Capturing Beauty
by
John Presco
Copyright 2021
Scrabble Stories
“Did someone say – “Scrabble”?
There is only one Z in a Scrabble game, unless you are playing with Mindy’s box. Then there are three. But, we were playing with my very old box I bought at Saint Vinny’s last week for $3.99. My neighbor knocked on door and invited me to play in front of her place. It was a hazy day. Mindy said she would bring down a card table and chairs and place them smack dab in the middle of People Action Point – the last place a practiced recluse wants to be. I had gone to Action Central for the Fourth of July party Mindy put on. I was surrounded by my neighbors and their children. I felt really spaced out from the people energy. All my interaction with my species went on in my head as I composed, put another five hundred words down on my blog. Then comes the cutting and pasting I like to do to give my reader more references and clues they can follow. I took the steak home Mindy cooked so I could collect myself, but went back for th fireworks where I ran from the cop who showed up. There was way took much sparkler action. Mindy overcooks – everything! This is why she has three scrabble sets. She should own a carnival. Management made her get rid of her three story Halloween Spookhouse.
I put my Scrabble set on the small table – and Mindy is all over it! She is blown away because it was a antique. This is the first time I opened the box! We both love Good Finds. We hit it off. I tell Mindy I am a bad speller, but not when I played with Mighty Mo – who was a great speller with a stellar mind. She made everyone play who came to her house. This was Sacred Family Ritual. When Mindy knocked on my door yesterday I knew it was her, She used Scrabble-Morse Knock……Do-you-want-to-play-Scrab-ble?
I knew this was going to be risky. I did not want to get Mindy mixed up with The Jesus-Wars at McKenzie. I had put an end to The God Squad meeting in the rec room. Jason had all his ex-felons in there. One was harassing my female friend.
“I did not read this sign when I came to apply ‘Welcome to Camp McKenzie – Home of Born-again Jesus-freaks!”
The New God Squad found this WANTED poster the Wiccan Anarchist, Alley Valkyrie posted after Mayor Kitty Piercy took it off her facebook. The Eugene Anarchist were trying to give me Big Time Writers Block. I got death threats and had the Springfield Police over. I called the FBI, several times. Mindy and I talked about writing a Scrabble story that turns into a Alfred Hitchcock or Stephen King novel. Little did she know. My neighbor got me composing about my mother, Rosemary, something that is very hard to do – because it was forbidden. Our mother make porno movies for the Mafia and dated Errol Flynn. She smoked and drank herself to death because – she was bored!
Mindy asked if I minded – she smoked. This was my first Scrabble game in ages. I came away smelling like cigarettes. I just had a creative conversation with a very interesting human. We talked about a group authorship and having Writer’s guild meetings in the rec room? How about Mindy start a Scrabble Facebook group that stresses FOLLOWING THE RULES? It seems all opposing sides don’t want rules. Finding permission from God and Jesus, to follow no secular rules, may put an end to Scrabble Games as we know it. Praying….for a Q and X, after you got a Z, may be the name of the new game
All four people in the pic below, are dead. Christine is wearing a Chinese hat. Perhaps Mindy can find some?
John Presco
“I’m going to make this very simple for you. I don’t know if you know who I am, but I sure as hell know who you are, and when you fuck with my friends, you fuck with me. Stop writing about Belle or I am going to make your life very difficult. I mean it. If I see one more word about her on your blog, your FB, or anywhere else, I will make sure that you experience all the fear and discomfort that she is experiencing right now.
Smoking Cigarrettes With Raphael
Posted on February 9, 2020 by Royal Rosamond Press
Elmer ‘Big Bones’ Remmer
Posted on June 7, 2012 by Royal Rosamond Press
I met Elmer ‘Big Bones’ Remmer when I was fifteen. He and his wife (or girlfriend) looked like Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus, they both having white hair. They walked into our home on San Sebastian Avenue, our benefactor wanting to meet the children of their employee. Rosemary ( a made woman?) was working for Rucker hydraulics in Emmeryville and met Remmer in the Oaks or Menlo Club located in mob-owned town. She started editing porno movies for Remmer, then starred in them. Many nights Rosemary did not get home till after her four children were asleep. We would find a doggy bag from a restaurant in the fridge. Vicki sees her three older siblings as her real parents.
