Excerpts from Ice Babies in Oz

Some excerpts from ICE BABIES IN OZ...

You know, Delbert, I wish that for just one hour God would grant us a genu-wine miracle - giving you enough sense of smell to realize how much a room fulla cat pee really really really stinks. From "Only 159.95"

Biographically speaking I can't say much, other than I am of pure Dutch-Irish-Creole ancestry born in Mobile, Alabama and nearly murdered on a fetus-removal table in Denver ninteen years later. From "Have a Nice Day"

Ladies and gentlemen. . . fellow F Train commuters: I don't wanna disturb anybody. But I really need your help. Anything you can spare. A dollar. A bagel. A cigarette. A condom, preferably unused. I mean, you really need all that stuff in your purse, lady? Jesus, a family of five could live in there! Whatsit have a garage and a sauna in the lower level? From "I Wasn't Always Like This"

Now, friends, though you might think you're on the highway to salvation, if you just sit there in the moral middle of the road, that sweet heavenly chariot's gonna run you right over! Life is not a limo ride, pilgrims, and nobody ever got to meet Jesus by bumming rides on another person's running board. From "Let Jesus Be Your Pit Stop in the Final Race to Heaven"

I don't know. You're the psychiatrist. It was an accident. I mean, just cause I don't like rainy days doesn't mean I'd let my own baby drown in her bathtub. Does it? From "It's This Rain"

I mean, really, darling, what do you want me to do with my time? Take up the harmonica? Join a birdwatching club? Shop till I drop? Collect expensive trinkets and meaningless baubles? Drink cheap white wine and drive aimlessly around town all day seeking naive but firmly-muscled young boys for an evening's jaded debauchery? Well, I've done all that, and it didn't make me happy. Not like coffee. Coffee is my one true rapture. From "Disciple of the Demitasse"

My last job, I was working as a file clerk in a women's health clinic on Tremont. One day I went out for lunch and didn't go back. It was strange, but I wasn't bothered by the ten-year-old girl in for her third procedure, sucking her thumb and squeezing a wornout teddy bear with no ears saying she knew her daddy really loved her and that's why he wanted her to have a little baby sister of her own. From "Ice Babies in Oz"

And then I woke up, cause I had only been dreaming, but I was crying. And my mom came, and you know what she did? She took a kleenex and waved it all over where my bed. And then she went to my window and opened it up and waved the kleenex around. I said, "Mom, are you wacko?", and she said she was pushing all the bad dreams out the window, and they would never come back. And she flushed the kleenex down the potty and then kissed me good night, and I went to sleep. From "I Once Was Scared of the Dark"

As your attorney, Mr. Tubbernitz, I'd like to remind you that the key word in this situation is "fear". Fear is a key word, Mr. Tubbernitz. Fear is your friend. Always think fear. You've got to project an image of absolute invincibility. Make the other guy squirm. Sweat. Shrivel. From "Key Word"

Then one day in '89 I was laying drunk outside a flop house in Mexicali thinking which one of the cantinas I'd visit that night, when I heard that old Son House song Death Letter Blues on some loco homeboy's boombox. From "Home Again"

Couple days later, I'm strollin' down 10th Street, somebody shouts my name. I look up and there is a big brown shape of somethin' gettin' bigger and bigger and comin' straight at me. I step aside, and bazoomba! - this giant jumbo blueberry bagel size of a German Shepherd smashes into the pavement and busts the sidewalk to pieces after missin' my noggin by like this much. Eight, nine floors above, there's a face stickin' out the window, and it's her! From "Guardian Angel"

"Where's Barry?" I screamed again, and I started calling his name until the rain pounded out my screams, and I slipped and tumbled across the slippery deck and got caught in the rigging of a fallen sail and heard the shiver-voice laugh like a cruel bully. From "Shiver"

Don't like to brag, sonny, but one glance under the hood and I know exactly what ails a person's soul. A broke-down axle or a busted fan belt ain't just a piece of metal or rubber gone bad. . . corresponds to some strained part of your psyche, a part of your spirit that's sick or twisted or about ready to go haywire and do you permanent damage. From "Jump Start"

Ask if they like porcupines. Tell them your thoughts on telepathy. Ask what their favorite food is and whether or not they were aware that the letters in "Seattle" also spell "Let's Eat". Then tell them about the feeling you get when you stand on a street corner on a bright spring morning, and the wind riffles through your hair and gently touches your face and you remember you felt the wind exactly like this at another time, and the memory provokes an incredible mysterious feeling that just blows your mind cause you know it has something to do with something magical that happened or is about to perhaps. From "Hey You Sitting There Looking At This."