My old community blog, Infinite Monkeys, is back. Still a few bugs in the template, but I'm working on it.

On average, everybody has one testicle.

I have spent the better part of the afternoon and early evening writing a poem — one of my better ones, I think — but somehow, I feel no sense of accomplishment in its authorship.

Poetry, for me, has always been an adventure, complete with crecscendo, climax, and catharsis, its creation a story complete unto itself. I have said before that the world needs poets for the same reason it needs knights, punt returners, banjo players, and the Marines — because you have to have someone to send in first — but this one has left me strangely numb. I feel no different now than I did before I sat down with a cup of tea this afternoon and began letting the words do their free-form free-fall into the quart-and-a-half noodle sloshing around in my skull.

When I finished, I scratched my head curiously, brewed another cup of tea, and sat watching the snow falling outside — it looked like ash from a frozen fire — and I was mesmerized, lost in thought for a while. Something eventually jangled my attention back into focus, though, and I realized that enough time had passed that I could look at the poem with fresh eyes. I spent a while editing, but did nothing more than add a comma, which I ended up removing again later.

I have been asked to read a poem, one of my choosing or one of my own concoction — I have elected the latter since it would seem cheap to swipe someone else's words — at the funeral for a friend tomorrow afternoon.

I have known her for about fifteen years, during which our lives have criss-crossed each others' more times than I can recall. Each time, it seemed as if we'd see each other every day, but then we'd somehow manage to lose touch with each other, and then we'd run into each other again. The last time I saw her was a little over three years ago, I guess. Until yesterday, I hadn't realized it had been so long ago.

Her daughter called me yesterday and gave me the news: an overdose — possibly accidental, possibly intentional — but no one will ever know for certain. It does makes sense to me, though, knowing what I know of her. Some people, I think, feel life a little more sharply than others, and she was one.

I don't think she ever knew love in her entire life. She was married and divorced three times, each marriage a little more hopeful than the one before it, but each turning out to be more volatile. By the end of her third marriage, she was callous and bitter, her heart hardened by scar tissue, and love had become something akin to competition for her, instead of companionship. She had become so brash that it was difficult to even remain friends with her. The last time I saw her, in fact, we argued (about what, I have no idea).

I had meant to call her. I wanted to tell her lots of things, things that happened after we last spoke. I wanted to tell her to ignore what I said the afteroon over coffee when I convinced her that God didn't exist. I had meant to tell her that I'd come across a book she'd love, and even bought a copy for her intending to give it to her one day when I saw her again. I wanted to find out how she was doing, to cheer her up and lend an ear if things were rough.

Apparently, things had been rough. Hindsight may be 20/20, but I've walked this path before, more times than I care to think. I've let people slip away, and now, I'm facing a stark reminder of a resolution I've made and forgotten numerous times:

Don't wait until tomorrow. Don't get sucked into the illusion that people are permanent. There's an old saying that today is the first day of the rest of your life, and this is true for every day, save for one — the day you die.

If you've got something to tell someone, do it now.

Her daughter said that she'd been doing better, though, that things were starting to brighten for her. She'd gone back to school and was just a few months shy of earning a degree that could send her on the path toward a career, instead of bouncing from one job to another as she had throughout her life. She had a new granddaughter, now six months old, upon whom she doted. She had even been dating — this time, her daughter made a point of telling me, someone who didn't come with a lot of baggage like the first three did.

Still, I can't help but wonder. Was it just smoke and mirrors, a last-ditch effort to try to fool herself into believing she could hide from her past? Was her jaded heart too haunted to escape? Or was this just one more of life's all-too-prevalent snares that tended to grab her just when things were about to get interesting?

Either way, it doesn't make the irony any less sour that she'll be buried on Valentine's Day.

So there I was, earlier this afternoon, relaxing in the Jacuzzi bubbling some warmth back into my bones after a frigid walk. I had my feet propped up on the far end of the tub and a wet washcloth covering my face like a shrunken shroud. In the bedroom next to me, Vanessa Carlton was on the stereo claiming that she'd walk a thousand miles if she could just hold me tonight (I'm not holding my breath...she says that to a lot of people).

Suddenly, I heard a cough in the next room and realized that I was not alone. Someone was in my house, right in my bedroom. I jolted upright and began grasping around for something I could use as a weapon, but the only thing I could find was a loofah. The bathroom door opened and just as I brandished my weapon, in walked none other than Hermes, the Greek god of travelers and poets. He paused for a moment in the doorway, staring blank-faced at the loofah, then cleared his throat and said, "I hate to bust your bubble, but I'm highly trained in the art of disarming persons who attack me with sponges."

I looked at the ridiculous choice of weaponry in my hand and shrugged. "Oh, it's you," I said, leaning back in the tub and not making any attempt at hiding my disdain, "the wonderful god of poets and literature. Just where the hell have you been? I haven't been able to write a damned thing for a month." I punctuated my remark by flinging the loofah in his direction. It caromed harmlessly off his forehead onto the floor, where it bounced around for a second like a fumbled football.

