The Handicapper

My father was a gambling man

Filled with the wisdom of the track

Mottos of a practical nature

Never gamble more

Than you can afford to lose

He said with no trace of irony

As he spent his three score and ten

Among the company of smokey men

My father was a sometime cautious man

Metering out advice like a reluctant tipster

If you're at the table

And you don't know who the sucker is

It's you

He said

As we shared a quiet meal

Just he and I

My father was a calculating man

Who read the form and knew the odds

And at the track he said

He won more than he lost

But at what cost

Never gamble more

Than you can afford to lose

He said with no trace of irony

As he spent his three score and ten

Among the company of smokey men

Socrates' Golf Handicap

I had a dream that I sent a message from my future self
To my present self
And I thought

How would I know if I was in the right place and time
To pick it up

My future self would know
Because at one time, it would have found it

And suddenly, it came to me
Now
Now would be a good time

Then I thought

What if the message was too specific
Like
"Don't by a parakeet on February 17th"
That would be no good
Because if I avoided the parakeet
Then the future would be different
And my future self wouldn't have to go to the trouble of warning me about the parakeet
and thus the message would be rendered meaningless

So what message could I send
That was specific enough to be helpful
But not so specific that it sets up
The parakeet paradox

And the answer is
Golf advice

The fact that I don't play golf
Means that my future self can safely
Give me advice or information pertaining to golf

And I will automatically understand
that this is a metaphor
And not an instruction

"Drive for show: Putt for dough" is a well-worn trope

And knowing this
My future self asks
the Socratic

Why not use your putter
as a driver?

My Emotional Toolkit

When I was young
I tried to learn life's lessons while I played
Gave tongue to simple questions
And listened hard to answers
With all the respect that could be paid

Hung on parent's sage advice
And even when repeated
Earnestly I listened twice

Now aged two score and more
I understand the reason
For all the messes that I made:

I learned almost nothing in that season
'cept how to sulk
And how to piss off friends in bulk

And though I am a child of fools
I merited
The harvest of my un-society

Of all the living tools that I inherited
The only social ones
With which
I regularly played

Were a pair of tweezers
And a hand grenade

Building a Box

Boxes always make me think of four

So when I made a flower box
Those are all the sides I used
A back a front
Both long
A side another side
Both short

All fourness nailed together at the corners
It looked  a proper box

I filled it with soil
Ready for seeds

This would have all been fine
Except the box was in the wrong place

And when I moved the box
The earth stuck to the ground
Instead of the box
Because earth prefers sticking to the ground more than anything
Which is why that is where you usually find it

And this may be
Why gravity is

And boxes are not four

Hidden

I play among
the kindly ones
the sparing ones
the caring ones

I am a thimble
and a lamb
A dull rock to sit on
and a sharpener of scissors

The sometime child
the listener of tales

The unintended
The spilled drink
The incidental fart

The happy accident