This old body has lost its equilibrium.
I stumble around here,
Heel rolling over the toe,
Like an old drunk
When I’m sober as a pastor…
MORE sober than that one pastor.
There are only a couple of things it could be.
My body doesn’t function like a well-trained athlete any longer, or
I’m hopelessly in love with you
and my brain is blindly following my heart to be near/toward/around you.
I’m going with number 2.
I’m not waiting for Door Number 3.
Come stagger with me, my love.
(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.
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.
After all the diuretics and tears,
When I die
Throw me away
Like an old
Wrung out kitchen sponge.
[292]
When you wake
It is sitting on the edge of your bed,
Waiting to be put on
Like a new suit of clothes.
It is too small.
It chafes at your neck
And pinches at your waist.
It shrink wraps itself
To your joints,
Stiffening your gate,
Chaining your hands and feet,
Wrists and ankles
Knees and elbows.
It has enough electrical charge
To freeze an appendage
And force the involuntary utterances:
Oh,
Ow,
God damn, for example.
It is small like electrons
Racing up neural pathways to the brain,
Always leaving damage in the synovial joints.
It is as wide as the sky
Filled with tumbling lightning,
Rolling and rolling through tangles of nerves.
It travels with you
To the bathroom.
Will your knees get you there in time?
Will your arms reach yourself
In the bath?
Will fingers hold out long enough
To rinse your hair?
To trim your beard?
To hold your toothbrush?
The warm water helps.
Eventually you must negotiate
The cold.
You towel off where you can reach,
Contort into real world clothes.
Begin your day.
But one day you cannot sustain the defenses.
You let it pierce you
And you cry and stamp your feet
Like a six year old
Who keeps wetting the bed
And who wants his mama
To make it stop,
Only Mama is dead
And the pain doesn’t care.
It throbs with your pulse
In bones
And joints
And synovial tissues.
It pierces
Then overfloods.
It seeps out of your bones
And it flies in your hair
And sets your scalp on fire.
Your knees ache
But your shoulder pain is sharp.
Your elbow locks
When raw bones clash
Like broken gears in a broken clock.
Your hip grates,
Grinding something down
That bleeds and erodes.
And you gnash teeth,
Gird loins
and you ignore it
And ignore it
And ignore it.
But eventually you understand:
It is not your pain.
You do not own it;
It owns you.
You are its reason for being.
It is your possessive lover
And it hurts you where no other may touch.
It is intimate
When it electrifies your nerve gardens.
Its fingers pry and dig.
It seeps salty vinegar into open wounds.
So you and your lover
Face your day with new understandings.
It is a jealous lover
And you dread meeting new people
With firm handshakes.
You give up any intimacy with tools.
Hammers may as well be cattle prods.
Rakes and shovels become abstracts
Hanging on your garage wall.
Even books are too heavy for your wrists.
Instead you begin a new study of drugs.
Your days get measured out in pills:
The morning pills, not coffee.
The afternoon pills, not lunch,
Maybe some weed.
The evening pills.
And you offer more changes for your lover:
You drink less
Or you drink more,
Some drink a lot more.
Each day is measured in organ capacity.
Will too many pills kill your kidneys?
Some days you root for liver failure.
You begin to understand the Oxy crisis.
Finally, it is bedtime.
Your lover crawls in with you
Wrapping you up in
Child-sized flannel pajamas
On flannel sheets.
They grip in your crotch,
Pinch in your groin,
Squeeze your chest
And armpits.
Lying still hurts.
Turning over hurts.
No pillow fits your neck.
No quilt lies easy.
You curl, feeling close to Heaven,
Still outside the gates.
You lie there a long time.
Eventually gray light seeps through the window.
You see the figure on the side of the bed.
[87]
Looks like we might have made it to the finish line.
At least we could walk it from here.
Well, you could. I have some doubts.
And it wasn’t like it was a smooth ride.
Lots of couples hit some bumps in the road,
But we skidded out more than once,
Saw the ditches way too close
When I was driving a while ago,
And I know we caught air this last time.
You were driving.
But I think I can see the route ahead
And now that we know we don’t speak the same language,
But we think we’re heading the same way,
I’ll try to navigate if you’ll do the steering.
Deal?
[44]
My elders were very poor teachers,
Or I was a piss-poor student.
So much about aging was left unsaid
Or unheard:
That pain is ugly
But it’s only pain.
That your heart will heal
But it might be a little crooked afterwards.
That the injuries from the Spring of youth
Return in the Winter.
That you can weep when one who cares
moves on—
And still wish them every goodness.
They also didn’t mention that
Mentors grow in age,
That gardens aren’t about vegetables,
That owning a dog isn’t about owning.
And shame on them for not telling
How an old heart can swell,
not just with edema,
But from the full panoramic view of life
As it plays out on the faces of children
And then the Elfin magic of grandchildren.
