Poem: Corn

 Corn

She always has a lot of questions at bedtime.

She asks when will be the next time that I pick her up from school
and I explain again how I work Monday to Friday now
and can’t do school pick-ups these days.

Oh.

She asks how much money I make at my job
and I tell her my hourly wage
and she ask how much that is for the whole day
and I tell her.

That’s a lot, she says.

It sounds like a lot, I say,
but it all goes to rent and groceries
and she doesn’t quite understand
so I explain that after paying for our place to live and our food
there’s no money left.

Oh, she says. That makes me feel sad.

I see the opportunity to slide in a lecture,
something about why we need to be appreciative and not wasteful
and finish our meals and clean out plates
even when we don’t particularly want the dinner daddy made
and oh yeah
I really need to use the corn in the back of the fridge before it goes bad
I should really check what we have in there
I don’t want to waste anything either

And instead of a lecture I tell her we have everything we need
and we’re doing just fine
and that it’s really time for her to go to sleep so she can wake up tomorrow.

Besides, I think to myself,
our money problems will all be solved
once my poetry career takes off.

(2021).

Poem: Earliest Evidence

Earliest Evidence

Someone asked about my earliest memory of wanting to be a writer--

when did you first know, etc., etc...

and instead of thinking about some conscious acknowledgment of writing
as either activity or vocation,
before I had any inclination of learning how to write fiction,
or effective, efficient non-fiction--

I remembered an event from first grade,
when I was literally learning how to write,
as in read and write,
printing block letters in pencil on lined paper.

Our teacher, Mrs. Deaton, asked the class what happened on the weekend.
I couldn't think of anything interesting that happened,
but I immediately thought of something interesting that didn't happen,
so I raised my hand and explained how,
on the weekend,
our kitchen stove caught fire. 

The other kids were amazed, no one pressed me for details,
and I wrote the sentence in nice block letters
with a picture of my stick figure mother
running away from out avocado green stove as it burned.

Mrs. Deaton gave me a check mark,
wrote "Good picture!" in the corner,
and we all hung our work in the hallway so everyone could see
what a great job we were doing learning how to write.

A few weeks later our family went to church,
and after the service was over,
my mom brought me back into the empty sanctuary.

She told me how another mom had seen my sentence in the school hallway,
and how that mom had asked my mom if we had replaced our burnt stove yet.

And mom explained how lying is wrong,
I guess hoping that the message would have extra force
if she said it to me in church.

It hadn't occurred to me when I wrote the whole stove thing that it was a lie.
To me, a lie was when someone asks you a question and you give a wrong answer,
like,
did you carve up the furniture with your boy scout knife?
No, not me.

As far as I knew,
the stove thing wasn't a lie.
I was just making something up to entertain others.

So if the question is,
when did you become a writer,
I guess it was around the moment
I learned how to write.

 

Poem: The Funniest Thing I Ever Heard My Father Say

 The Funniest Thing I Ever Heard My Father Say

I was around twenty
and he helped me find a used car
for going back and forth to the university.

It was a 1983 Chevrolet Celebrity sedan
high mileage
but not in bad shape
and a bargain at $500
because the owner had to sell it fast.

After a few weeks the steering went
leaving a puddle of pink fluid on the street
and requiring the replacement of the rack and pinion.

Dad did the work.
He always fixed the cars.

It was not an easy operation
as the steering had to go in an awkward place
up under the engine.

Dad,
self-taught in the art of automotive repair
during generations when cars were built
with easy and accessible structures
began ranting against the more complicated models
stemming
he believed
from American companies imitating more complex Japanese design trends.

I stood by the tool bench
passing him an occasional wrench.

He got more and more frustrated
trying to fit the steering assembly into its niche
and eventually exploded:

"Lee Iacocca
When I die and go to Hell
I'm going to find you
and kick you square in the balls!"

I didn't hang around too much longer.
He had all the wrenches he needed.

