© 2018 Howard Lipke and Aaron Surrain
Museum of Practical Jokes
Recent IQ Test
© 2017 Howard Lipke and Aaron Surrain
War Heroes: A Poem
As taught by 500 veterans who have been tormented by their war.
Part 1 How to know you are a war hero
(pick some from the list below)
Believe you didn’t do enough
Believe the real heroes are dead
Have pride in what you did
Despise what you did
Not give a shit about what you did
Believe you should have died
Think you must figure out the secret reason you didn’t die
Be angry at the people who weren’t there
Think of everything you can to keep your kids from going
Love anyone else for going
Think you only did what you had to do
Think you didn’t have to do everything you did
Think this is not how heroes think and feel
Part II How to get over being a war hero
Grieve everything and everyone you lost
Grieve all the yous you think you could have been
Go through the grief until you recognize the impossibility of the other selves
Learn we have an obligation to find serenity
Learn that nobody in their right mind needs you to suffer anymore
Learn that living your life well is the only way to honor the dead
Learn that trying to carry other people’s pain would be an insult, if insults could exist
Stop pretending you are not going to die
Learn that knowing something once is not enough, we must keep coming back to it
We don’t pray once
Part III Where you learned the definition of the word hero
Maybe when you were a kid you learned to look up to someone as a hero
You thought that person had all the answers, all the power, all the skill, and none of your kind of fear
Then you grew up, but still never noticed
that the hero didn’t feel what you thought he felt
Now we know that the courageous are scared,
and the skillful aren’t always courageous
Part IV Summary
There was a new recruit from Maine
who thought he would earn him some fame.
He got in the fight,
and Lord it got tight,
but you better not call him a hero because now he knows
it is much more complex than that, and besides all the heroes are dead
Howard Lipke
(1/6/16 version)
Resources for Therapists, Vets and Family available at
HowardLipke.com
And I really don’t have PTSD
When I look out my window at the blowing swirling snow,
and feel a little of the cold push from the glass,
I remember being told of how cold it was in the Korean War
How there was no relief, no warmth, no sleep, falling off mountains, being stabbed in sleeping bags.
And I profoundly love that I am warm and safe.
When I hold the hand of a toddler at the corner to cross a street,
Often I know a little moment of danger and fear,
I remember a friend who held her child’s hand as she
was hit by a car which failed to stop at a cross walk.
I then try to be so very careful standing near the street, and almost always am.
And that, my friend, is how to live life, if you are safe and warm and are lucky enough to sometimes have a toddler to care for.
– H Lipke
Its Magic
The five year old boy has a bubble blowing kit.
With delight he says to his grandpa,
“I’m going to stand behind you and blow bubbles
when you see them say,
‘Where did those bubbles come from?’
Then he says to the grandpa,
“Its magic”
The grandpa laughs and happily follows instructions.
The twitter president says “I’m going to blow smoke up your ass
then you tell me that I’m your hero.”
He and the crowd before him are delighted, though the twitter president is not their grandpa and few in the crowd are 5 years old.
The Baby
The Baby
The baby takes two swigs from his bottle,
Holds it forth with two hands and loudly proclaims
“BA…BA”
then takes two more swigs.
There is a primal need to speak what is important to us.
The baby points at his mother and says MA,
his father and says DA, his dog and says DU,
a car and says CA.
Then he points at his shoes and says SHOOOZ.
One never knows when sophistication will pop out.
The baby walks along the low concrete wall bordering
the playground.
He runs his hands on the smooth surface,
Every once in a while he comes to a small protruding bolt,
and picks at it for minutes.
One must pay attention to irregularities.
The baby says his words with clear meaning,
BA, DA PA, MA loudly, forcefully, with enthusiasm.
But, when the baby shares what appear to be streams of gibberish.He often has a thoughtful look,
an eyebrow raised now and again for emphasis
His tone is quieter and modulated.
Will the pattern hold?
The baby toddles around the plaza while guardians
protect him from passersby and vice verse.
When he sees a manhole cover he stands on it and crows.
And then another, and another…
Some things are beyond our understanding.
That baby hurt his left foot and couldn’t toddle.
But he could enjoy holding his truck puzzle pieces up and saying something like “truck” before putting them not quite randomly in their home spaces.
He could also enjoy making the light switch go up and down,
sliding himself backward on his stomach on a wood floor,
and many other activities.
Is this what is meant by “Playing hurt.”?
