 
He is a street busker and his 
current area o’ raucous 
resides within London’s Covent Garden. 
Oh, and for every busker, a punter, 
and this one particular busk 
has amassed a resounding thousand. 

He has this shtick; 
would have us believe he’s 
some sort of unfeeling automaton. 
This no more than an act 
(though his wife doth beg to differ). 
To be an animated automaton… 
That.     That.     That! 
That would be his sizzle shtick! 
He of unhappy apparatus status, 
absent bliss o’ beatitude, 
would bring smiles unto the masses 
whilst void thereon his own. 
He would not, could not smile. 
Could not permit the experience 
   of joy unto himself, 
but would do his utmost 
   to bring it to another.

And so… 
And so, synergic motor 
emotive interloper that he is, 
he passes into the crowd, 
selects a random woman, 
and brings her to the fore. 

And though shy
she swiftly submits 
to synergic scintillation. 
Showtime’s sure allure as it were, 
and servos whir, 
   and rotors stir, 
      and robots putter and purr. 
Our mechanized mime 
moves his demur maiden to 
the middle of the mall where she 
turns to face a sea of smiles. 
Men, women, and children 
expectant to be entertained. 

Lo but what can she do?
What talent doth she possess 
which will mesmerize the masses? 
And here she looks out to note 
that every third or fourth smile 
has a camera plastered above it. 
A quarter thousand lenses 
capturing film and video, 
placing her pending performance 
full-frontal their holiday memories. 

The mime has her strike a fashion pose 
and the circled spectators chime 
with a scattering of churlish chuckles. 
This her first time on stage 
and so soon a boon critique. 
Surely… 
Surely, she possessed some 
other significant attribute 
which might arouse the myopic masses. 

And here the enigmatic mime 
motions for our immaculate maiden 
to raise her arms above her head. 
Having done so, he 
catatonic robotics to her rear, 
reaches down, grabs the hem of 
her thick woolen sweater 
and slowly begins to pull it up. 

This mime held hard assumptions. 
That in absence of a divine god, 
man is surely incapable of morality. 
That the life of any one man, 
no matter how despicable, 
holds more inherent value 
than that of a dog. 
That his penis
was larger than average. 
 That he was currently pulling up 
a heavy-knit sweater and not 
the clinging blouse beneath. 

And here this particular sweater and blouse 
come to pass her armpit level and 
proceeds to cover the maiden’s face 
when those thousand amassed spectators 
begin to cheer as one.

Indeed at this precise moment, 
he as a street-busking mime 
is garnering the greatest applause 
and aroused audience boffola
that his slick robotic shtick 
will ever have achieved. 
And all he has done is 
pull a cumbersome sweater 
up over a woman’s face. 

What? What? 
What could possibly make 
this one particular stunt so special? 

He looks out into the gathered crowd 
to see the most animated 
of hysterical spectators to be 
an assortment of small boys. 
Boys whose mothers are 
frantically attempting to 
turn tantalized faces askew. 
And our mechanized mime 
of deadpan dour 
brings his face down and around 
to behold a perky pair 
of naked breasts. 

Whoa but such a site to behold 
that the mime does a 
sparky spit-take 
and turns his flushed face 
back and about 
to the roar of the 
rollicking crowd. 

And there… 
There to my utter wonder, 
I come to discern 
that rote-rigid robots 
can actually manage to smile. 

Ó2019 Jack David Hubbell