Remmer was bigger then I thought. He is named along with Mickey Cohen and Frank Sinatra. He ran the Cal-Neva Lodge and took his case to the highest court in regards to his card rooms in Emmeryville and San Francisco. It looks like Remmer was trying to make gambling legal in all of California which would put the Mob out of business in Nevada. However, Remmer was the Mob.
There was a brawl and arrest in LA involving the actress, Vicki Raaf. Here, Hollywod make-believe, meets real reality!
Jon Presco
Page 45 ‘When You Close Your Eyes’ by Tom Snyder
“We’d be over at Christine’s after school.” Raphael says, “and sit around te kitchen table drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and eating cinnamon toast. Because, you know, they never had any food in that house. So toast was about the best we could do. But at least we could hang out and smoke, and we sure couldn’t do that at my house. So Greg and Mark, and Chris and I hung out and talked about what seemed important to us.
“Greg had largely dropped out of school and had fashioned an outdoor studio in the backyard studio.” Raphael recalls. “He spent most of the time painting, working on these large somber things with a lot of texture and layers. But they didn’t have any people in them, just turmoil, like heavy dark seascapes – very dark and gloomy. Christine did a few drawings, probably more than we realized, but wasn’t doing any painting when I first knew her. Greg was the artist in the family, and had all his mom’s attention for that. Chris just tried to stay out of the way.”
Christine also tried to stay out of the way in public, but around the kitchen table, she brought the controversial style of both her mother and maternal grandmother to any discussion.”
Smoking Cigarettes With Raphael
by
John Presco
Raphael and I
smoking cigarettes
together in the dinette
This couquette
who spoke perfect French
had two wondrous dimples
above her derriere
The sign of Libra
the balancing of Love
promises
in days to come
when we were young
sprinkling cinnamon
on the popped toast
eating all the butter.
Sprinkle Sprinkle
Little Star
I couldn’t wait
till Christine came home
from school
I in need of some company
painting all mourning long
as a failure
at seventeen
Large canvases
wiped out
on the fumes
coming in the back door
just to say hello
I lied
Yes I noticed
the dimples at the corner
of your smile
and the twinkle
in your smoke-filled
eye
“Another cigarette
Mademoiselle?”
School girls
So innocent
I so jaded
from reading art books
in my high-school
drop-out world
that they promised me
would be a living hell
without them
my schoolmates
in the cafeteria line.
Not for me
the Good Grade
grab bag
of Total lies
What truths
do you own now
Mr. Wise Guy?
“Pas me
the pack of Marlboroughs!”
Mr. Fougette was a French chef
from a line of them
Christine discribed
the seven course meal
while I was hungry
Raphael testified
we Prescos
had no food.
most of the time
Just cinnamon toast
in the alclove
talking art
waiting for the toaster
to do its thing
Pass the butter
merci
Playing scrabble
with the sisterhood
by Rosemary’s
Reseda pool
Everyone of them
is gone
I left alone
to search for words
Christine on the cusp
of being famous
wearing a funny hat
Pass the tile box
please
Rosemary
have you marked
the X, Q,
and Z?
Cheating at Scrabble
Cheating at Art
I used to pen poems
to my finished work
I declining the guitar lessons
Bryan offered me
telling him I am creating spaces
with no expectations
no comericalisation
allowing un-known notes
to find each other
Scrape Scrape Scrape
the sound of cinnamon toast
and grumbling stomachs
as Raphael and I
looked so cool
smoking cigarettes
in our after-school
Bohemian Hot Spot.
All winter long
we passed the butter
and the time
Mark did not join us
that is a un-artistic lie
I was tempted by
this French maiden
to take her out back
to the little shack I made
the bed I raised
on stolen palletes.
I was her foreign ideal
I owned a European look
If I had seen Raphael
in the nude
we would have had children
and more smoking of ciggerettes
in the afterglow.
Much more after-glow
because
She had the most
perfect derirre
waiting for me
in our Little Bohemia
carved out of
that giant city
“Plus de toasts cinnomen?”
“Merci!”
Rosamond Press 
Leave a comment