The baby’s grandfather texts everyday to find out how the baby’s foot is progressing.
The calls can’t possibly help the baby or his parents.
Somehow it helps the grandfather.
The baby’s truck puzzle board has six trucks in it.
They are all colorful. The pieces are flat and a quarter inch thick,
The trucks on them are visually one dimensional. The baby can’t quite fit the pieces into their spaces on the board yet.
Nonetheless, he disdainfully pushes a puzzle piece off the board and tries to insert one of his 3 dimensional toy trucks.
Has the baby already studied Magritte? Or, perhaps Magritte studied the baby.
On a subsequent day the baby keeps moving his truck puzzle pieces (see above) on the puzzle board.
Pretty soon one or two actually get fully in the spaces designed for them.
Then, as acts of will, more get in their spaces.
I think it is time to start calling the baby the little boy.
Or maybe the toddler
The grandpa juggles, not great, but you’d have to call it juggling
When the toddler wants the grandpa to juggle, then elbows in, he holds his hands out and moves them up and down quickly,
surprisingly quickly.
One day the baby holds his hands out to ask for two of the balls.
He makes his hands go up and down a few times then drops a ball and says” Whoops”.
The mistakes are part of the show.
The baby, now the toddler loves to dance.
He dances to the radio every day with his father and mother
He dances with his grandma and grandpa.
The baby’s mother asks the grandpa to bring his harmonica
The grandpa is hesitant, he only knows a mournful two songs.
(Not as good as he juggles.)
Nonetheless, he plays simple happy tunes he makes up on the spot.
He never remembers them, so plays a new one every time.
The toddler dances with vigor and joy,
He doesn’t realize the grandpa really doesn’t know how to play the harmonica.
When the toddler sees another child near his age, maybe even a year or two older, he points and says BABY.
The grandfather, a psychologist, thinks: “How cute, the toddler still lacks self objectivity.“
Later, the grandfather is in a train station;
He hears an old coot rattling on and thinks, “What an old coot.”
As the coot continues to rattle, he mentions his age, which is 4 years younger than the grandfather.
Self objectivity, once achieved, does not appear to be a stable trait
The toddler is playing with a box full of his toy cars.
Among them he finds a small blue plastic stick like thing and asks where it goes.
The grandpa says he doesn’t know,
as do the Mama and Grandma.
The toddler asks quizzically several more times, and then episodically throughout the evening
Youth wants to know.
– H Lipke
No Words
Absolutely and Disruptively Outside the Box
I’m trying to think of an outside the box way of saying “outside the box”.
I’m trying to think of a word to disrupt the word “disrupt”
I absolutely want to find another way to say “very yes”.
I get “outside the box” and “disruption” and “absolutely”, I just want to figure out what will be next.
But, I absolutely can’t get far enough outside the box to disrupt.
-H Lipke
An Old Liberal Apologizes or…
An Old Liberal Apologize
or
On Reading News Stories about How the Liberals Missed the Feelings in the Heartland.
Here I am working in the dark like an old coal miner suffering, choking, gagging, fearing the canary’s death, or wrong survival.
In my mind: I am now like the pictures of the miners caked with execrable dust and grime, raging at what threatens and abuses me.
Rise up in defense.
!No More Mining Young Orphans! reads my crazed sign.
Chanting their phrases:
Make the clean jobs
Mine the wind,
Mine the sun,
out in field,
lab and factory.
Not choking,
Help us all
not choke and drown.
Wait, No, could it really be that the real coal miners mock the wind farm and the solar panels and those who would help them and bring the end to the dirt and the working in the dark and the filthy poison rivers? From deep in their souls they mock and scorn the old liberal who can now only confess he was wrong. Now they love the huckster and hate the school marm. “Never let her fight for us!” they declaim.
…___…
Forgive me coal miner for not understanding that when you were born, on that day when the sun didn’t shine and you picked up your shovel and went to the mine, I didn’t understand that it was what you wanted, what you would die for to die from. Silly me, I thought that baby coal miner wanted to go to school.
– H Lipke
Untitled 2
The old man has had a career of helping combat veterans find some comfort despite the horrors of war, the loss of friends, the loss of their health and the loss of their illusions.
The old man suddenly realizes:
“Hey that is a lot like getting old, except, of course,
the parts about war happening when you are 20, not 65,
the there is not much immediate terror,
that you can usually chose not to do horrible things,
and that you don’t have to kill anyone and…
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