Black-eyed Peas And Chitlins

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I composed this poem this morning for lack of anything else to do in response to a goat farmer's initial good will and new year's greetings. I looked up the difference between the terms "restraint" and "constraint" and the Dictionary and Wikipedia revealed the expression "prisoner's complaint", and by employing poetic license I used it without actually knowing what it meant as determined by the aforementioned references.

2010

I've never cared much for black-eyed peas.
They make me uneasy to do as I please. 
But, when I react with a prisoner's constraint,
and claim to do things that I know that I can't,
no food or no condiment or no likker or beer
can stop kismet from filling my po' heart with fear, 
though I silently scream with unruly trepidation,
and wear a false smile and pretend to elation, 
I think about winter and how it's barely drawn near,
then yield to it's madness and say, "Happy New Year!"

fmp, Friday, 01/01/10

Granted, I've never liked the taste of black-eyed peas. They're about the only peas I don't like except the large green peas that I associated with English cooking. I can and do eat anything if I'm hongry, but I don't go buying none of them that don't taste good to me. I've never been all that particular about the taste of kale by itself. That's changing now. I eat the bottom leaves from the ornamental kale plant I bought at Lowe's as a regular fare. It's three times as big as it was, and has many more leaves on it since I brought it home.

An interesting facet of doing this raw food diet is the chlorophyll and the way it cleans up my taste buds and makes my breath smell fresher. I never have taken good care of my teeth. I've used every excuse I have run across to apologize when my crude ways offend somebody, but not having to because of my diet is a easier solution.

I injected the second dose of this new medicine prescribed to me for my arthritis this morning. I'm glad the time to do it came around because I've experienced some discomfort recently. My left shoulder and neck in particular. It hurts at night when I try to roll over. Not as bad as it used to, but enough to wake me up in order to deal with it. It buzzes during the daytime. I have to self-inject every two weeks, and other than taking calcium/vitamin D capsules that's all the medicine I'm taking now. I could get used to this. I must have been taking 5-6 pills both morning and night.

The way I'm going about this diet is intentionally haphazardous. My whole life, my subjective personal life that I conduct in the way that I do just for me, has been about how to respond to the various urges and yearnings I infrequently encounter while intending to be doing something different than that. Now, it seems, I'm dealing with a lack of urges, comparatively, and what to do in the interim to amuse myself.

My not eating meat hasn't produced no strange urges. Neither pro nor con. I'm keeping an eye out. One of my most important signs of how things are going with me health-wise is whether the medicine I take constipates me. It's not just a physical discomfort I have to concern myself with. When I'm literally full of shit, then I'm figuratively full of shit too. I have to be careful about that when I'm in the public eye.

There have been occasions when I've been out and about town shopping or eating at a cafe, that I've gotten angry for some reason or the other, and acted out in public like I do at home. I forget people are watching me openly display my inner feelings, but with a less-than-compassionate disposition. Basically, I'm just being another cranky old man, but for me that's worrisome.

Such awkward behavior is not politically expedient. Being old doesn't give me any right to behave indignantly than some pubescent kid showing off and fledging his wings. Not so oddly, his sins are more forgivable. I've seen how things go. I oughta know better because I've seen the outcome of being cranky too many times.

I guess I got it coming. I don't know if there's any truth to it, but I came up with a phrase I like that sounds like it could be true, but probably isn't. It's not so much of a specific wording that matters, but the idea that, how a young person treats old people when they're young, is how young people will treat them when they get old.

I've been saying something like that to the various people I encounter from day to day, just to watch how they respond when they get the idea I'm expressing. Most of them like the sound of it. It only makes sense fate would make such an arrangement. I figure most people think they're fairly kind and helpful to old people. If they're smart they will see the advantage of doing so immediately, quaint saying or no.

When I was out bumming around it didn't take long to figure out that being polite and helpful to older people was the only real option I could reliably reach for. Older people were more vulnerable and subject to mistreatment by neer-do-wells. Strong young people have a tendency to be on the alert to prove they respect their elders. For a bum with no place to run or hide to even give the appearance of taking advantage was an invitation to disaster. I might as well have been messing with their children or kicking they dog.

Over the years there have been many moments of reflection in which I remembered some occasion when I was lucky to have come out of dire straits alive and/or not being put in prison for something I didn't do. A homeless bum standing beside the road with nowhere in particular to go is an invitation for some people to shift the onus of some evil deed on a drifter to get outta jail free.

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