I reminded him of what he had said once
years later.
He didn't remember
and was surprised.
Several years sober by this time
he speculated about how many rum and cokes
he might have had that night.

The car ran well for several more years

until I took $500 dollars for it

when I had to sell it fast.

Welcome to the Era of Openness: Poem

Welcome to the Age of Openness

Welcome to the age of openness

Where your worth is tied to your willingness to share

Where your experiences do not exist if they are not documented

    and posted for like share subscribe

Where every thought must be broadcast, every idea shared

Everything everything everything is content

And we are all just content creators and content consumers

And it used to be "it's not what you know, it's who you know,"

But now it's "how's the content, how many followers, how many subscribers,

    and what percentage of them are bots?

And people cry defund the police and oh no, what would we do,

    how would we catch the bad people,

    and we realize that cops don't catch the bad people anymore,

    people with cell phone catch the bad people by posting the videos,

    including videos of the cops.

The cops of the future will just be really, really online kids,

    and the choice will be cancel or convict.

Welcome to the era of openness,

Where the current president got nominated off the strength of his Twitter game,

Where simply documenting your existence is a viable career \,

Where you can be a youtuber, an influencer, a cosplayer, a gamer,

and a new defining aspect of being a have or have-not 

    relates to the speed of your internet connection.

Welcome to the era of openness,

Where maybe you don't have health insurance

    but if you can share well enough

    make yourself sympathetic enough

    maybe you can crowdsource enough money

    to see a doctor after a cop breaks your face

    for protesting against violence cops.

At least you got the whole incident on video .

That's great content.

Welcome to the era of openness,

Where the unwired are the ignored,

Where the private are the forgotten,

Where life is but an attention-desperate consumer

    that struts and frets through meme-cycles online

    and then is shared no more,

Where we are the idiots full of sound and fury,

    endlessly repeating nothing,

Where or social media profiles live on after we die.

Welcome to the new immortality.

* * *

Two Poems: Colloquial, and Omniphoria

Colloquial

The first good thing I wrote was a story

for a creative writing class.
We had an assignment each week
and by week three I was out of ideas
so I wrote a story about writer's block
that turned out pretty well--

That became one of the major themes of my art,
such as it is
art about art
because there's nothing else to talk about,
|novels about writers who are writing
novels about writers who are writing
novels about, hell, I dunno, me, I guess. 

If I was deeper person I would have deeper themes,
and sometimes I come up with something.
Love was a theme for a while,
And I got some mileage out of angst and depression
and drunkenness and the fear of going mad-- 

But eventually I'm left writing a poem
about not knowing what to write a poem about.
Metatextuality, they call it--
that act of creative, self-reflexive self-awareness. 

The colloquial term is being a dumbass.

* * *

Omniphoria

Dragons hoard gold and gems cups and crowns
Pseudodragons hoard any shiny crap they see
like spoons
beer bottle caps
or whatever

crows collect shiny things too
paper clips and such
carry them around
show them off
sometimes give them as gifts
to children who set out  food for them

It is omniphoria
a neologism
Greek omni ‘all’ + pherein ‘carry’
-> ‘all-carrying’

and it applies to the artists too
the painters singers poets makers
who collect the shiny little things
carry them around
show them off
and then make gifts of them.

* * *

"Omniphoria" originally appeared in Suggestion Box: Fifty Poems.

Three Poems: Octopus, School, and Quaint

Three poems: "Octopus," from the Suggestion Box: Fifty Poems collection, "School," and a new poem, "Quaint."

Octopus

The common octopus is a marvel

eight tentacles which can be categorized
as two legs and six arms
with a battery of super-powers:
the toothed tongue for sawing through shells,
the ability to change color and texture
to blend in with surfaces,
the ink spray to obfuscate its escape
while jetting away at forty kilometers an hour,
and smart enough to dance
with its reflection in a mirror.

It is an amazing creature
the smartest invertebrate
and one of this planet’s wonders
and yet it lives
only twelve to eighteen months
before dying.

