Life is Fleeting, or,
Fuck! It’s Feeling Like the End Times, Again
I feel this sense of impending doom every time I accidentally watch the news; that we as a species have once again stumbled up on the cusp of self-annihilation. Ordinarily, I’m incredibly diligent when it comes to dodging reality, but when you share a house with an eighty-year-old father-in-law, the house’s Prevagen-addled equivalent to a town crier afflicted with an oddly specific Trump-fixated Tourette’s syndrome, it is difficult to swerve the everyday horrors of existence.
“Looks like Trump’s in bed with Putin, again,” Milt announces from the confines of his catnapper as I emerge from my study to fetch another bottle of Purple Toad Black and Bruised red wine.
Fuck, now I’ve got to speak. “Milt, you can’t say ‘again’ when he’s never left that jackass’s bed to begin with. By now, Putin’s bedsheets reek of urine, dementia, petroleum, and willful ignorance. Speaking of which, you voted for that pedophile three times, so I don’t wanna hear it outta you.”
“Well, that’s back when I thought I was saving the kids from becoming the transgenders. You imagine how awful it would be; you send your son to school, and he comes home wearing a lacy pink dress, sporting a brand new vagina.”
“So, what happened? Gas hits four bucks a gallon and now the kids can go fuck themselves with whatever sexual organs those goddam liberals decided to saddle them kids with?”
Milt pouts. It hasn’t been a great last couple weeks for him with Michigan playing some haphazardly incompetent football. He’s been relegated to watching games he’s recorded two, three years ago in an attempt to lift his spirits. I suppose a subpar football season can feel like the end of the world. If you’re not part of the fucking world.
My spirits have been riding a rollercoaster engineered by the gimp chained up in Eli Roth’s basement, sorta like the Goliath rollercoaster in Georgia that hasn’t been keeping its passengers buckled in too well.
It’s been a lovely week for freak accidents.
Father Sanchez just the other day preached a sermon on the fleeting nature of life right before a big ass crucifix fell over and knocked him atop the head sending him off to his heavenly reward. The irony is so delicious it could only have originated from the hand of God. Even living in Ecuador, there’s no way that priest could have predicted he’d die by crucifixion that day. Makes you wonder about God’s design for this world.
Was Father Sanchez a dirty priest? Did he have it coming, getting brained by a toppling cross? Was he a decent man, and maybe God just got it wrong? Maybe God has a wicked sense of humor and told himself “Hey, Jesus, watch this shit. I’ll give those folks a lesson in the fleeting nature of life they’ll never forget.”
And Jesus would reply to Himself, “You may as well give it to him good, God. These cats ain’t got a whole lotta time life on the clock, anyway.”
Then God being the hyper masculine deity my good buddy, Waylon, established last week, helicoptered his big dick over Georgia and knocked Hassan something or another (a name I’m sure Trump would automatically condemn) right the hell outta the Goliath roller coaster at Six Flags. Witnesses on the ride said the man made prolonged, uncomfortable eye contact with the other passengers as gravity gave him what for. I think if I were on the ride and we made eye contact as he jettisoned toward his final destination, I would have gently mouthed the words “fuck you,” give him something to think about on his way down, you know, not to be a dick, but just to take his mind off his sudden and comically unfortunate turn of events, because that’s the Christian thing to do.
Of course, I would never be on a roller coaster ride. I know God’s sense of humor and I know that son of a son of a son of a bitch has been out to get me in the most ridiculous way possible for years and years. I also realize my soul is not His for the casual harvest. When I was a twelve year old miscreant, a fortune teller of some renown in the Region, Madam Coslowski, prophesized my doom would come about as a result of too many Albanese Gummi Bears locking my pancreas up… a demise which seemed ludicrous to me at the time since I was eating a five pound bag of those delicious little fuckers a day and felt totally fine. That said, since that fateful day, I’ve been eating Albanese Gummi Bears only sparingly.
If all this ain’t bizarre enough, there’s the sad and needless death of Air Force Tech Sgt Ian Patterson. Leading up to the start of a college football game (and not even an SEC game, so it wasn’t like it counted for anything) between the University of Texas at San Antonio vs Navy Midshipmen. During the pregame ceremonies meant to honor military members and veterans where I guess they get to drink half-priced beers or some shit, they set up four service members on the roof of the Alamodome to rappel down for the crowd’s entertainment. So these four highly trained guys are up there in the rafters about a hundred and seventy feet in the air and they’re going to scoot down a rope very fast like they would do in a war zone, except they’re not in a war zone, these soldiers are at a meaningless football game. So, Tech Sgt Patterson won the race to the bottom by doing his Owen Hart impersonation. And like Owen Hart and our roller coaster buddy, Hassan, the ground proved utterly unforgiving.
Now, this all may come across as mean-spirited, but, really, what’s the use of these guys gym-roping down from the ceiling? What’s to be gained from the needless risk of life? I mean, any time you slide down a rope from the top of the Alamodome, there’s a chance for mayhem. This guy served his country for fifteen years. Did he sacrifice his life for the greater good of god and country? Nah, he was fucking around at a football game. They were playing Navy for fuck’s sake. You wanna honor your veterans, throw a drunken sailor in a john boat and have two drag queens drag his ass from end zone to end zone. That’s the Navy way, goddammit. Drag queens and booze. Not motherfuckers falling outta the ceiling.
I know this kinda stupid shit has been going on for a long time, but if Trump can blame Biden for the economy he’s dry fucking, then I can blame Hegseth for the circusification of the military. I can only imagine Logan Paul or Kid Rock giving the boys a pep talk before they stick the needles of syringes chockful of testosterone into each other’s asses before they grab hold of their ropes.
Does that sound far-fetched? Is it any further outside the bounds of common sense or basic human decency than the pedophile in charge puckering his lying sphincter mouth and claiming that kids are going to school and coming home three days later having been surgically reassigned genders? Fuck, who knows? I don’t. I’m going back into my room. Listen to some Iron Maiden albums and forget about this shitty world circling the drain one more time.
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
