Homer's (the blind man's) poetry as seen by the waiter

"Iliad V"
 

addiction

he was addicted to her, his Sophia,
obsessed with her:
Obsessed with technology!
Obsessed with her beat!
Obsessed with input and output!
Obsessed with Windows in actions!
Obsessed with Disk and Backup Units
which he never installed!
Obsessed with going all out On-Line!

Trudging downhill to meet some others
who like him thought about curbing
their obsessions.
Today it was S&LAA: Sex and
Love Addicts Anonymous, S&LAA.

NA, OA, CA and AA all had been politely telling
him, "Sorry pal, wrong meeting!"

So he went to sit down, sat,
his dollar in the basket.
Sat there listening, they talked about
getting too much of it.

He did not get it, for he was preoccupied,
true he could not get enough.

Aphrodite one suffering lady infected
by a common-savior-syndrome-virus,
decided he needed all the help he could
get. When he said:
"I'm I, a love-addict and I don't get it."

Aphrodite was a brave soul and
not without having her own motives
offered to thirteen-step him.

She had told everybody her story, but
him, whatever they wanted to
hear, she and her short-term memory
were able to recall:

Such as the sleeping in
parked cars on the railroad track between
Kalisa's and The-Old-Coast-House.

There was no aquarium, there were
no tourists and the old canneries
burned on occasions to the ground.

Aphrodite talked about: Back then
people living in their cars
were as good as people can be,
taking care of each other
helping each other, sharing
the very all they had.

Aphrodite missed many of her friends:
They were good people, some down
and out on their luck.

Most of them were real rich...

...blessed with big hearts.

They were good people and they
had something the rich didn't have,
the money-bags could never buy:
They had tranquility.

Aphrodite looking at him
expressed her thoughts
about men who beside everything else
had always had money
in their pockets.

It had been a long time, long time, since
she had had some for old-times-sakes.
And charity, she did, by giving old
clothing to Goodwill Industries.

Aphrodite knew they all had forgotten, how
things used to be, on purpose.
Thinking death by aids and
humiliation by STDs.

Think, things had changed.

Way back then Aphrodite had
been left behind
by her boyfriend
back in the canyon...

...at this one party, a harvesting-party, by reasons
of insanity ?

It went on for five days, after he
this freak, had left
on the second.

In the end Aphrodite had
left too with a group of
musicians, who told her she had
a great voice.

They all had listened to Aphrodite
in and outside the thin walls of the tepee.

And Aphrodite bragged and bragged
and bragged, that once
they had hidden a microphone in the tent.
The Santa Lucias came to life.

The valley was echoing with Aphrodite's
voice for the longest time, a trip lasting a lifetime.

And the trees were bowing in salute
after parading by
as they all did, all the straight ones.

And someone gave her a recording
titled "heatbarnone!" She barely recognized
any of the players in the drama
in which Aphrodite played the
willing victim.

The tape had sixty minutes of
uncensoreduncutpassion
on each side.

"You want to listen to it?"
Aphrodite asked,
searching in her bag of tricks
for the tape to
prove that the show had lasted for
more than an hour.

She bragged much too, before
making a sales pitch for
legalizing marijuana.

It wasn't that he did not dig Aphrodite.

Yet who could know where Aphrodite
had been in the last twenty years after
the hippies' spirits left Big Sur.

When he mentioned he lived in Africa,
she took her offer back saying, "That's where
all this Aids business started isn't it?"

He thanked Aphrodite anyhow as she clarified...
...the spelling of her name as Afro-Di.

At the same meeting some fellow told him
that he had to have a sponsor
who could take him all the way
through all the steps.

"Show me the thirteenth first?" he asked.
Getting a "Weirdoo..." remark, this conversation
was cut very short.

He had not hit bottom yet,
he had not reached the stage where
he would have admitted that he was powerless
over his addiction and that his life
had become unmanageable.

Nevertheless he noticed nothing.
He was preoccupied with Sophia and
Computerese of which he didn't
understand much.

Disclaimer:

Any similarity fitting the reader

is done on purpose,

names are not changed,

no innocence was protected.

May you wear the glass slipper if it fits

with royal pride and never feel hurt

by a fool's tongue sticking out at you.

 chapter 6