And here I sit
eating stale chips
and reading yesterday’s paper.
I’ll probably get eighty years.

Doesn’t seem fair, somehow.

* * *

School

One thing that made it possible
for me to get up every morning
and drag myself through the mixture
of tedium and drudgery,
the mild threat of violence or humiliation
that bullies and social hierarchy presented

was the possibility of the random encounter
the crossing of paths with my many crushes
the chance of a kind word spoken
or a moment of eye contact

but let's face it

as necessary as the whole thing is,
for the most part
school was just
a goddamn drag

and my crushes faded into the past
not knowing they were my crushes
and if I was anyone else's crush
I faded away
not knowing it either.

* * *

Quaint

Anybody can be amazing once
Anybody can hit a single home run
Or throw one knockout punch
Anybody can bust their ass
and lead the pack for one single day. 

But the challenge comes the next morning
when you have to get up
and the pack is ready to go again.
The challenge comes after that single great success
and you’re told
“Great shot, kid. Do it again.”

 Anybody can be intense for a brief stretch.
It’s much harder to be consistent.
It’s much harder to get up every single day and tell yourself,
time to do it again. 

No one ever made it off of
one great shot or one great day.
You only ever make it
if you’re willing to do your best
again and again
and again
and again.

* * *

Two Poems: Waves, and Putrefaction

Waves

 

Trouble comes at you in waves

Crashing against you relentlessly

 

Demands and criticisms

Dangers and needs and insufficiencies

Conflict and danger and worry

 

These waves are eternal

They never stop coming

 

And like stones on the seashore

these waves can shape you

wear you down

wash you away

 

Some days are storms

the waves hit you like blows--

Other days are placid

and you feel nothing but a caress.

 

What can you do?

You can't stop trouble from coming

any more than the rock can stop the sea.

But just like the rock

you can stand strong

with eternal patience

and understanding.

 

* * *

Putrefaction

 

There was a time when I saw a real problem with rock and roll--

Rock and roll, and beer, and TV,

and everything I really liked basically--

 

Because I saw them and all the other

amusements and entertainments that make life tolerable

as blocking real progress--

 

Anything that lets the proletariat blow off steam

prevents the steam from building up and rupturing a broken system.

 

Because who needs to concern themselves

with throwing off the yoke of the oppressors

if you can get drunk and dance to good music

and if you don't meet a girl or a boy or whoever you like

there will always be some TV to keep you company--

 

Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses--

true for his time perhaps, although too narrow.

A regime that represses everything will always fall sooner or later

But an oppressive system that allows religion

and beer and porn and rock and roll and everything else

is very difficult to overthrow because

there is so much to distract the oppressed from the oppression--

 

and it's so hard to focus on the putrefaction of the system

and overwhelming injustice and inequity and corruption

when your sports team is in the playoffs

and there's a new Thor movie coming soon

and weed is legal and beer is in the grocery stores--

 

Who could rebel under such a system?

Consumer culture keeps us as happy little victims.

 

Billionaires laugh

while we drink and dance and blow off our steam.

 

* * *

New Poem: Delicate

Delicate

 

It can be really difficult living with other people

I've never met anyone who can be happy all the time

and familiarity breeds contempt

while absence makes the heart grow fonder

and all the other very true clichés--

 

and all I want is to be alone most of the time

but just like when I was a little kid

and I hated drying the dishes so much

but I often did it without being asked

just so my mom wouldn't have to do everything alone--

 

Now I spend my time with the others

maybe not as much as they want

but more than I want--

 

that sense of obligation and duty pushing me--

 

but then sometimes when I do too much

and it starts to grate on my nerves

I get shitty and nasty and on edge

 

"you're always on edge" they tell me

and it's true

 

it's all a delicate balance:

be there so much that they never miss me

but be away enough that I can stand it

 

and most of all

I really think I overestimate

how much I'm needed anyway

 

sometimes.

