Tag Archives: literature

Food & Sex


(From a glossy mag quiz re: food and sex)

At my age do I have a comment about food and sex?
Does a fat old man have the right?
Am I still relevant in the final, um…quarter of my life?
What of audience for my say about food and sex?
After all, I remember the summer of love first hand, so to speak.

(Speaking of love)
I have had sex without love.
I have had love without sex.
And I have had no love without sex.
No love without sex is boring.
Love without sex is boring,
What could be worse in America?
But sex without love is like
(Speaking of food)
Steak without the sizzle–
Steak devoid of fat–
Tofu-based ground meat product–
Not even good enough to make a decent chili.
It doesn’t matter how hot you make it.
Add garlic and chilis and cayenne,
Add salsa and white pepper, black pepper, red pepper,
Add mustards, white, black, yellow,
Even oysters and a tiny bit of chocolate,
It’s still just soy
Dressed up in crotchless panties and a garter belt.
Sex without love is nice,
Nice like low-cal sherbet made from skimmed milk and xylitol,
Nice like soda with aspartame,
Nice like left-handed sugar,
Nice like microwave popcorn with shake-on artificial butter flavored salt substitute.

Fucking your way to love
Is like eating your way to thin,
Or praying your way to heaven
Because in an hour,
Or after a shower,
You just need more.
The itch remains unscratched.
The void remains unfilled.
And eventually you get some disease
Or you figure out that some things aren’t good for you:
That some sex is goofy;
That some sex is a little crazy;
It’s all fun and games
Until you break your dick.
So you lay off and try to heal,
Sitting on the couch
(Speaking of food)
Eating pop tarts,
Tater tots, fish sticks, fruit by the yard,
Wonder bread, Lucky Charms, Fritos,
Ubiquitous bean dip, candy bars,
Cup cakes, Twinkies, smokey links,
Propyl gallate, butylated hydroxyanisole
Or butylated hydorxytoluene,
Potassium bromate, monosodium glutamate,
Ascesulfame K, Olestra, sodium nitrate,
And always, always,
hydrogenated vegetable oil with
Blue 1, Blue 3,
Red 3, Yellow 6.
It’s all in there,
Like good pornography.
And eventually there you are again,
Staring at your reflection in the pool
And wondering why that erection won’t go away,
Understanding the meaning of priapism.
And clitorism,
Or why your panties won’t dry
In the middle of the swirling snow squall.
Trying to come in from the storm,
Trying to come in to the table
Trying to come in
Trying.

The Solstice and the Poet’s Metaphor

Winter Solstice is the Poet’s Holiday–
Maximum darkness
With flat gray skies
During a short, sunless day.

The chasm, at night,
Between dark and light,
Grows bottomless.
Accustomed to their night vision,
The Poets peek
Through the veil
At their glimpse of despair
(for Despair is the finest of poetic feelings)
And bear witness to
The false promise
Of the returning light’s respite.

Tomorrow is new.
We count the days.

Winter solstice.december 21 .tree,branches with some leaves in white on dark background.

My Heart is Heavy

The moment I woke today I said, “My heart is heavy,”
But I did not mean it.
Why do we say that?
The heart isn’t heavy, no matter how sad we may be.
A man’s heart weighs something like 10 or 11 ounces,
A woman’s is even less: 8 or 9.
If your heart is heavier than that,
It isn’t from sadness.
It has become enlarged from some medical condition and it may be treatable.

And even if you had a heavy heart,
Say five pounds or so,
It could sit in your lap with little difficulty,
Like a cat or a small dog.

A cow’s heart weighs about 5 pounds
And would not weigh me down much.
Even a horse’s heart is easily managed at 8 pounds.
I have had dogs in my lap bigger than a giraffe heart at 26 pounds.
An elephant heart is something like 60
But it would still fit in my lap.

It is not the heart that is heavy;
It is the world.
“The world is heavy,” is what we mean to say.
“I can no longer bear it in my lap.”
It is my heart’s job to weigh the world.
The weight of the world can crush a man’s heart to jelly
And his bones to powder.

That is what I meant to say this morning.
The world is heavy
And I am in danger of being crushed.

