LAST RUDE NOTE FOR YOUR DEPARTURE
As the frou-frou italic note at the bottom of the poem indicates, this was an e-mail to Doc Nagel. He was going to San Diego for a Phenomenology conference, and, I thought, with the time difference in my favor, I could send him a note before he left (thus the title); then, rather suddenly, "Descending into Saint Louis" sprang to mind, and I started composing this off the top of my head as a companion piece. The current version bears little resemblance to the first version, which made almost no sense at all, except to contradict "Descending's" assertion that there is a demon in the air. The (sorry) descending portion has some of my favorite lines, including "Trust in the boys at Boeing!" and the seat cushion mantra. Rachelle(The Wife)'s favorite bit is at the top, where common sense gets conked on the head. I think she actually said she can picture that. Which, I guess, okay, I'll let her...
The seed for this poem was actually sewn some years previous, while we were in Atlanta (and Chris and Kim were in Pittsburgh). Chris sent me an e-mail one Friday afternoon with the subject line "Last rude note for your weekend" (which, naturally, was not rude in the least). (It's part of his philosophy-boy Existential Angst pose, and also a bit of homage to Hunter Thompson.) After that it became something of a tradition for us to send each other e-mails claiming to be rude notes. You'd think this poem might put an end to the practice, but, oddly, it hasn't.