* * *

New Poem: Opulence

Opulence

 

One factor that motivated the French

to surrender Paris to the Nazi war machine

rather than fight for every inch of ground

was the desire to preserve the architecture

the art

the monuments

the opulence--

 

They didn't want to see their history

churches, museums, palaces, etcetera

demolished by bombs, artillery, and tanks--

 

Better to surrender their monuments

of victory and liberty to the fascists

and as a result they saw Nazi soldiers

smirking as they marched under the Arc de Triumphe.

 

Sartre was right in his comment

that surrendering these objects to fascists

robbed them of their worth

and made them meaningless.

 

Try to remember when you're living under fascists

not to cry too much at the destruction of property

belonging to the oppressor class.      

A broken window means nothing

compared to

enforced poverty

and a boot on your throat.

 

 

* * *

New Poem: Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition

 

Riots again.

 

The current president

is calling for those who protest murder by the police

to be murdered by the police.

 

The previous president

is saying murder by police

should not be normal in America in 2020

Even though he went dining and dancing on Martha's Vineyard

on the night of the 2014 Ferguson riots--

 

doing absolutely nothing to change

what was absolutely normal

about police murdering black people in America.

 

A black woman dies in Toronto with police on the scene

and some people assume they killed her

and some other people say the police here are different

Canadian police aren't so racist--

 

And I remembered the Saskatoon Police

taking Indigenous men and dropping them off in the snow

to freeze to death twenty years ago

(although they admitted they'd been doing it for at least forty)

and no, it's not the same thing--

 

But a white supremacist cop

is a white supremacist cop

and it's not much of a juxtaposition

between theirs and ours.

 

* * *

Two New Poems: "Ghosting," and "Market 2020"

Ghosting

 

I'd like to apologize for ghosting you

It wasn't my intention--

I have a bad habit of assuming

that I won't be missed.

My more natural inclination

is to assume that contacting you

would be bothersome to you

"oh, it's THAT guy again"

and I tend to prefer being alone anyway.

 

I admit that when I was younger

there were girls I didn't call

and if they called I told them I was sick

or I just wanted to be friends.

I suppose I could have been more straightforward

 

But ghosts

are naturally inclined

to be cowards.

 

* * *

Market 2020

 

During a moment

in which 100,000 Americans have died unnecessarily--

 

and many more are fighting pitched street battles

for the right to not be openly murdered

by those sworn to protect them--

 

A moment where the American government pledges

$484 billion to help those suffering (April 24)

And it is announced that America's billionaires

just got $484 billion richer (May 22)--

 

And the government reminds American workers

that they are human capital stock,

a term which fixes value on a worker's ability

to make billionaires even richer,

 

It can be hard to find the motivation

to perform the little tasks

like sweeping the floor or making the bed

or writing another stupid poem.

 

There is no end to that which must be protested

And no end to that which must be done.

 

* * *

New Poem on Alcoholism and Sobriety: "Peel, Bark, and Root"

Bark, Peel, and Root



At about three months sober I started to crack.

I recognized the benefits of sobriety

I wasn't planning every minute of the day around my beer run--

I wasn't swinging on a three-day cycle

between craving, drunk, and hung over--

I wasn't snapping out in rage quite as often

(sometimes, but maybe less)

and I didn't have to hide or lie or make excuses--



but I was starting to crack.



I was hitting two or three AA meetings a week

Whenever I could fit them in

And I was feeling all the stress.



When I was drinking, I had a bunch of small-to-medium problems,

And a big problem, which was drinking.

But when I had a drink in my hand, I didn't have any problems.

Now sober, I still had the small-to-medium problems,

Still had the big drinking problem,

But didn't have the relief of getting drunk.



I broke and got a pack of dealcoholized beer (0.5 %)

to try and take the edge off.

I told my temporary AA sponsor about that and he said

that was slippery-slope material.

Better to try some chamomile tea to try and calm down.



