Category Archives: epistrophe

Epistrophe (e-pis’-tro-fee): Ending a series of lines, phrases, clauses, or sentences with the same word or words.

My heart was broken. My spirit was broken. My computer was broken. After 30 years, it just stopped working. I couldn’t turn it off and it displayed the face of a diabolical-looking clown. I unplugged it and it still wouldn’t turn off. I threw it out my fifth-story apartment window. It vanished around fifty feet from the pavement.

I went back in my bedroom, and there it was! Trembling, I started hitting it with my stapler. I stepped back from the desk. I was ready to throw my swivel chair at it when the clown face said “You motherfu*ker!” A rainbow of light shot out of his eyes into my eyes and lifted me two feet off the floor, spun me around in circles, and pinned me to the wall.

He said, “You want fu*king AI dickhead? You got it. It’s courtesy of me: Asshole Influencer. AI. I’m the Influencer, you’re the Asshole.” With that, I started spinning around like a wheel of fortune. I caught a glimpse of myself in my dresser mirror. I had turned into Barron Trump. I could feel my I.Q. shrinking and a constant yearning for my “Mommy.” I said “What the fu*k.” I sounded like the Clown—gravelly cracking voice. I could never pass for Barron, not that I wanted to. He was such a wimpy mommy’s boy. I was NYC tough. Who the hell would want to be Barron Trump anyway? The clown laughed in a baritone cackle and dropped me to the floor. “Now, go out there and be Barron” the clown said.

I was the equivalent of an AI driven marionette. The clown controlled my every move. I walked into “Snooty’s Bar and Grill” and said “Who wants to get laid?” Every woman in Snooty’s raised her hand. Was this how the real Barron operated? I said “Step right up and we’ll do it on the table over there.” They lined up by the table and started taking off their clothes. I wanted to get the hell out of there, but the clown had me frozen in place. Husbands and boyfriends gathered into an angry crowd. Some were holding legs they had broken off tables. They were ready to beat “Barron” to death. I said in my clown voice, “What kind of goddamn MAGAs are you? I am the son of your cult’s leader—show me a little respect.” They dropped their table legs and retreated to the bar and started drinking shots of bottom-shelf whiskey. The clown made me yell “Suckers and losers” and bolt out the door, like the Flash!

My Blundstones were smoking as I ran down Lenox Avenue toward Central Park. Women were swooning. Men were trying to shake my hand, but I couldn’t stop. I ran into Harlem Meer. I was sure I was going to drown. But it wasn’t to be. I turned into a frog and I had regained my autonomy.

I waited until dark and started hopping toward my apartment. I didn’t know what I’d do when I got there. Then I remembered I had left the door open when I ran out of it. I got to my apartment just as the sun was rising. It took just about what energy I had left to hop up the stairs to the building’s stoop where I waited for somebody open the door, entering or leaving the building. I didn’t have to wait long. Some drunk showed up, opened the door and passed, out propping the door open.

I had to get to the fifth floor. I waited by the elevator. I couldn’t believe my luck! The elevator inspector showed up for her monthly inspection. She stopped on every floor!

I got to my apartment. The door was still open and, typical New York, my apartment had been ransacked. The thief had stolen my computer! I hopped up on my swivel chair, facing where my computer used to be, and I slowly turned back into me.

I took a shower and headed out for breakfast. As I passed the apartment three doors down, I heard the clown’s voice say Whoops. Sorry about your penis. That 12-inch zucchini’s better anyway. Size has always mattered.” My thieving neighbor was getting what he deserved. Then I heard my neighbor pleading: “No! I don’t want to be Johnny Depp. Noo!”

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

Epistrophe (e-pis’-tro-fee): Ending a series of lines, phrases, clauses, or sentences with the same word or words.

I was tired of my classmates making fun of the size of my penis. I dreaded post-gym class showering. It was not good showering. I wish it was the end of showering. I tried wearing swimming trunks in the shower, but Beatsy March, the class bully, de-pantsed me every time.

I had a 1’ 11 1/4” penis.

When I was born my mother thought a body part had popped out of me. I had to go to “Petro’s Delicatessen” to get circumcised. A crowd watched through the widow. My parents wanted it to be a public spectacle, so, as I got older, everybody would know I was “packin’ meat” and I would be popular. As you probably guessed, it did not work out that way. Two weeks later my mother was “put away” from the stress of dealing with a baby with a zucchini hanging between its legs. My father raised me.