"Writer's block, huh?" he replied, ignoring my contempt and leaning over to pick up the loofah. He shoved my jeans off the chair with it and sat.

"No shit," I said, "No thanks to you, of course. My literary well has dried up and just when I needed a spark of inspiration most, you're nowhere to be found."

"I've been busy." It appeared this was best he could muster as an excuse. I glared at him, and he continued. "Look, let's not mix metaphors here. I couldn't have done you any good anyway. You were gone Zeus knows where for most of that time."

"This is true," I conceded. "I was in the jungle." He stared at me quizzically, so I elaborated. "I volunteered to help out on an archeological dig on a Mayan temple for a couple of weeks. In Tikal. You know the place?"

"Yeah. I know it. How're the Mayans doing?"

"Extinct," I said, then recanted a bit, "Well, at least as an autonomous nation. Their descendants are still around, but scattered here and there."

He slumped in the chair, shaking his head, and said "That's too bad. I'm sorry to hear that."

"Hey, no need to apologize to me, Herm," I replied, "I wasn't one of 'em. All I did was poke around in their garbage."

"Still, though, it's sad. They were a great people, once upon a time. Little bitty fuckers, maybe, but great."

"Pretty impressive temples, I hafta say," I said. Because I hadta.

He sat in silent contemplation for a moment, then appeared to shake off the bad news. "You know they got jaguars down there."

"Huh?" I mooed stupidly.

"Jaguars. The critters — the cats — not the cars," he clarfied.

"Oh. I was wondering. I couldn't see how a pint-sized Mayan could navigate the rainforests in an XKR convertible," I joked.

"Know how Jaguars kill their prey?" he asked.

I shrugged.

"They've got the most powerful jaws of all the big cats. Even stronger than lions. They evolved that way so they could crack through the shells of the turtles that used to be abundant down there. Now, they use that same strong bite to crack through the skulls of their prey and puncture their brains with their teeth."

"No shit!" I replied. "Jeez, that makes my scalp tingle, just thinking about it."

"Yep, it's a fact. Good thing you didn't run into any."

"I'll say!" I said.

"Not much chance, though. They're pretty skittish around people," said the demigod. "If there were one anywhere near you, it probably slinked off into the woods and you never knew he was there."

"I wonder what my brain would taste like. I imagine it probably tastes kind of bitter, maybe sour, just judging from my general disposition." I stared out the window in thought, pondering if one could cause his own brain's flavor to change by thinking of different types of food.

As the conversation lagged, though, my mood became more reflective, and it must have shown on my face. After the conversational lull, he asked me, "What are you thinking about?"

Shaken from my reverie, I turned and looked at him. "Oh, I was just thinking about that temple. You know, they really were a great nation — a whole lot more advanced than we ever give them credit for — and I was just thinking what it might have been like way back then. I sat on top of the temple one night while I was down there and I watched the full moon float across the sky. Part of me was wondering whether some old Mayan might've sat there in that same spot, years and years ago, watching the moon just like I did. It made me wonder what kinds of things he'd think. What kind of things scared him, or made him laugh, or left him mystified? What did he want out of life? How did he live? How did he die?"

The god of literature and poets gazed at me for a moment, as if pondering whether I could handle the truth. Then he took a long breath and said, "You're a lot alike, you know. Humans don't change their nature much over time or distance. A thousand years and a thousand miles are just a blink of an eye and a short walk in the overall scheme of things. I'd venture a guess that this postulated pygmy, had he been in the same place, probably thought a lot of the same things you did."

"Think so?" I asked.

"Oh, absolutely. No doubt about it. Humans are remarkably similar. In fact — and I intend no offense by this — you're all so similar as to be tediously predictable," he explained. "You're each woven from the same bolt of rough fabric, so it shouldn't come as any surprise. Sure, you might celebrate your differences, but when you boil it all down to the basics, when you reduce it to the lowest common denominator, you're all practically identical. And some may be the melody and others the beat, but you all sing the same songs and dance the same dances."

It was food for thought, and I meditated on the idea for a moment. Then, it struck me how apropos that expression — "food for thought" — was, given my contemplation a moment before about brain flavors. An image popped into my mind and I snickered.

"What are you laughing at?" he asked.

"I have this mental image of a bunch of jaguars all shuffling through the jungle on their hind feet and chanting, 'Brains, Brains, We want brains,' like the zombies in Night of the Living Dead.

"You are certainly an odd person," he smiled. He threw the loofah back at me and stood. "Look, I've gotta run," he said.

"So soon?" I asked, "But what about my writing? My muse has left me and God only kno — er, rather, 'Zeus' only knows — where she went. I have seen neither hide nor hair of her in months and I don't think she'll ever be back."

"Don't worry," he laughed, "I think you've probably got plenty to write about now. But I must go. Duty calls. Got a date with a congressman."

"Really? A congressman? What on earth for?" I asked.

"Yeah," he smirked. "Remember, I'm not just the god of travelers and poets. I'm also the god of liars and thieves."

And with that, he left, pulling the door shut behind him and leaving me alone once again with Vanessa Carlton and my loofah.