050: La Fin du Monde

Read the world’s ending

in a book

again

today

and I laughed
not out of disrespect
but determination
to laugh
I’ve determined laughter
helps us finish
strong.

It’s not the first book
today
printed whose themes
feature
the end of the world
it’s a popular transition from
fantasy
to
science
fiction
to move from eschatology to
utopia/dystopia
through
apocalypse
into
post-apocalypse
and… here we are!
science
fiction
from
fantasies
(dear tom, will, matt – I totally predicted
your immanent come-back
of science fiction
via post-apocalypse…
not that I’m bragging because
you never know
the day or
the hour
it’s coming…)

many family members
preppin’
with canned food
ammo enough to sow a thousand fields
were they seeds rather than shells
of broken things
like the heirloom kind they buy
unlike those engineered
to die
three generations out
from harvest

buddy told me to buy-gold-not-buy-gold-buygold
after the Dinar revalues
(after the bitcoin exploded already)
after they devalue the dollar
nevermind, don’t buy gold again,
buy foreign stocks
from those countries
America invaded
in order to have
something worth investing
in:
Japan
Germany
Iraq (once they get theirs up and running)
because depression’s a great
foe, great depression
is
and I
determined to laugh
so
I laughed.

Call me a scoffer, a cynic, a mocker
but I see the ashes, the cinders, the embers
and laugh
because fire keeps me warm.

I see the smoke rising and see
smoke signals
in billowing willows
and think: if Isengaurd’s burning
then Ents are on the way.

I see poisoned wells
and rejoice that half the world doesn’t
have clean drinking water because
as we sitswimmin in 16,000-gallon pools
our water’s rotting
while theirs has reached stasis
and they drink up together and
laughing and chugging
poisoned sacraments of the poor
while we die of thirst,
so I laugh too,
because that’s what my homeless friends do
and Rich told me
“He did not have a home”
so why should I?
The whole world belongs to the meek,
so why should I?
Funny, life.

I see wounded wings
mended
when kids giggle
and bells toll.

I see crashing planes
flown inverted
by drunk men
laughing
who say, “Hello, my name…”
and laugh with others
who once nursed the bottle
intemperately,
who readily admit:
we’ve all got a serious problem.

I see games to end hunger,
Givers,
people sick of taking The Stand,
game overs for readied Player Ones,
all under Big Brother,
and I can’t help
but laugh
because even O’Conner and
Anne Rivers Siddons
Straub
Shirley Jackson
dude that wrote The Walking Dead
McCarthy – these “southerners”
all can enjoy the sweet
tea
black and
refined sugar
meet
in
brown-iced-liquid
They laugh at dinner like the rest of us
if given half a chance
and good company
“friends,” that is.

Don’t believe me?
read Malin’s recipe for “THE NEW AMERICAN GOTHIC:”
(1) setting: microcosm
(2) …as image of imprisonment, confining narcissism
See there? New trends makes perfect sense,
whether zombie,
bomb
-ie, economic collapse, or your
run-of-the-mill invasion
(of the body snatchers),
because it’s all as small
as claustrophobic
as the modern kitchen table
which remains woefully vacant
either literally
(where only one due to loneliness or
none due to fast food)
or figuratively
(where only one due to worry or
many due to screened-in
phones)
gather around and forget that this
symbols
communion.
And so we invest in
(1) microcosms of
(2) imprisoning narcissism
and let the wrappers,
status-updates,
preppers,
and divorce
leave us like the last man
in a prison full of
living hell,
undead
but at least we have our guns…
and at least they have theirs.

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hmm. [chuckles]

Maybe not.
see if the “No man is an island” remains ignored
we convert
kitchen tables
back into islands
and the only way off the island
(Lost?)
is by building a land bridge
not in the Alexandrian way,
using the rubble of conquered cityscapes to
level the playing field,
but rather the rubble
of broken loves
broken kins
broken brokers
to rebuild a path from my side of the table
toward yours
and that sort of thing
starts with the sound of
kitchen tables,
starts with
a laugh.

So yeah, I laugh when you tell me the world’s ending
not out of disrespect
but out of this respect:
laughter’s the only way out.

“But Lance, the world’s really ending.
Like, for real this time.”
I know.

[sound of laughter]
Trust me, I know.

Is the world ending?
Sure, why not? Has been for two-thousand years.
Apocalyptic
literature
‘s as old
as Scripture
after all.
We humans’ve done this thing for quite some time…
and the best of us knew how to overcome and
laugh. Look at John, Zeke,
Bell and her Dragon.

That Shepherd of… what was it again? Hermas?
Sure, why not, the world’s always ending.
So what’s changed?
Nothing.
Wars
rumors of wars
not yet the end, but
the end’s in sight.
[sound of laughter]

Greatest man to ever live
saw the end
and laughed,
scoffed, really,
in the face of doom
(His)
and the world’s ending.
Oh we could wax about the appropriateness
of phrases eloquent-yet-cliché:
laughed his head off,
laughed it to scorn,
laughing all the way to the bank,
but really
the laugh’s on him
cause he had the
last laugh.

