...Drunken Kung Fu...

There was a time in my life

when I had a deep affinity

to all things Kung Fu.

Now perhaps you envision me

flying sideways through the air,

moments before the heel of my lethal foot

  shatters a concrete slab.

Perhaps you have this brutal image of yours truly

flailing about amidst a circle of would be assassins,

each of whom drop to the floor

consecutive upon consecutive corpse

from the application of my pin point death touch.

Is that Kung Fu?

Well… not exactly.

Contrary to popular belief,

the term “Kung Fu” does not translate to martial art.

Does not equate to the concussive application

  of fist to fragile cranium.

That is,    unless you do it very well.

For you see Kung Fu more literally translates

  to “excellence of technique”.

A Kung Fu of cooking.

A Kung Fu of tightrope walking.

A Kung Fu of chainsaw juggling.

A Kung Fu of putting up

with your drunken father

on a hot Summer’s afternoon.

Did you know there’s a style called

  ‘Drunken Kung Fu’?

Sounds pretty silly don’t it?

And so it should.

  So it should.

In the golden olden days of chop suey cinema,

our suppressed and antagonized hero

would be forced to take up the elusive Drunken Style

as taught by some dotty old vagabond monk.

And Drunken Kung Fu was always fun to watch

because let’s face it:

Being drunk is always funny, right?

I figure this was why those villains in Kung Fu flicks

never got to do the Drunken Kung Fu style

‘cause you can’t come stumbling

and slurring into a fight scene

and still be taken serious.

Sorta strange then that these special rules

never really applied to the strained relationship

  my father and I shared.

High Noon in June.

Sitting on a porch of which I currently coexist

  with an agitated wasp.

I play the protagonist in this scene,

and I suppose you think the wasp

is the much dreaded antagonist,   but no.

That role is played by

he who just strolled onto the porch

  with a bottle in his hand.

Bottle in his hand;     book in mine.

I do my best to ignore the

beer braced bravado of banter

that spews from his toxic lips.

Mano-a-mano denial. 

My inability to embrace the existence

of one whose state of inebriation

conveys manifest masculine destiny.

Not ‘walk quietly and carry a big Kung Fu stick’

  but rather,

‘swagger brashly and sling a mean brown bottle’.

And he of bottled bluster

would really like me to know

how my professed Kung Fu knowledge

would defend against an agitated wasp.

And for the next sixty seconds,

he who I’m trying so hard to ignore,

moves about that screened porch,

doing everything possible to shoo

an increasingly pissed off wasp in my direction.

And every time it swoops toward me,

the smile upon my father’s face

  increases in maniacal glee.

Yes kids.

Here is Father/Son bonding at its finest.

The wasp swoops around behind me

and though I can hear the hum of its of its wings

as it careens along the porch’s screen mesh,

I do not take my eyes off the book 

for that is the power of myKung Fu.

Ignoramus ignorer extraordinaire.

Ahem…

There is a sensation you get

when a wasp lands on your skin

which is quite unlike that of a mere fly’s anointment.

I’m not talking about that pending sting of pain.

Just the heightened moment of its legs alighting

upon exposed epidermis

accompanied by the instant cease of buzzing wings.

Thatsensation…

That sensation has just occurred,

  there on the back of my neck.

An unseen presence,

yet I know precisely where it is.

And with one complete fluid motion,

my right hand leaves the edge of the book,

shoots to the back of my neck

   where my thumb and index finger

   instantly crush the wasp’s torso

   and then just as blindingly fast,

   my hand whips back 

   to sling the insect carcass

      there at my father’s feet.

I would not have been able

to do this again   in a thousand years.

And yet, there it was. 

Most certainly something to 

   make one jump up and exclaim

  “Yo Pendejo! 

      Did you see dat shit?!”

Well that’s how I felt on the inside,

but on the outside I merely gave my father a quick glance

and calmly returned to reading.

No doubt I conveyed my Kung Fu excellence of

“Hey! Don’t fuck with me!” and yes,

I suppose that compared to true Drunken Kung Fu

what I had just done wasn’t very funny but then again,

if you had seen my dad’s Drunken Kung Fu

  as many times as I have,

you’d be forced to admit

as with most jokes of inebriation,

they all lose their kick pretty damn quick,

for instead of laughing at Drunken Kung Fu,

you simply find yourself staring at a drunk,

  and no,

there is nothing    

   funny  

      about it.

©09 Jack Hubbell

  ...Troth unto Troth...

Color-blind by design, way 

back before they were sexed, 

being anatomically incorrect, 

they became the best of friends. 

Indeed, it would literally be years 

before she would find him blue, 

and he find her pink. 

Until then they homogeneous; 

their rainbows shades of grey. 

They kinder in their garden, 

absent apple, vacant snake, 

hand in hand, before the fall. 

They learn of sugar and spice, 

   of puppy dog tails. 

That girls will be girls 

and boys will be boys, 

and both in turn are ucky, 

nay icky, nay just plain gross. 

That the only way 

you’d ever find each other 

holding hands was 

during a dreaded fire drill. 

“Over my dead body!” as it were. 

This long before they’d learn to long. 

Yet they resolve to evolve, 

and puberty soon arrives. 

She now anatomically quite correct;

he nothing more than erect. 

Of this they dare not say a word, 

for the greatest act of intimacy 

that a boy and girl could ever know 

would be that of holding hands. 

 That is, until that perilous moment 

when each one’s respective 

tooth and tongue comes in 

close proximity to the other, 

and all that negates 

the pending rend of flesh 

is the fortuitous presence 

   of purse and pout. 

That one pair of lips might 

choose to gnaw at another’s 

and there find it somehow erotic 

is the strangest of dire desires. 

Oh, and the taunt and titillation 

their tongues were want to do

was pucker peculiar indeed. 

And then they in the 

back seat of a car 

where frantic furtive hands 

werepermittedfelicitous functions 

other than that of holding the other. 

And it wasn’t long after this that 

their hands came to find 

each other again; they 

troth unto troth connubial. 

And they come to produce a child 

who at its striven best 

could manage to wrap 

the whole of its minute hand 

about the smallest of their fingers. 

 And it’s only a moment later 

that this same hand 

comes to wave as it 

heads off for school and beyond. 

Once boy and girl, 

now woman and man, 

   husband and wife, 

      mother and father, 

they now as aging couple alone, 

ensconced upon a porch swing, 

pensive hand within that of the other, 

waiting for that wistful wave to return. 

Decades tick by 

as if passing seconds, 

and here the only waves 

that greet forsaken eyes 

are those from the hands 

of an apathetic clock. 

Forlorn lovers whose liver-spot hands 

cling one to the other as vines entwined. 

They there embraced

beneath liniment layers of flannel 

   and blanket cerement. 

Each with dread of morning’s arrival; 

there finding the other’s hand 

cold to the touch. 

That this clutch of one’s warmth 

within the ardor of another’s 

should ever come to end. 

That there will 

inevitably come a time 

where one remains above ground; 

the other’s remains below. 

That now wizened hands 

might come to reach forth 

in quest of a beloved other, 

yet there grasp naught 

but ethereal void.

And then… 

And then that given grace 

when they as lovers are 

once again found beneath blanket, 

though this 

be a blanket 

of earth. 

And here both come to germinate. 

Remains here rendered rhizome, 

they two as root resurrected; 

hand unto hand once again. 

Dirt to dirt. 

Love unto loam. 

Once they were two, 

and now… 

they both are one. 

Ó2019 Jack David Hubbell