Gary Gamble

Mission Impossible

I'm no plumber.
Funny how plumbers always are the butt of
so many worksite put downs.
Shit runs downhill, payday is Friday.
All you have to know.
Maybe it's the fecal proximity
that makes them so available for ridicule.

I'm in the crawlspace
doing my favorite thing,
communing with spiders,
plumbing the depths of my incompetence.
Reliving episodes of mission impossible-
lit fuse slithers across the screen.
Doomsday clock ticking down to nothing
pliers seek the right wire to snip.

Commando crawling
rerouting those pipes
sweating those joints.
I keep expecting someone to say:
*don't sweat those joints*
as if its easy.
Its not easy.
I'm no plumber.

I can't fathom the technique:
polish and shine the parts to be matched.
heat and solder the silver thread
to be sucked in to the capillary.

I swear I'm praying to the wrong gods
when I turn the main back on.
Silent news is good news, pissing sound is bad.
Tense and alert, I turn the valve.

Gary Gamble comes from questionable ancestry through more than a few customs line ups, leaving a vast array of children, wives, and expired passports in his wake. After committing literary suicide in the late seventies a la Franz (burn all my manuscripts, Max) Kafka, he's resurrected himself now that he feels he has outgrown the post-adolescent angst which littered his scribblings at that time. Turn the hubris alarm off, he's not comparing himself to Kafka, although he did name his son Gregor.