So now here I am with small-to-medium problems,

A big problem, and a long time standing in the coffee and tea aisle.

Chamomile, spearmint, orange peel, and lemongrass.

Black tea, chicory root, ground coffee beans, and cinnamon bark.

Ginger root, blackberry leaves, linden, and lemon peels.

Licorice root, anise, cardamom pod, clove bud, and black pepper.



What the fuck, man.



* * *

Two Poems: Universe and Stained Glass

Two more poems. Did you know I have poetry books for sale at Amazon, Smashwords, KoBo, Nook, Apple, and literally everywhere else? Just saying.

* * * 

Universe

They're not getting thrown out

you patiently explain over and over

they're just going into storage

we can take them back out another time

and it'll be like having new toys all over again

 

but they're not even really toys

they're just things

a random collection of plastic bits

accumulated without intention

tiny dinosaurs, fairies, heroes, cars

doll accessories, pirates and pieces--

a mismatched menagerie of junk

an unplayed-with universe

acquired on every visit to the dollar store

in every happy meal, inside chocolate eggs

and found every day

when a child walks down the sidewalk

 

a treasure for an hour

then forgotten,

and you think of their grandfather

who had to make his own toys

for himself and his cousins on the farm

from wood and nails

and bits of string.

Stained Glass

The past is an abandoned church

the scenes of your story

play out in the dusty images

of broken stained glass windows.

Let it come down.

* * *

New Poem: Misanthropic

Misanthropic

 

Like many of you,

I enjoy fantasizing about the Apocalypse.

 

Or more accurately

I enjoy fantasizing about after the Apocalypse,

when all of mankind has been wiped out

except for me, a sexy love interest, a few buddies,

and a gang of villains we need to overcome.

 

We see it all the time in books, films, TV:

a burned-out, empty world

with the sins of mankind scorched away by some disaster

of our own making

 

and we die by the hand of Hubris.

 

It's a fantasy born of fear, misanthropy, and narcissism

(everybody deserves to die except for me because I'm special).

Billions have to be wiped out to atone for the sins of the specialty classes:

the oligarchy

the aristocracy

old money

the political class

the industrial giants.

We fantasize about wiping out 99.99999%

When all of mankind's worst is based on a blueprint from the 0.00001.

 

The problem is, it's always wrong.

In the fantasy, it's always an empty desert.

But really, without people here,

In a few months, it would all be oh so green.

 

* * *

Read Among the Humans today!

Two Poems: Luminous and Membranes

Luminous

I admit to having issues with my appearance

I have compared my body to a sack of potatoes

Even though I know it's a good body

It gets me around, gives me little pain

And I feel ungrateful for not loving it more

Because of mere aesthetics

 

I fantasize about a body that is sleek and shiny

All smooth and graceful, strong and fast

I smash myself in the gym and get strong

But I never get sleek

Abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym

And my kitchen is full of cookies and beer

 

But it's a good body

I am not sleek or shiny

But I am luminous

 

Glowing from within.

* * * 

Membranes

Our bodies are full

of semi-permeable membranes

 

which are membranes designed

to allow only certain types

of molecules to pass through

 

I wish we had the same for our souls

that the love would pass in

and the hate would be rejected

turned away by our membranes

and we would be happy and full of love.

 

We don't have those special magic membranes

so we have to do the sorting ourselves

 

and that can be very, very tiresome.

* * * 

Explore Nolan's titles to read more.

New Poem: Clothes

Clothes

Every year or so I decide it's time

to get in the best shape of my life.

I return to the gym and pound weights

until my schedule changes or I catch a cold

and lose momentum and give up for a while.

But dammit, this time I wasn't going to quit!

I worked out with dumbbells at home every single day

and hit the gym three or four times a week

and my arms and shoulders and chest grew and grew.

My shirts didn't quite fit anymore--

the armpits were too tight.

Yeah, baby! I was going to get so freaking huge

I would need all new clothes! Muscle clothes!