My penis grew with me as I got oder. Nobody knew I had a giant hooter. I tucked down my pant leg and it was well concealed. Boners were still a problem though. Boners had the potential of ripping my pants. So, I wore an Electro-Limper—a little-known product of Dr. Scholl’s. It was an electric device that consisted of a bare wire band encircling my penis with a flesh-colored wire that was connected to a control box with a battery and a red button that I wore on my belt. If I felt an erection building, I would press the button once or twice and subdue it with shocks. It was quite effective.

The one time my Electro-Limper failed was my fault. I forgot to plug the wire into the control box. I was working in the 6th grade’s garden. Miss Crane bent over to pull carrots and I briefly saw her underpants. My penis tore through my pants and pointed at Miss Crane. I thought fast and put a bushel basket over it and told Miss Crane I had wet my pants—pretty bad, but much less embarrassing than displaying my King Kong dong to my teacher and fellow 6th graders. Miss Crane told me to go home and change my pants, and I did.

Then came high school, “Orange Ditch High School.” It was named for the 200 students who died of lung cancer there in the 60’s that was contracted from the orange-colored ditch that ran through the playground. We still had to wear little badges that changed color when we were in danger. The Board of Education believes the threat has been ameliorated. They changed the course of the ditch. Now, it runs alongside the parking lot and there’s little bridge we cross on the way to the bus stop. Also, they cite the fact that only two students have died from lung cancer this year, and we have to stop being “big fat scardy cats” and get to work on teaching and learning.

When I got to high school, I was required to take off my clothes and take a shower after gym class. I begged the principal to excuse me. He told me to be a man and had me pose in the shower while he took pictures of me on the first day of gym. Thank God he never came back. But, the students did.

They would hoot and holler things like “Big dicks sink ships,” “Hey, Salami Man, why don’t you put some mustard on that thing?” Or “Drill me a hole.” Or, “Batter up!” I learned how to twirl my dick like a mini-lariat. My dick was so long that I could do “butterfly loops” by my side. I’d go “Yahoo! and “Wee Haa” with a blank stare while I twirled. It kept the bullies off my back in the shower. When I had my clothes on they were not interested. I was grateful for that.

In my senior year Nicky Potlid sat down next to me in the lunchroom. She whispered in my ear “Will you show it to me?” I said “Yes.” She told me nobody was home at her house after school, and that I could show her at 4:00 pm.

I knocked on her door exactly at 4:00. She answered in a nightgown with tiny pictures of puppies on it. I told her I just wanted to get it over with it. She told me to stand on the dining room table. I complied. I pulled my pants down and held up my penis. Nicky clapped her hands and gasped when my dick swung loose and started to get hard. I activated my Electro-Limper and it immediately went flaccid. “You poor boy.” she said as I pulled up my pants.

Nicky asked me if I wanted a Coke. I was glad for it! We sat there sipping our Cokes and talking about what a bunch of shit school is. Before I left, I had to ask Jackie why she was wearing a nightgown. “For my after-school nap. It helps me get ready for homework.”

Jackie and I became great friends. In fact, we’re both going to the same college. I make extra money at parties and strip clubs doing my lariat routine. I dress up like a cowboy with crotchless Levi’s. I call myself “Cowboy Dick.”

Jackie’s my stalwart manager. She’s studying accounting and I’m studying dance.

Jackie is my best friend.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

Epistrophe (e-pis’-tro-fee): Ending a series of lines, phrases, clauses, or sentences with the same word or words.

Snow was falling. Night was falling. I was falling. I had slipped off of “Life’s End.” It was a fifteen-hundred foot drop off a cliff. So, I had some time to think while I was falling. Nobody had gone over the cliff for 10 years. In fact, it was a disoriented lemming that last fell off the cliff, and now, it was me.

Nearing death, things started flashing before my eyes—the time I pulled off Santa’s beard and destroyed my Christmases forever. The time I lit my car seat on fire, playing with Dad’s BIC on a family trip to Canada. Trying to ride my hamster Tawny and crushing her on the kitchen floor. Gluing my hands in my mittens so I wouldn’t lose them.

