Oh, how he loves abusing them

His menagerie of masochists

Knowing they’ll  beg for more.

As he hits them with lies

And makes them lick his sneakers

Knowing how much they enjoy being humiliated and called “stupid”

Watch as his sadistically brainwashed get whipped into a frenzy

As the master smiles

That contorted I-love-torturing-people sneer

This master in the art of inflicting pain

does not clown around with those slaves he holds in bondage

They have no coulrophobia

But they crave his discipline

As he drills into their submissive brains.

Yelling, “I don’t give a shit about you. All I care about is me.”

And they love it

For their brains are cuffed to his genitals.

Oh, how he loves sexually assaulting them by rubbing porn stars in their faces

And teaching their children, “Abusers are good people”

And slaps the smiles off of young pregnant women

And punches the disabled to make the crowd laugh

And this sadist knows the weak of mind are easy prey

Always begging for abuse to be heaped upon them

And as the crowd cries out for more

He listens and smiles and  knows he is giving them pleasure

With interest, I read the SFWA announcement of Pamela Petro’s lecture at our monthly meeting. I catch part of the title of one of her books; focus on the words “Presence of Absence”.

I think, “How often have I been physically in one place but mentally in another?”

Yes, we can be in two places at the same time.

Yes, we all do it.

As kids, we perfect this skill watching the black arms on our classroom’s circular clock crawl toward the three and twelve.

And boy did we perfect the art of daydreaming.

And as I daydream, I question: Is the presence of absence an oxymoron?

You bet it is.

Then my brain jumps to other oxymorons, Simon and Garfunkel’s, “Sounds of Silence” and John Legend’s, “All of Me.”

I love Legend’s lyrics:

I love all your curves and all your edges

All your perfect imperfections.

So if you’re dying to live, and you don’t want to be absent from our presence, join us or you’ll miss Pamela Petro’s perfect imperfections.

Join us to hear Smith College’s own Pamela Petro speak about “The Long Field X-Ray’d – The Insider Story on How I Found the Skills and Guts to Write the Book” at the South Florida Writers Association’s monthly meeting on Saturday, May 4, 2024, Pinecrest Library, 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and on ZOOM, Login: 838 9971 8493.

Hope to see you there.

Yes, every once in a while, even writers catch a lucky break.

Yes, we do have our serendipitous moments.

And to my surprise, one week ago serendipity hit me in the aisle of a Cracker Barrel.

You see,  I’m the SFWA chairman of our joint 35th Anniversity, Howard Camner Poems Landing on the Moon Christmas party.

What an endeavor!

And one of my assignments is to look for stuff related to our theme, “The Moon.”

So I’m walking down that Cracker Barrel aisle and I find a display of moon-related stuff.

“Wow. How fortuitous,” I think and I wonder, “Was this display here because of the eclipse? Who knows?”

But as I examine the tchotchkes a smile eclipses my face. My eyes spy upon a box of porcelain salt & pepper shakers.

Not your ordinary run of the mill shakers but ones shaped like the Earth, the Moon, a rocket, and an alien.

A blue and green earth which highlights the continents, a pink moon pockmarked with craters, a black and white rocket with one porthole and four fins and a scary red moon alien.

Before my eyes, Howard Camner’s miraculous story has been told in porcelein.

On Earth, Howard crafts his poems.

Then a rocket flies them to the Moon.

Where aliens read them and think that our SFWA member is one hell-of-a-poet.

I buy half of the box of these salt & pepper shakers:

As gifts for Howard and his wife;

As party favors for the folks that plan and run the event;

As door prizes;

As a prop for this story.

So my fellow writers and poets, remember no matter where you are, be on the lookout for

serendipity.

For she may inspire you to write a poem or a story that ends up on the surface of the Moon.