T.V.

SO,

I guess I'm like eating chicken-fried steak,
mash-potatoes and green beans, maybe a salad
with french dressing, and I'm about 7, and
I'm laying on an orange shag carpet
watching a wooden cabinetted Zenith that
has heavy folding retractable shudders
with dangling brass door handles that
look like inverted chess pieces, like
inverted Bishops, or maybe Rooks.

I can remember every nuance of that cabinet.
The stepping regime in the base.
The sort of 'little porch' above the CRT,
but I can't remember the knobs on
the T.V. I really think half the time
I was just sitting there luxuriating
in wood fantasies. I can remember
the color of the wood. The deep brown
glossy grain. That was our first 'good'
T.V. And it lasted until I was in High School,
I think, and then we got another one
and it was in a cabinet too! Always
liked wood. We always had paneled
T.V. Rooms, or "Living Rooms" they
called them, but they were T.V. Rooms.

I can still sing the Mutual of Omaha song
from Wild Kingdom:

Mutual of Omaha IS people,
You can count on when the going's
rough.

But now my mind hangs on

Mu, Chew all.
Which I guess means that matter
is a koan that eats you.

Not sure what house I'm remembering,
but I remember watching a show called
Gargoyles, that disturbed me, but then
the room I had at that time was painted
dark purple from the former owners.

That was a weird room.
I think that room sort of freaked me out.
Plus, in that yard there was some kid's
fort already build in behind these big old
Yucca plants and some other junk,
and there was a huge stash of nudist magazines,
not porno, but nudist rags full of families
playing volleyball in the nude, stuff
like that. Ma and Pa camping with
their yaks and oodles hanging out.

I never showed those to anyone,
and I used the space as a sitting
area where I would arrange, and, well,
let's face it, talk to my bubblegum cards.

Yes,
I talked to my bubblegum cards
and made them into social groups.
Then eventually I met Randy and Ray,
and started getting into movie monsters
and comic books. Thank God.

Later in life, I heard that Randy
had become a male stripper and did
well with it. They had Evil Knievel
on a motorcycle, and we made it do
a lot more than it did on T.V. and
also we would write on our bodies

with tape and sunshine.

Things like:

HELLO
STAR
or just,
Lanny.