More Stuff by Peter Ambrose

                   FUNK
          A low depressed mood.
            Down in the dumps.
            A deep blue funk.
        Down in the deep blue funk
        A musty smell is smelled.
             Of moldy tobacco
             Or an old attic
     Cluttered with old instruments.
            The smell of jazz,
               Funky Jazz.
   The rhythm and blues of the 1970's,
The jerky bass and bombastic vocalizations
    Of Parliament and George Clinton,
          The soul and the vibe.




                         Speak of the Little Devil:
                     A Brief Glossary of Day Camp Terms

bug- juice 1. [noun], A beverage composed of water and a powdered
   drink mix, created with the intent of giving water the taste of something
   other than water. ex. "Can you tell what flavor bugjuice this is?"
   2. [exclamation], A nonvulgar expression of anger replacing any variety
   of vulgar exclamation inappropriate for young persons.

C.I.T. [noun], An acronym for Counselor In Training. A volunteer
   supervisor of day campers who undergoes training to prepare for the job
   of full-time counselor. ex. " Being a C.I.T. can really stink sometimes. "

J. C. [noun], An acronvm for Junior Counselor. A payed day camp staff
   member. An intermediate position between C.I.T. and full-time
   counselor. ex. "J. C.'s are very reliable considering their wages. "

rod- rig- uez [noun], <etymology: Slowpoke Rodriguez, the
   slow-moving counterpart to cartoon mouse Speedy Gonzales.> A
   camper who is incapable or unwilling to dress himself at an acceptable
   speed, ruining any chances af getting to or leaving the swimming pool on
   tlme.

shor- ty [noun], A camper who will invariably cling to any authority
   figure in the same body of water as him or herself and never let go.
   ex. "Help, the shortys have got me!"

                                           CAMP IDAWANAGO



Vertigo Incorporated

Up above, a few more stories of the high rise
remaining above you
Down below, Firemen and watermelons, and perhaps your own
remains below you
Vertigo
Your head spins
The melons smash,
red and green splatters on the pavement
Will you splatter too?
No green though,
No green for you
Vertigo
Lookers on look on
Firemen call to you
Firetrucks crash into fire hydrants
The crash!
Vertigo
Flying through the air,
Perfect "10" swan dive
The crowd screams
The janitors ready the mops
Vertigo
Another stock-broker smashes
Like a watermelon on the sidewalk
The janitors step forward
Vertigo



Smooth Music


The tuba
A big brass
A big band
Tubas in a big brass band
The tuba says "BLATT!"
And FWOO-domp a domp-domp."
The band plows over,
Marches through

The eel
A smooth fish
Unarmed, unlegged, light
The eel skates the seas alone
The eel says nothing
It glides among the seaweed
And squiggles around

The eel plays the tuba
It says "Squeetybonk."
The band of eels has no feet
A slithering band
Glides through, between
Underaround .



                             Impromptu Poetry

Transformation Poem:  1) Write a Poem describing a worker becoming a part, a
    tool, or a product of his or her work. This requires your intimate
    knowledge of the particular work process and the language connected with
    it.   2) Do NOT use any form of the following words: become, change,
    transform. Instead, make us experience the transformation.


The Keeping of the Beeses

When people want honey, there's money to be made
Bob wants money to buy a nice new car
Bob builds a hive to put the bees in
The bees are bought by Bob for 15 dollars
Bob is busy bringing honey from the busy bees
Bob is buzzing back and forth, buying BMW bygone
Busy Bob's bustling business back breaking buzzing
Buzz busy bees
Bizz buzz bazooz bees buzz beeses
       Buzz Buzz
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ



           Hats

A canvas hat my Dad wore in Africa
Too big over my eyes
A Mariner's baseball cap from my uncle
back when they still had the trident
I wore it backwards and I was the Blue Baron
A plastic top hat covered with Fake felty Fuzz
made me the Wizard of Oz.
Don't laugh or Ricardo will beat you up.
Now I am bigger.  Me and my dad
and my grandfather all wear the canvas hats
together.
For the last time
These are the days of our hats
And the hats of our lives.



