THE BOX CALLED WAR

“Once upon a time in the land of hushabye
Around about the wondrous days of yaw
I came upon a sort of box …”

I'm still not sure what came over me, but in my fifteenth year I shuffled out of my dark, smokey lair of teenage angst and purchased a John Denver album. Perhaps I was wasted and the record store manager took advantage of my condition -- I got a shitload of bad albums that way. Or maybe I thought it was an album by Bob Denver of Gilligan's Isle? ( a three hour tour ). Look, I don't really know the reasons. Let's just chalk it up to raging pubescent hormones, psychotropic drugs at too early an age, too many Herman Hesse and Carlos Castaneda books, a grievously defective decision-making capacity and a general lack of free will.

I don't remember much about the record itself - don't really want to remember - except that it included an epic poem, which I assumed was composed by Mr. Denver himself, entitled, "The Box Called War." Even after all these soupy, dispiriting and despoiled years, I recall that the poem took the controversial position that women and children didn't open the box called war. This morbid ode wounded me deeply as a vulnerable pubescent, and it occurs to me now that I might enjoy hearing Bill Shatner do a hip-hop version of it.

At the very first listening - Good Christ! What abomination have I brought into my home? - I knew what must be done. Without Dad's knowledge (Pop had a weird thing about his tools), I took his soldering iron to the vinyl, a surgical procedure I had performed only once before, on an early Fleetwood Mac with its own querulous sonnet about ... bare trees. However, the operation on the Mac album was intended only to create a smooth channel for the phonographic needle to glide safely and seamlessly across the unhappy track to the next song. Unfortunately, despite the skill of a young Dr. Barnard or DeBakey, the patient died due to unforeseen and unavoidable complications.

However, in the case of Mr. Denver's compilation, it was never intended for the album to survive the operation. And it did not, except in my deepest consciousness where it has festered like a rusted nail.

You're going to say that perhaps I just don't like poetry. And that is not true and, indeed, the mere thought of you saying so makes me want to cut open your nose, kittycat, like Jake's in Chinatown. In fact, I consider myself a sophisticated connoisseur of the bard's art, and as a high school sophomore penned my own poignant collection, "Crickets in the Cat Box." I yet recall one haunting refrain from that precocious anthology ... "But I have seen diamonds."

There was also a subtle metaphor featuring a pussy willow struggling towards the crepuscular light amidst the grimy, limb-strewn abattoir.

But let's get right down to it, shall we? First of all, there is no proof whatsoever that war has ever been packaged in a box. I mean, like a Cheerios box? With the food pyramid on back? I do love the food pyramid, having spent hundreds of hours pondering its mysteries as I spooned up my toasted O's ("They float!" I always thought that would make a great ad campaign) - so many servings of this, so many of that; the sparkly bits of salt and fat twinkling fetchingly at the apex. Who figured all this out? It had to be a genius, maybe the Beautiful Mind guy.

Speaking of the cereal box phenomenon, when I was little more than a toddler, I sent away my painstakingly collected purse stealings (mom made it so easy, it was if she wanted me to rifle her purse) to purchase a tool - a piece of advanced technology as it were - which promised that when easily screwed into the rind of the sweet Florida orange would yield a veritable fountain of delectable, thirst-quenching and nutritious juice. Twist it in, then simply pour the rich, pulpy nectar right into your mouth (food pyramid: one serving!).

You've already guessed what happened: a small, innocent, if somewhat large-headed child spends months racing to the mailbox day after day - only to be ultimately baffled, crushed and irremediably damaged when that dreamed of delivery arrived. Welcome to the real world, sonny. Not a drop dripped from the rind-protruding tube. For hours, I held it over my heavy, outsized head, mouth gaping like a carp out of water, tongue hopelessly probing the juice-less tube - until my tiny aching arms finally gave out. Then I lay on the floor, curled up like a cashew, sucking, until my lungs hurt, the dry plastic teat of all my illusions.

A large part of me is still sucking that teat.

