Sprinkler Leaks

Oh, Lordy, the customer calls, her sprinkler heads are not working up to par, several are fine, but some are just dribbling, can I schedule a look in the next few days? Yes, we agree on a time that suits both of us, and I arrive. She heads for the garage to turn on the electronic controller manually, and I head to the valve box to see the type of valve head to see how high each of the three stands are set. Next I look at the dribbling heads to look for plugged jets stuffed with the winter’s Earwigs, but it’s a newer sprinkler head geometry that I’m not familiar with. Mine at home are vintage 1980 and yearly since 1984 they’ve filled up with Earwigs in the winter, and then spit Earwig carcasses each year at seasonal startup until my Swiss Army knife cleans each head under pressure. Oh the Joys of working with nature! The customer and I detect a sprinkler head that’s impeded by its adjacent plant growth, and it just pours excess water down its vertical shaft, but there’s a nearby river also, too big except to be a break! Oh, Joy, the vertical stand pipe of plastic is obviously BROKEN, but the gardener who speaks no English is about to cut the lawns, so we abort for the present time, I vamoose to Starbucks to see if I can write this now-late column by noon for today’s paper.

What a Writer Writes

Still trying to play catchup time-wise, I get this bright idea to run three of the week’s poems that I shared this wekk at First Tuesday’s Poets’ meeting at the library. Here goes:

Pedro’s Last Exit

You can exit a room,
or exit a highway,
but how do you exit a life?
There are so many ways!
So you toss and turn one night
thinking about a final automated graphic
that can hang in a room,
or maybe in a deserted Art Museum
in a western ghost town,
plugged into a wall,
and it says, “Tap Here” in the center
and it opens horizontally across the wall,
and then vertically, and then “Boom!”,
it snaps taught with a little white powder
like a small air bag exploding
and it is so cool! With such DRAMA!
But suppose it hangs in a room with no juice?
Or with a long, ugly extension cord?
Then what? Or it travels without its Instructions
in some future Garage Sale and nobody knows
it goes from “Tap Here” to a bigger size,
and so it just hangs there saying, “Tap Here.”
What’s THAT good for?
Better to write a poem about it
and hope that some future tinker at UC’s SERL
with a sense of humor and steady work
and a retirement program (good for a few weeks),
tapes it to his restroom wall so that
all future patrons will look at it amused
and maybe one by one say,
“I guess he used to work here.”
Or maybe in the Hearst Mining Building
on the Berkeley campus under glass,
and students there will say,
“Crap and Wow! He used to be a student here!”

To Run Like a Kenyan

We’ve all seen them, the dark and leather-skinned
Kenyans who finish the local marathons, minutes
if not miles ahead of the competition, bursting
across the finish line like they were just out
for a neighborhood run with a cheetah or
rocket sled to see who could make it to
the nearest scrap of water before dying like
parched jerky in the noon day’s sun. Barefoot
and dressed in only scraps of cloth like Gandhi
out for a non-violent fast stroll for the bus until
he realizes that buses don’t run across the
Serengeti or Zimbabwe plains where cheetahs
and Kenyans run.

So from whence or where comes Christopher Bray’s ability to run? Certainly not from his padre or madre nor his grandparents on three sides of the family dartboard. But we guess, from his paternal grandfather, Philip Robert Bray, born in Oakland, California in 1920, who once ran track in San Luis Obispo, California as a young recruit in training in the US Army-Air Force before shipping out to World War II England, France, Belgium, and Germany. Taking the Kenyan ancestry even further, Phil Bray’s father was George Bray, born in Grass Valley, California! Aha! George was born to Philip Bray and his wife Jenny Menadue Bray, a hardrock miner and his wife originally from Cornwall, England! So a hardrock miner descendant becomes a Nevada Union Miner who can run like a Kenyan. Must be something in the rocks or the waters of our origins.

100 Precarious Days

I woke up from my bed,
every thought in my head
was on the word: precarious.

Our President Trump’s a horse’s $#@%$^%,
and many of the states are legalizing grass,
every molecule in my head and heart
are feeling precarious.

Where the hell is Bernie?
Impeachment is such a
God-awful slow journey,
even the tea and muffin
I had for breakfast
are feeling precarious.

It wouldn’t be so serious,
if I knew I was delirious,
and just fighting off some flu bug
or virus.

Even Billy Ray Cyrus
knows they’re laundering
Russian black money in banks on Cyprus
and buying up Trump’s Towers
just to deny us our freedom
from feeling precarious.

Will Trump twitter North Korea?
Will a Special Prosecutor
rise to see ya,
you and me voting ever again freely?
Or will Trump be impeached
to Guantanamo’s Sea World:
no pool, no pets,
no golfing ever again
or weekend rides to Florida
on Air Force One?

We wait for a Republican-controlled Congress and Senate to prosecute
a treasonous, Major Conflict of Interest Republican President, in violation of the US Constitution, a former Reality CrapTV celebrity who refuses to show America his tax returns or show
who’s providing him the money
to cover his last and hopefully
final bankruptcy. It’s all too precarious
for me, I’m knock, knock, knocking
on Heaven’s door.
Is anyone Home?
Is there one courageous Democrat
or Republican left on the planet,
or is EVERYONE COMPLICIT?
The sea levels are rising,
all you Science Deniers!
The EPA and more
have been told to close their doors,
tax cuts are for the rich only,
and way too much money’s
being spent on Meals on Wheels.
Really?
Is Being Stupid back in fashion?
W. Bush is looking better daily.
COAL IS NOT COMING BACK,
NOR Are WHALE OIL SALES,
Donald, Duck!

Peter Bray lives, writes, and works in Benicia and
has written this column since 2008.