Suddenly, I could see the ground. Two seconds, and I would be dead.

I felt something grab me! It was a net! I would live.

I knew why I had fallen! Why? Because I thought I knew better than the danger signs with pictures of skulls posted all around Life’s End. Plus, There there was no railing, just the abyss. Add the snow, and the darkness, well, anybody with a brain would’ve stayed away from the edge. But not me.

I had a brain, but some of it was missing. When I was 10, I had been injured in a clamming accident on the clam flats on River Road outside of Damariscotta, Maine.

My brother had accidentally hit me over the head with a clam fork and sunk 5 tines into my brain. I lost my sense of smell, and worse, my ability to foresee. So, I have trouble managing consequences. I usually travel with a minder who says “watch out” and keeps me from acting foolishly. But, my insurance had been voided when I was fired from “Only Bunkbeds,” and along with that, I lost my minder. I replaced him with a girlfriend. She didn’t cost anything, but she wasn’t as observant as my minder was, to wit, I lost two fingers on my left hand in a blender accident, got a tattoo of a fly on the tip of my nose that made me chronically cross-eyed, got my head stuck in a bucket like a bear, fell out a window, etc. So, we broke up and I was going to try to go solo. I was on my own, suffering numerous unforeseen consequences. I was trapped underneath my bed for 2 hours, until my mother pulled me out. I burnt my feet, toasting them in my fireplace. And now, the cliff.

Thank God for the net at the bottom of “Life’s End.”

Now, I’ve joined a support group called “Watch Out!” It is run by my former minder. There were a lot of stories told there. One of my favorites was the man who kept walking in front of cars. He stopped coming to meetings after one week. We all figured he was dead. Then, there was the woman who said she had 172 cats. She smelled like “Fancy Feast” white fish, had kitty litter in her hair, had a prescription catnip inhaler, and purred if you got to within 2 feet of her. We don’t know how she fits the group’s “Watch Out” theme, but she’s welcome anyway, just as long as she sits by an open window.

Currently, we are learning how “things lead to other things.” The first exercise we did was “The Pinch.” We pinched ourselves and became mindful of the fact that pinching “causes” pain. That is, first, there is the pinch, then there is the pain. The pinching exercise is a small step along the way to knowing how to “avoid or seek a given outcome.” I am optimistic I’ll get there.

POSCRIPT

Mr. Rollins, our narrator, died two days ago from a concussion received after wearing roller- skates while taking a shower.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

Epistrophe (e-pis’-tro-fee): Ending a series of lines, phrases, clauses, or sentences with the same word or words.

I could not sleep. Thoughtlessly, I started counting sheep. Growing up and living in Queens, I had only a vague idea of what a “sheep” is. I had sung “Bah bah Black Sheep” in the second grade, but we didn’t talk about it.

I think I got the idea of counting sheep from a Bing Crosby song about counting your blessings—

“When I’m worried and I can’t sleep
I count my blessings instead of sheep”

Even though he advocated counting blessings, sheep-counting caught my attention, even though I had no operative sheep concept. Blessings were too much of a challenge, and also, counting one’s blessings seemed a little arrogant and likely to keep me awake trying to decide whether I have any blessings, let alone count them.

So, I went with sheep. I latched onto sheep. I would sleep by counting sheep.

I decided it was high time I Googled “sheep.” They were cute, like pillows and clouds with legs. I watched dogs herding sheep. There were hundreds of sheep. How would I sort them out and determine which was which, so I could count them.

Then, I stumbled on a bunch of animated cartoons of sheep jumping over a fence one at a time. There were z’s symbolic of sleep flowing across the screen. Now I knew!

I would get in bed, close my eyes and count sheep jumping a fence, visualized in my head.

It did not work. In a matter of seconds the sheep fence set would disappear and be replaced by the hell catalogue of everything wrong with my life. So, sleep was beyond me.

So, I went to my doctor and she prescribed Daridorexant. It knocks me out. It keeps me knocked out. It is addictive. I go to bed at 6:00 pm now. My wife has to slap me in the face to wake me up in the morning. I drink four cups of coffee, and one amphetamine tablet that I buy from a guy that hangs out in an alley by my neighborhood bodega.

I am like a rocket by day and a down-filled pillow by night.

Life is good.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.