My Stint on the Golden Bachelor

Sit-down Comedy Routine, Along with a Comic Prose Poem

This fun post was up briefly and then something happened, so here it is again.

Enjoy this prose poem from my “career” book, While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems. While the Undertaker Sleeps

I am a big believer that if people made fun of themselves more we would live in a saner world.

Before Anyone Had Ever Heard of Johnny Depp

I’m trying to find a runway that’s not in flux, some place I can strut my stuff.

Like that roofless bar in Hermosa Beach.

It was called La Paz or La Place, or maybe Je Vous Demande Pardon since I’m always seeking forgiveness.

Whatever, it had the best taco burritos in southern California and was manned by a bartender with a pop-star face and a vicious overhead volleyball serve.

I was explaining this to a classmate at my 48^th high-school reunion.

His name was Mario, a guy as fidgety as a conductor’s wand, intent on settling his nerves with a tumbler of gin and tonic.

He called me a liar, and that’s when we attracted a crowd of old guys who still believed in signs and symbols.

Undeterred, I recounted my idyllic nights at the Je Vous Demande Pardon until they told me to shut up unless I had something lyrical to say.

Exhaling deeply, I let it rip:

“It was the Summer of Relief when Uncle Lou came stumbling out of the closet wearing two different shoes and the sun bore down on us like some mythological god. ‘O Hope! O, Charity,’ the birdies sang…,” and I could’ve gone on if not interrupted by smatterings of laughter and a wall of gray suits drifting toward a table of Buffalo chicken wings.

I felt hurt until I realized we’d all be dead in ten years or found heavily sedated, wandering around parking garages unable to locate our cars.

We’d all like to be as permanent as a forehead crease, as necessary as a mop in a house that’s sprung a leak.

Who wants to end up as an unsung artificial leg dragged across some stranger’s straw rug?

Forty-eight years ago, back in Hermosa Beach, I got drunk on tequila with a wino named Sudsy.

We were stealing two-by-fours from a construction site.

We were piling them like blocks of letters that once correctly organized might form a word to explain our sorry-ass lives.

All this before the age of flat stomachs and unpronounceable coffee drinks.

The age my Old Guy Manual on Memory lovingly refers to as “Pre-Lacunal.”

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You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com

His most recent book of prose poems is While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems

His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories

Find out why he is giving away his new book of prose poem/fragments, even though he has a publisher for it, by downloading the PDF from the below link or going to OLD MAN’S homepage. His “Note to the Reader” and “Introduction” at the beginning of the PDF explains it all: Observations from the Edge of the Abyss+