            Impromptu Poetry:  Ethnic Poem:  "Old Way / New Way"

This is the old way
The cave is cold
Everyone stares in awe
At the golden-orange heat
in the center
This is the old way
Knapping with flint
Splintering wood
Tying with sinews
To hunt
The lumbering mammoth
And wooly rhinoceros
This is the old way
The mammoth is too quick
For the ape man and his club
Maybe they will dig up
some roots and worms
_______________________
This is the new way
My sweater is too itchy to wear
So I turn up the thermostat
Casually glancing at the television
This is the new way
I call Pizza Clans
And an underpaid, overdressed
Young man brings me
food
This is the new way.

The Brown Sugar Man

There are days when you wake up in the morning and think to yourself "I must go to school, I suppose I survived before, I will do it again. " There are days when you spring out of bed and say "Oh boy, school time! " And then there are days when you wake up and you are the Brown Sugar Man.

The Brown Sugar Man looks like a normal person at first glance. He has the general shape of a human, and his overall hue is not too different from the color of a person. Upon closer inspection, he is far from a normal shade of skin color. His form is too collapsed to be human. It is soon realized that the Brown Sugar Man can not be disturbed from his resting state without extensive caution, lest he disintegrate into an amorphous heap. Due to his structural instability, he avoids activity, Iying around langorously, silently praying that he will not crumble. Being composed of brown sugar, he has an utter disgust of even the thought of food, avoiding it at all costs. He seems to have a subconscious fear that this supplementary nourishment will violate the purity of the brown sugar.

Gradually, the Brown Sugar Man returns to his normal state. It may take a day or it may take a month. However, to the Brown Sugar Man, time as we know it is irrelevant. Each second is an etemity, punctuated by the hammering of the second-hand on the clock. The Brown Sugar Man's sole sanctuary from the deadening relentlessness of time is sleep. This is not sleep in the normal restful manner, but a loss of all perception. Everything becomes nothing. For sometimes minutes on end, time bypasses life and memory scrawls down a blankness in his mind. The Brown Sugar Man is not a pleasant person to be.

It seems so long ago that I learned the true meaning of the Brown Sugar Man. One cold February moming in second grade stands out in my mind. I definitely felt like the Brown Sugar Man, or at least one of his close relatives. It was a good day to stay home sick. It was the flu if I ever had it. Early in the day, I could barely conceive of eating, and I was overwhelmed by the mysterious smell of ham and bacon. After lounging around watching obscure public television programs, I felt the need to eat and stomached some soup. My fever was around 101 degrees that day.

The next few days, time passed slowly and I ate a few installments of "gentle" foods such as soup and Jell-O. I drank a lot and actually got some real sleep. My fever lingered around 100. My largest recollection of those few days was a strange educational show. I have no idea what it was supposed to teach anyone. I do remember that there was one kid who was some kind of troublemaker in the program. It ended with some obscure fight scene between several of the youths on the program, climaxed with one of them falling out of a treehouse. I can still see the kid Iying on the wet leafy ground. I knew he wasn't dead, but without some continuation of the story, he would interminably lie there painfully on the ground. Maybe I felt I related to him.

The next two days, I did not feel particularly perky, but I was much better than I had been. I ate my "gentle" foods more regularly, and even ate something close to a normal meal. I could even walk around a bit. I had it pretty good those two days. My temperature was still running a bit above normal so I didn't go to school, but I didn't have the overpoweringly miserable feeling I had felt before. I would have gotten to eat my special Sunday breakfast of waffles and sausages and I would have even been back in school on Monday. Unfortunately, before Monday was Sunday.

Sunday, I was without a doubt the Brown Sugar Man. I did not even think about break- fast. I just lay there and sank into the bed. My fever ravaged on at 102. My recollection of that day is like a badly scratched record. Many things seem to happen more than once, there are periods of silence, but mostly there is the damaged squeal of the misdirected record grooves. I payed a visit to the doctor that day, to find out that I did indeed have pneumonia and to get a prescription. Somehow, time sped up enough for the day to end, and I fell into a deep slumber. The next two days I still felt like the Brown Sugar Man, but nothing like Sunday.

The antibiotics eventually took effect, so I crawled out of bed and went to school again. At the time it did not seem too significant to me, and I went back to school as if I had only had a couple of individual sick days. But now, I will never forget my days as the Brown Sugar Man.