“What are you talking about? ”
“Never mind, eat the fruit. ”
“You know, this place almost looks like the Garden of Eden. ”
“Eat the fruit. ”
“Sounds quite like it too. “
older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter. He wanted to die.
The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensibile rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories.
Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey he would stand near every child of the world, leave one of the dwarves’ invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen in time.
He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas. His punishment was harsher.
Ho.
Ho.
Ho.
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions.
You want to know about voting. I’m here to tell you about voting. Imagine you’re locked in a huge underground night-club filled with sinners, whores, freaks and unnameable things that rape pitbulls for fun. And you ain’t allowed out until you all vote on what you’re going to do tonight. You like to put your feet up and watch “Republican Party Reservation”. They like to have sex with normal people using knives, guns, and brand new sexual organs you did not even know existed. So you vote for television, and everyone else, as far as your eye can see, votes to fuck you with switchblades. That’s voting. You’re welcome.
At first she thought she could kill him three days.
She did nearly. His heart proved nearly unequal to her compliments.
Then she thought it would take three weeks. But he survived.
So she revised her tables and calculated three months.
After three years, he was still alive. So they got married.
Now they’ve been married for thirty years. People speak warmly of them.
They are known as the best marriage in town.
It’s just that their children keep dying.
God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players (i.e., everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
Moments In Erasure 
04.07.2008
Posted in Poetry with tags art, bob hicok, funny, literature, Poetry, social commentary, writing on April 7, 2008 by Ryan Sanford SmithRinging the bell curve (a poem by Bob Hicok)
I’m doing a study on ambition.
For science
I say to participants
as I take their money.
If they run after me
but don’t catch up
I write down that they’re slow.
Those that catch me
but are ticklish I’ve labeled
the “giggling poor.”
You see why I gravitated
to the social sciences.
I have a pool and you don’t.
I have nomenclature
at my disposal.
I have your address
and an index of your contortions.
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