What kind of beast would do this to a smiling baby, who had, at least theoretically, heretofore regarded the cosmos with trusting, clapping, awe-struck wonder? I think we all know who, but my attorney advises me to name no names.

Thank you, we now return to "The Box Called War:"

Why not the bag called war, or the thermos called war? Huh, answer me that, if you can. Again, I know what you're going to say, you transparent Quisling apologist: Pandora's Box! Ha Ha! Hoisted on your own petard! (My second wife did this to me once - I think the pretext was, "Honey-bunny, can you help me with the curtains?" Then she brought out a cattle prod to discuss Charlene and Darlene, my one and only twin-sandwich experience. I guess she found the polaroids.) Why have you been hoisted on your petard? Because Pandora's "box" was really a "jar!" Read your Britannica, ass-face!

Now to the crux, this dangerous nonsense about women not opening the Rubbermaid tub called war. If you're a motherless, sister-less gay man, you might be excused for thinking thus - if you were also a spittle-drooling halfwit of saint-like proportions. But anyone who has lived with a woman longer than an enthralling drug-addled weekend knows that the female of the species has honed war to a fine-edged art. Elephant traps with Punjabi sticks! Bouncing Betties! Interrogation techniques outlawed by the Geneva Convention! It's self-preservation: women live surrounded by grunting, biologically-whipsawed weasels (may the Lord have mercy on our raddled souls).

The ladies took a crowbar to the box called war a long time ago.

Who do you think Pandora was, anyhow? Sammy Davis Junior?

And, furthermore, nothing makes me more peevish than the witless deification of children. What a load of New Age crap! Right, children drop from heaven like lotus seeds. I, for one, try to remember as little of my childhood as possible, doggedly replacing loathsome reality with light-hearted scenes from Macauley Culkin and Molly Ringwald movies. Outside the company Christmas party, there is no more dangerous and repulsive place on earth than the Every-Town Lord-of-the-Flies Middle School. Gang warfare, spearing, stink bombs, sexual humiliation, extortion, scalp nougies, foot bastinado, pink belly and lynch mobs of eager, baby-fatted faces chanting "fight, fight, kill, kill!" I wouldn’t dare enter a restroom without significant numbers of burly supporters, which, unfortunately, I never had.

Childhood is one long war zone! I approached each day like a brain-fried Vietnam grunt fearfully eyeballing another tunnel hole in the muck. Please don't make me go in there ("Yankee dog, you die!"). Given the choice, I'd rather have just dropped a grenade - "fire in the hole!" - and scooted happily back to my dark, sweaty room to bolt the door, suck the hookah and watch the ceiling fan turn to the music of Jethro Tull.

Doesn't that make good sense to you?

For the most part, that's still how I feel about the box called life. And yet...I have seen diamonds.* Man! That's powerful. Most writers would give their eyeteeth to come up with a line like that. If Mr. Denver had had one-tenth my talent, I might have given his album a favorable review. As it is, I really have no other choice than to shitcan it.

[* Footnote: For those of you who have been hurriedly skimming the piece, hoping for an explicit sex description, this evocative line - depicting fragile hope amidst overwhelming despair - comes from the reviewer's own pen. Yes, really. Now, please proceed to the next piece for some hot XXX action.]

Acknowledgement & Correction: I feel begrudgingly obliged to thank my prepublication reader, R. Doe, for researching and then rubbing my face in the facts that the correct title of the piece in question is not actually “The Box Called War” but indeed simply “The Box,” which was written not by Mr. Denver but instead by the great English poet, Lascelles Abercrombie (1881 – 1938). Ms. Doe proceeded to point out, rather gratuitously in my opinion, that Mr. Denver was born in Roswell, New Mexico - the implication being, I assume, that he was an alien. I, however, prefer to believe the maestro came from and returned to the magical land of hushabye, where Jiminy Cricket, Puff the Magic Dragon and that rarest of mythological beasts -- the Compassionate Conservative -- also reside.

By Henry E. Panky