Kenosha Kitchen Band Christmas [First Hack]

Sad to report that Jeanne of Jeanne's Greens, our long-time flower person, passed over this year past. Her store was a small cavern shop of wonders. She was a rainbow. Here above is her Christmas design from circa 1997 which graced the depared SoftwareMag.com at Christmas.

Best Christmas and New Year to all. It is a time of year we walk in darkness, and I time of year to, like Isiah, see a great light. There follows a poem [Kenosha Kitchen Band Christmas [First Hack]] this memory that came back to me of a Christmas party with all handicapped kids many moons ago.

i.
Weight of a million years
and there is a hole in what I called time
Voidoid climbed into my life
when I was just being there burdened and blind.

Grabbed me by the throat
and took the air out, man
It was
all the Lutheran mothers
in the Kenosha kitchen band.

Took the stage again in the glare
at the bell school
the Special Ed place before they called it that
when the Edsel was a flop
and the hit was a power windowed Cadillac

When the handicapped
hadda find their own way
when they wouldnt let them in school
so parents banded bucks together
and then it was Christmas jumping
and the kitchen band
I recall all stood in a great light
And we were
In the dark
Our boots in the cloakroom
in snow puddles.

They took their forks and their knives
in their housewife hands
to play the Spike Jones music
silver bells
egg beaters pots and pans
Gene Autrey’s Rudolph Red
piezoelectric flour sifters cacophoning
at the Special Ed Chritsmas
The snowy long-ago eve.





ii.

In the audience of special clamor
a hundred special needs kids
most in good ruckus yknow
Georgie with palsy with cross eyes he stared
Taking the music in
A little gentlemen
but he'd help katie get her coat off there
the lights were on .. and the clatter was great
poor penny
on the coil not long
wiggles twists turns to see

And me like Georgie taking it in
Holding it a long time til
It tastes of drowning tears
the mothers clatter and hum
in my camera eye mind
at the Special ed party in a lobe
in an alternate Charlie brown universe
just seven days
before Christmas
watching the ceil while snow is falling

Kitchen band clangorous carrying abundant joy
great jubilee in this nebula life akimbo.
Crying time, buck, but
if I am going to cry
I will go home and cry
in what I call my good past time.
-Jack Vaughan, Dec. 2007