[269]

I’m Watching Late Night TV

I’m watching TV sell goodies to me.
I can still buy CDs.
I can buy DVDs
Of the old BeeGees.
Rendered now in full 3-D.

I can cure ED.
Buy gas from BP,
Get shoes orthopedy
And Beefy BVDs.

I’m watching TV sell goodies to me.
I can watch three monkeys
Fling mealy feces.
I can buy a green machine
that makes trees leafy.
I can fly to Fiji.
I can feed the needy.
I can take a GED by the light of GE.
I can watch I dream of Genie.
I can meet ET.
I can see the big ol’ boobies
Of a witch named Phoebe.

I’m watching TV sell goodies to me.
I can buy a PC.
I can take PE.
I can get PG.
I can go PP.

I can get touchy feely.
I can beat the heebie jeebies.
I can eat more kiwis
Than a dog named Queenie.

I can watch a man fish in a lake that’s reedy
Or fix his lawn that’s really, really weedy.
I can watch the PD
Storm a hotel seedy,
Bust a whore with VD
And symptoms of TB.
I can watch a guy who’s creepy
Just before he gets the DTs.

I’m watching TV sell goodies to me.
I can watch some plumber TCB
With some plastic pipes of PVC
Fix a toilet that’s leaky,
Make it flush away the TP,
And once again, take away the PP.

I can Watch the QB
score the winning TD.
I can watch an old movie
‘bout truckers on the CB.

I can watch dinosaurs all scaly and creepy
Back about a million years BC
Act like members of the GOP
In the halls of congress in today’s DC.
They both were greedy
And they both ate freely
Of the eggs and babies of other little meaties,
But the big ones ate the little creepies
And were eaten in turn by the bigger blue meanies.

And I watch all this till my brain gets leaky
Then my real world life begins to look pretty freaky.
So I’m watching TV sell goodies to me,
And I know it’s time to quit the habit of TV,
But it really isn’t all that GD easy.

I can still buy CDs.
I can buy DVDs
Of the old BeeGees.
Rendered now in full 3-D.
I can buy a PC.
I can take PE.
I can get PG.
I can go PP.
I’m watching TV sell goodies to me.

[245]

If I had better lungs, this would be 30 seconds shorter.

I’m Tired of Living in a Country Song

Let me make it clear: this is not tale of my life today. It was a time in my marriage that was much different from now. But I can’t deny it was a real time. Also NOTE, regular text is spoken, italic text is sung.


I’m tired of living in a country song
But here I am,
Sitting in my truck,
Looking down an endless highway
With less than a quarter tank of three dollar gas.

I’m tired of living a country song
So, I’ll take the truck and drive along.
I’ll let the dog ride shotgun next to me.

But any old road that I choose now,
Well, that’s a road you won’t go down.
So, we’re headed in different ways, it’s plain to see.

The only thing I know for sure
Is you don’t want me around no more
And I’m staring down a highway I can’t drive.

I’m sick and tired of mad and sad.
I’m looking hard for a little glad,
And we’re layin’ down this song in concert live.


The biggest question we have right now
Is who gets custody of the last dog,
And if I have time to get my teeth fixed
Before the insurance runs out.

Highway moves from town to town.
But staying here just brings me down.
I just can’t be the me I wanna be.

I know you know I’m not the man
You tried to make when we began,
And I can’t be the me you wanna see.


So maybe I’ll grab the dog and drive away
Drink some beer and
Learn to play the slide guitar.
Wish you luck
And catch your act in Wichita.

All duets will end one day
And each of us is less, they say,
Than half of what we were when we were one.

But less than half is more by far
Than all of any falling star
That burns completely out before it’s done.

I’m tired of living a country song
So, I’ll take the truck and drive along.
I’ll let the dog ride shotgun next to me.

But any old road that I choose now,
Well, that’s a road you won’t go down.
So, we’re headed in different ways, it’s plain to see.

[244]

I do not claim to be a fine singer!

Set the Nails Deep and Hard-1955

My father traded his life’s plan for a Purple Heart in Korea.