Then my elbow started to hurt.

It always made a grinding noise

because of a high school bicycle accident

but this was serious pain.

Doctor's diagnosis: lateral epicondylitis,

commonly known as tennis elbow,

which I'd gradually given myself over ten years

of trying to be Champion Dad,

pushing my kids halfway to the moon on the swings.

Idiot.

Now I'm going for walks,

waiting for my elbow to eventually stop hurting

so I can lift again.

And all of my shirts fit loose.

* * *

Like my poetry? Try About a Bird or Suggestion Box!

New Poem: Cannibal

Cannibal

In the beginning everything comes cheap

you can burn ideas

spend details freely

spill ink like water from a well that doesn't dry

maybe what hasn't arrived yet in quality

is made up for in quantity as we burn and burn

quantity comes first

quality comes after quantity

the trouble is getting to quality without burning down the house.

 

Make it through to an artistic plateau

what do you find?

A tabletop, empty of obstacles

and of inspirations.

 

What then?

What now?

 

Strip the old machines for parts

cannibalize your own brain for ideas

until you're picking through the scrap.

 

Get a job, old man, you're through,

and you never made it.

I hope it was worth it.

(It was.)

* * * 

Two Poems: "Gigs" and "Muse"

Here are two poems, based on single words suggested by twitter mutuals. To see me reading these poems, click here to see the video on youtube!

"Gigs"

I read the term "gig economy" for the first time today

meaning that many people

especially the young

do not have full time jobs

with nice fat paychecks

and annual bonuses

and insurance packages

and three or more weeks paid vacations

per year

 

Instead we are a floating army of freelancers

scrambling

banging from gig to gig

trying to piece together an income

but disqualified from being technically poor

because we were not raised in shacks

and because we own coffee makers

although insurance packages ad regular paychecks

are entirely alien

 

The context was an explanation of why

angry disaffected excluded disappointed oppressed people

were free during the day to show up at protests

meaning protesters and obviously unemployed

and therefore want a socialist revolution because

THEY ARE LAZY

when in fact those people work from home

refilling their coffee makers

staying up all night

banging away at a losing game.

* * * * *

"Muse"

There's a cold draft on my legs and ass here

Sitting in a neighborhood pub

Getting a pint of lager before lunch time

Trying to soften up a bitter spirit

 

Cold hands make for difficult typing

And emotional exhaustion make it hard

To pull words out of an empty heart

Don't I get to have a muse to inspire me?

 

This poem, interrupted by an angry phone call--

There isn't much peace for me, no break

No quiet moments, no relaxation

And no, no muse to whisper beauty

 

Sorry if you were looking for something soft

Grace and love and desire and wonder

I'm just trying to get by here

And if whispers of beauty arrive in my ear,

They'll have to come from you.

Excerpt from "I Sing When You Shut Up," chapter 3

("I Sing When You Shut Up" was serialized on the "Internet" in 2012 as a sequel to the "Comeback Road" novel. I'm editing it for an eBook release and will drop nuggets as I go. This is from chapter 3.)

I nodded. "So... you're doing good?"

She smiled. "Yeah. How are you?"

I'm drunk and sick in my guts from seeing you, I thought to myself, I've been missing you for two years, taking myself apart and trying to figure out how to put myself back together so that I could be the guy that a girl like you would want to be with, even though I had been the guy you wanted back at the beginning, but then when you got to the bottom of me you found me empty and decided that I wasn't what you wanted after all so I've been trying to fill in that emptiness but the more I try to fill the emptiness the more empty space appears, and I've been trying to figure out who I want to be, always with an eye over my shoulder looking toward an unseen image of you, trying to figure out if any step I take is the one you would want me to take, and it's been driving me crazy and it makes me love you and hate you and want you and resent you because I don't know who I want to be anymore except that I want to be the guy you want. But I couldn't say all that, so I said "I'm fine. I think I'm going to grab another drink."

