Ackee Soup

By Giggles Anderson

For hours, I’ve used the Zappos site
to search for the perfect shoe.

The one that exudes
my enthusiasm or mood.

The hunt for a buckle,
an Italian patent leather,
a 5″ cone heel.

A sole that communicates my own.

Every now and then,
I spot that pair of oxblood loafers
I might never be able to afford
without skipping several meals,
Credit card payments, and
a car insurance premium or three.

I’d happily walk,
but who does that
to a shoe?

The Zappos search engine
lets me sift out
the Mary Janes
from all the others.

The stable standout deserves
preferential viewing.

A one-strap tramp
in a Miami joint
laced with strappy open toes;
ice pick heels;
The Birkenstock.

Zappos makes it easy
to see each and every camel
and beige Spectator shoe.

Only in my good friend’s size, I see.

How about we identify such issues,
make a few calls and smooth those wrinkles out?

Size 12 please!

Zappos empowers a user
to screen out all the others
and focus in on the prize:

The shoes to make one
healthy, wealthy, and
three inches taller.

I have a heap of experience
doing this and/or that:
Operations. Management.
Human Resources.
Finance. Sales. Marketing.
Administration.

I’ve taught Contractors,
Employees, and Students.

The one thing I’m sure?

The world beats a path
to the door of those who master,
respect, and honor the chore.

A business process
must be attended to
with kindness and wit.

Need meets speed.
Service is doled out with care.
Everything and everyone matters.
Especially when they don’t.

Every segment should be tweaked.

Is there room for improvement?
Is that working?
How can everything be better?

Shouldn’t we do something
about that leak?

Did our friends
(efficiency, profit, and service)
come to the game?
How long did they stay?

Did we all have a good time?

A healthy business process
feels much like a birthday party

Cake for everyone!
Gifts for everyone!
An honest attempt to appease
those who ordered cake and got pie.

After all, each sale is a special event.

“Jan, I understand that
Konsumer wanted cake,
but she received pie.

How did this happen?
Where did the shoe drop?

Mistakes and mishaps
happen to the best of us.
Let’s work together to work it out.

What say we contact Konsumer today?
Ask that She accept our sincerest apology?
Ask if we may send the cake?

Yes, we need to do this today,
before the other shoe falls.
Think! Let’s engineer a fix.
If She has to call again,
She will certainly be ticked.”

Are we having fun yet?

I enjoy a challenge,
keep a muzzle on the wrath.
I’m looking for a dynamic environment,
To work with great people for whom
I can go to bat.

A unique chance to use
all the feathers in my hat.

I think we’d be perfect together.

By Giggles Anderson

hey brother,
can you spare a drop?

By Giggles Anderson

Times are hard these days.
We’re all eating from the dollar menu
“I’ll have two Buck Doubles,” you scream
into the big black box with the friendly voice.

As you dig through your we can change cup
for two dollars and fourteen sense
you remember the good old days
of big homes– high ceilings, crown molding and
stainless steel everything.

King me.

Everyone lived like royalty.
for a few months anyway…

And in the middle of your reign,
there were jewels.
Strands of precious metals
now put away in anticipation
of more appropriate times.

Hiding the pearls of wisdom?
Three years have passed.
Give or take two years.
We’re all still making sense of all that change.

And on the day you wake with rheumatism in both wrists,
feeling like a not-so-fair version of Snow White or Sleeping Beauty,
You reach for Cobra and it bites you in the wallet.

That blanket costs as much as the mortgage
you cant afford to pay.
as the student loans you cant afford to pay.
as the alimony and child support you cant afford to pay.

The compound interest confounds.
Make a payment on the Principal out of moral principle?

Who can afford heaven these days?
Check the price of gas.

Start the search for Granny’s cure.
Silver and Copper turns the ache away
for colored girls when the apple is not enough
For sure.
For cheap.

What the cost of Bayer’s aspirin these days?
Add the gas and the time spent in line away from Maury.
The paternity test reveals: the pain of the others blurs your own
for an hour or so.

The show is over.

You’re now lying in a mound of unrealized dreams,
unopened mail, unpaid bills, unused napkins,
and unopened ketchup packets.

You realize two things:
One, Heinz will never abandon you.
An ever loyal taste of the good life resides
in every three inch packet.

Free with purchase.

Two, a kiss from The King is always a blessing in disguise.
You now have a bag of burgers in hand, condiments, and a few good napkins.
Truth? You can’t handle the truth.

Think hard. Remember where you buried
those treasures pirated from your Mom, grifted from your Dad.
Those Baby Boomers have great taste.
A few moments on The Google leads to
a new use for the Jacks of all Trades
in the bottom of your burger bag.

Ketchup forms a landmark partnership with napkins
for the sole purpose of cleaning your copper bracelet.

Courtesy of The King.

Excerpts from Towards Third Cinema by Solanas and Getino

… To an institutionalised cinema, it counterposes a guerrilla cinema; to movies as shows, it opposes a film act or action; to a cinema of destruction, one that is both destructive and constructive; to a cinema made for the old kind of human being, for them, it opposes a cinema fit for a new kind of human being, for what each one of us has the possibility of becoming.

… People are witness to a constant astonishment, a kind of second birth. They recover their early simplicity, their capacity for adventure; their lethargic capacity for indignation comes to life.

Freeing a forbidden truth means setting free the possibility of indignation and subversion. Our truth, that of the new man who builds himself by getting rid of all the defects that still weigh him down, is a bomb of inexhaustible power and, at the same time, the only real possibility of life. Within this attempt, the revolutionary film-maker ventures with his subversive observation, sensibility, imagination, and realisation. The great themes - the history of the country, love and unlove between combatants, the efforts of a people who are awakening - all this is reborn before the lens of the decolonised camera. The film-maker feels for the first time. He discovers that, within the System, nothing fits, while outside of and against the System, everything fits, because everything remains to be done. What appeared yesterday as a preposterous adventure, as we said at the beginning, is posed today as an inescapable need and possibility.

By Giggles Anderson

Caught in the ring
between
cobra and cane

ringleader on hold
hummingbird wanes.

dove watches
from a distant perch
tiger waits
all on alert

trapeze artist
wraps her wrist

three bears
practice their jig
noses tingled

rubber ball rolls on and on

lion yawns in defeat.
no center stage today
mouse replaced the thorn

clown cries
fallen star
car has two tires flat

rabbit chews
through and through

new hole
old hat

in the pain
of hallowed game
mouse gone
rabbit gone

cobra aptly named.

worry not
shark on the way
mongoose in tow

lunch on the mind.

two cents?
two fangs.

Patience will win.
(at least this time.)