Instead, he made aluminum extrusions in a plant that was as loud as any combat.
He cut aluminum billets and fed the extrusion machines:
Loading them into the ram,
Firing them in the furnace
To something just short of 1220 degrees,
Sawing off the butts,
Attaching a new billet,
Heating,
Pressing,
Sawing,
Loading.

During smoke breaks,
Squatting against a wall
Like a Korean farmer,
He flicked ashes in his pant cuffs–
A habit he picked up in the war
to help hide his presence from the enemy.

When he was a saw-man,
His cuffs were full of aluminum shavings and ash.
He never emptied them.
Even at 5, I knew that made Mom mad;
He could not remember his cuffs full of irritation until too late.
He turned them out in the kitchen
And swept them into a dustpan with a small whiskbroom.
But even a single stray burr could hide
Beneath the lip of the heat register for days,
Guarding against glinting in the darkness,
And bite bare feet on the way to breakfast.

When he wasn’t a “feeder,” he was a “puller” on the other end,
Keeping extrusions from kinking
While they were shit out of the machine die muzzle,
Headed for the stretcher and the hardening tables,
Cutting them to length.
He came home enfogged in a layer of invisible oil
Mixed with sweat from the heat of the furnace;
He smelled sour from feet away.
His black hair,
Cut in a military flattop every other Saturday,
Gleamed greasy.
Even his breath smelled oily
Every day…except Sunday.
By the time he had bathed and washed his hair
And changed clothes twice,
The smell of extruding oil had faded.
On Sundays Dad smelled right: cigarette smoke and beer.
That’s how a blue collar Dad smelled in the Eisenhower era.

On Sundays Dad often produced a half-pound sack
Of one inch roofing nails
And my hammer.
In our small backyard kneeled a long-dead tree stump.
It had been there far longer than I.
Dad wanted me to practice driving nails into it.
By the time we left that house in 1957,
That stump was entirely galvanized—
Silver nail heads
Overlapping like fish scales—
Impervious to rot.

He had taught me how to hold the nail with my left hand,
Tap-start it with the quick hammer in my right
And to drive it
With the last strike to set the nail deep and hard.
To this day, I enjoy no job more than driving nails
And setting the nail with that last strike, just so!
I own three different nailing guns,
But when the job calls for a hammer, I know the special finality:
“Tap,” “bang, bang, bang,” “BANG!”
In the way of securing this to that and making a thing.

Dad often sat on that dead, silver stump to smoke
After I had been put to bed.
I saw him there at night,
Or rather I sometimes saw the hot orange spark,
And if it was a warm night,
I was soothed by tobacco smoke
Blowing in through the one small window.

Other times, if the wind was blowing too hard,
Or the weather was poor,
He cupped the cigarette to shelter it,
And to guard the telltale glow from the enemy.
He smoked them unfiltered, far too short
Until the pads of his middle finger and thumb
And his too-long fingernails
Were stained brown.
He knew.
He called them coffin nails.

In the end, I didn’t make my father’s coffin,
Although I would have found it an honorable labor:
Sawing and planning,
Joining and setting screws.
Somewhere I would have found a way to use some nails–
Maybe roofing nails for a simple pattern on the lid.
A fish-scale, perhaps.
Tap, bang, bang, bang…BANG!
He chose cremation, returned to the furnace,
Much hotter even than for extruding aluminum billets.

[243]

Nine Nights on Prednisone

The great sin of my life
Was committed out of greed.
Because I wanted it.
I lied to all of us about it.
Dressed the lie up in glittering raiment
To disguise its petty nature.
Called it Love.
But it could not last.
It could not hold.
No plan was forged in the long nights.
No sacrifice on my side
To offset the gains I lusted for.

And so I lost,
Our way.

I stumbled over miles and acres,
Tore flesh and clothing
on rocks and brambles
And psychic snags.
Fell full-faced into debt-sodden mud,
Caked and sticky for decades.
Lost my shoes and then the path.

There is no gift after sorrow.
There is but greed with grasping.
There is no holding–no caress.
And every gain is met with loss
And every hope is dashed by retribution.

Guilt fails,
And fails again to re-prove itself.

I am diminished.
I am smaller than I might have been.
I tell you a true story.

[201]