Story time:

The other day
my buddy was having
a rough day
so we played chess after eating
homemade burritos
at his kitchen table.
His world was falling apart
(he’d overstated a point)
My world was falling apart
(I hadn’t got paid for an invoice yet)
His wife’s world was falling apart
(she dropped twelve stitches on her knitting)
My wife’s world was falling apart
(we are moving away soon)
His son’s world was falling apart
(he had to go to bed without milk)
His daughter’s world was falling apart
(she wanted to stay in the living room and flirt some more
with me,
even though I won’t flirt back—she’s three
and I married the lady of my dreams)
and everyone I knew was falling apart
and everyone he knows was falling apart
and our everyones everyoned into everyone
until everyone and everything
fell apart.

The
fragments spilled out on the table…

even on top of
our chess game where he beat me with
hypermodern openings
that he didn’t know were
named thusly, yet
played yet thusly…

He sat down a bottle of
French beer named
La Fin du Monde
and he
friended
me
and I
friended him
over fragments,
broken bits of pottery,
and started to piece together
a vibrant mosaic
using this audacious
glue that’s found in abundance deep inside,
underground, the
motherlode
running through all of our
kitchen table islands
this natural
resource,
this love-
glue called
laughter.

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We laughed
while I sipped,
some would say “nursed,”
the bottle
of the end of the world.

}{

For newcomers — a note on 50 @ 25:

Once upon a time, I read that the perfect age for writing quality poetry is twenty-three.  Apparently most of T.S. Elliot’s stuff came out then, the rest of his work being supposedly non-poetic. This resulted in 46 poems written at 23.

These poems came out exponentially faster and faster before my 24th birthday on April 30th – and I had to write in genres spanning from epic ballads to limericks to get 46 in on time. I guess that means, for better or worse, that’s the best poetry I’ll ever write. Sad day.

Who was I kidding?

Milton was blind and oldoooooold—when he publishedParadise Regained. Emily Dickenson was dead when her stuff came out. My favorite stuff from T.S. Elliot came out after his conversion. So yeah, old age is good for poetry too. Look at Burns and Berry.

(Side note: the name “Berry Burns” sounds like a shady car salesman).

Will I keep up this twice-my-age regimen every few years? Who knows, but this year, here’s to 50 poems at 25 to be written exponentially faster until I turn 26 on April Thirtyish. I do it this the second time around as a way to say: “Here’s to living life well before it’s too late.”


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  1. storiesbywilliams

    Not bad, very poignant and full if delicious puns. However, I must ask what you think of the beer that holds the name, the label of which adorns your page. The Beer Snob in me holds it as one of the worlds best and would like you’re thoughts…

    1. lanceschaubert

      It’s one of my favorites. The sheer palate velocity in that bottle does have the power to end the world for the untrained beer patron. I think I’ve tasted smoke, oak chips, raspberries, vanilla, wheat, rye, gunpowder, motor oil, sea salt, sailor sweat and cherries among other things sipping La Fin Du Monde.

      So yeah, it’s one of the world’s best — the wine of beers.

  2. peggy s

    I stand amazed every time I read your poetry (storys) Where does all this come from?? You will b e famous someday, wait and see!! Love Grandma

    ________________________________

    1. lanceschaubert

      Aww. Well thanks. If there’s anything worth sharing on here, I suppose it comes from the Irish soul, the Native American blood, the German bones and the Christian mind and heart.

Quick note from Lance about this post: when you choose to comment (or share this post with your friends) you help other readers just like you.

How?

Well, see, your comments & sharing whisper a few things to those who come after you:

The first is that this site is a safe place to speak up & stay curious. That it's civil. That discussion is encouraged. That there's no such thing as a stupid question (being a student of Socrates, I really and truly believe this). That talking to one another and growing together is more important than anything we could possibly publish. That the point is growing in virtue and growing together and growing wise. That discovery is invention, deference is originality, that we all can rise together. The only folks I'm going to take comments down from are obvious jerks who argue in bad faith, don't stay curious, or actively make personal attacks. And, frankly, I'd rather we talk here than on some social media farm — I will never show ads and the only thing I'm selling anywhere on the site or my mailing list is just the stuff I make.

You're also helping folks realize that anything you & they build together is far more important than anything you come to me to read. I take the things I write about seriously, but I don't take myself seriously: I play the fool, I hate cults of personality, and I also don't really like being the center of attention (believe it or not). I would much rather folks connect because of an introduction I've made or because they commented with one another back and forth and then build something beautiful together. My favorite contributions have been lifelong business and love partnerships from two people who have forgotten I introduced them. Some of my closest friends NOW I literally met on another blog's comment section fifteen years ago. I would love for that to happen here — let two of you meet and let me fade into the background.

Last, you help me revise. I'm wrong. Often. I'm not embarrassed to admit it or worried about being cancelled or publicly shamed. I make a fool out of myself (that's sort of the point). So as I get feedback, I can say, "I was wrong about that" and set a model for curious, consistent learning, and growing in wisdom. I'm blind to what I don't know and as grows the island of my knowledge so grows the shoreline of my ignorance. It's the recovery of innocence on the far end of experience: a child is in a permanent state of wonder. So are the wise: they aren't afraid of saying, "I don't know. That's new: please teach me." That's my goal, comments help. And I read all reviews: my skin's tough, but that's not license to be needlessly cruel. We teach one another our habits and there's a way to civilly demolish an idea without demolishing another person: just because I personally can take the world's meanest 1-star review doesn't mean we should teach one another how to be crueler on the internet.

For three magical reasons — your brave curiosity, your community, & my ignorance:

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