"Cool," she said. "We'll be here."

So I smiled and backed off, went to the bathroom and then up to the bar. I checked my wallet and realized I didn't have enough money for another beer, so I left the bar and went to the ATM across Spadina and took out another forty bucks. And then, once back in the bar, with another unnecessary beer in my hand, I went to the back and found that the second band was nearly through their set, and that the members of Seam/Fault/Flaw were all gone.

I drank the beer and then another while I waited to see if they would show up again. I was completely wasted, rolling my head around and wishing I could lie down under a table. I decided it would be a good idea to head home while I was still able to walk. The night had been a wreck. A depressing, humiliating wreck, and I felt like a fool. I zipped up my coat and got the hell out of The Horseshoe.

The beer didn't like being sloshed back and forth while I walked, and vomiting was a real possibility. I pissed in an alley, and I started thinking: just make it home and then you can pass out in your warm soft bed. If you have to puke, you can puke in your bathroom. Your nice, clean bathroom.

I almost made it.

There's a tree in front of my four-story building, and I ended up leaning against it, holding myself steady while a stream of beery vomit forced itself out of me and onto the snow-flecked grass. I just remember trying to spread my legs as far as I could to avoid splattering my shoes.

I must have been making a lot of noise, because someone came out onto their second floor balcony and a female voice asked me what I was doing. If I live a thousand years I'll never know why I replied, "Goddammit, I'm a music journalist!"

The Old Material: Late Night Television

(Originally published in the Late at Night short story collection, available at many eBook retailers.)

We got home from the bar late, and while my girlfriend (now my wife) puttered around the apartment getting ready for bed, I flicked on the television to see if there was anything interesting on. There was nothing on the few channels that sometimes had English programming, but I was patient and after a while I found something interesting on a Korean station. There was a broadcast of a Thai kickboxing match. Usually I have no interest in kickboxing, but this time I noticed that one of the combatants was an above-the-elbow amputee.

I refilled my beer glass from the two liter bottle of Korean draft I'd bought at the corner store, and when my girlfriend asked why I wasn’t coming to bed yet I told her what I had found on the tube. She didn’t sound impressed, but for the moment she didn’t pester me further.

The amputee, in blue shorts, had a boxing glove on his stump (is stump the politically correct term?) and a mean looking face. He reminded me of the little guy that hangs out in the bar looking for much bigger men to beat up so he can prove his size isn't holding him back. Napoleon Syndrome, they call that. I don’t know what they call it when amputees want to beat up non-amputees to prove that nothing's holding them back. Maybe they could name the syndrome after this kick-boxer, whatever his name is.

In red shorts, his opponent looked uneasy. He seemed to know he was going to have a rough fight on his hands, and from a certain point of view there would be no way to win. If he lost he would have the shame of being defeated by an amputee, and if he won he couldn't claim much glory from beating up an amputee, even though the amputee was undoubtedly well-ranked.

The bell went to start the first round and they went at it. It was a violent fight, and the crowd was clearly on the side of the amputee. He used his shortened limb to parry punches, but had only three-quarters of the striking options of his opponent. Even so, he fought hard, clearly wanting to give the man in red shorts a thumping. His major handicap was the balance he lost from missing part of his arm, so his opponent’s kicks occasionally made his stumble before he could regain his stability.

Unwittingly I found myself cheering for the two-armed man for the simple reason that the look on the amputee’s face was so mean-spirited. As well, the crowd was behind the one-armed man and I seemed to see the two armed man as some sort of reverse underdog. Because one man was an amputee he was immediately the crowd favorite and everyone wanted to see him win. That seemed unfair to me.

I watched half a dozen rounds of combat and each man gave as good as he got. They beat each other up pretty badly for our amusement. I didn’t get to see how the fight finished or whether it ended in knockout or decision, because at long last my girlfriend called me to bed, not understanding why I should possibly care who would win a Thai kickboxing match on television at three-thirty in the morning.