I’m writing this down today
So no one else forgets to say
Or hear.
[43]
I don’t know where these came from. They seem to be characters in a music/arts scene somewhere. Two are recognizable as characters I’ve known from Ann Arbor. That’s George Bedard of George Bedard and the Kingpins above. He seems to belong with these. I don’t now if there are more of them or if they interact somehow, but I put them here so they won’t get lost.
Rocky
Low blare of the bass sax.
Get back to it, man.
Cats wearing shades.
Collars up-turned.
Black pants.
Black pants.
Hepcats in the wings.
Rocky croons a vibrato.
Her name is Wynona.
Rocky never gives us rules,
A right-hearted man.
Wynona was all warm.
Her hair with wine.
Her voice full of no-nah, no-nah.
[32]
..
George danced like a question mark.
It was always the same question.
The cat snapped his fingers
And kept the burning stump of a Lucky
Between his lips,
Smoke curling into a squinted eye.
George had been around a couple more years
Than the rest of the hep-cats.
A pioneer with a question
That never got answered.
[33]
(PS This is not George Bedard. This is another George who may very well have gone to listen to the Kingpins.)
..
Billy
Tough Black cat with a white guy’s name,
In a scene that’s pretty white.
Took the bias both ways.
Talks code to cross over
When he hangs at the last juke joint.
It’s all Blues
And Rock-a-billy with him.
He’s a Blues-Billie.
[34]
..
The Ardog
Beat poet
Black coat
A fucking beret,
Do you believe that cat?
Clove mutherfuckin’ cigarettes.
Does percussion on road trips
From the back seat
On the backs of the front seat.
Long hair flailing
But it’s getting thin already.
He’ll look like a monk in ten years.
Talks a hep game
But he’s a
One trick pony with eyebags.
[35]
..
Jake.
Whatchew doing here?
You gotta get some strings for that thing, man. Whoever heard of a man playing the three string?
The hat
The shades
The trenchcoat.
Those beads.
Alcohol did that to your voice?
That ain’t mouthwash.
You’ll never change, man.
[36]
..
Marcie,
Seems so French.
Holding her smoke upside-down
Pinched between her thumb and finger.
Also with the the black ankle boots.
They are French too?
your French sounds American.
Champs Elysees doesn’t sound a “p” in it.
Sometimes.
With Magyo,
Tough one,
Speaking Island French.
Holding Marcie’s temple
Against her bare shoulder,
Marcie’s neck in the crook of Magyo’s arm.
Marcie pouts.
[37]
..
Lyman
Likes beer.
:likes wine.
My old lady left me
While I was paralyzed six months.
Don’t hit me with no bus.
I’ll sue yer ass.
I’m set for life.
Now she wants to come back.
Lyman says no.
But he’s mad he has to say it.
[38]
..
Lump,
Everywhere he goes
It rains.
It finds him in the park,
In the alley.
He oozes the gloom.
No one smiles to see him
Or buys him a drink.
Keeps his hands in his overcoat.
Self-fulfilling prophet.
[39]
..
Jimmy Hot
Best dancer
Best fighter
Best racer
Best car
Best piano
But he’s boogie woogie, dontchaknow.
Too big to be a back-up.
He’ll beat your rockabillies
With a baseball bat or a piano.
[40]
..
Sweeny
Like all vixens
That look
That walk
That way of listening
And acting like there must be something better to do.
Used to be in the life
Now she’s kept.
Angling for Lyman
But with a man the age of
Lyman’s father.
Lyman’s father is dead.
So will this guy be
Before Sweeny is done with him.
[41]
..
Smitty’s on Alto
Plays it like a clarinet
Squeaks it
Lets it drone
He sweats
And he finds that one riff.
He plays it again
Again
Again
Again
Again
It breaks and the guy on the drums
Brings the band back.
That cat’s always there.
[42]
..
May 2 Story
Once upon a time, I started a WORDLE puzzle with the answer to the previous puzzle. It threw me for such a loop that I failed to solve it, thus, seven words for this WORDLE poem.
FORGO
ROMAN
ORALS
SAVOR
SHORE
SCORN
(STORY)
I had to FORGO my ROMAN holiday.
I had failed my ORALS.
The depression forbid me to SAVOR the flavor of fruits,
The smell of the SHORE—
All but the SCORN of my professors.
The scorn of my cohorts is a different STORY entirely.
The game, starting officially tomorrow, May 1, 2022, is to use the words in your WORDLE solution to serve as a prompt for a poem each day. My addition is to strive to use the words in the order used in the puzzle. But surprise! On this puzzle I did a 2! If I don’t use the start word in the poem, that leaves me with only one word, the solution. Start word: EARTH, solution: TRASH.
Earth Trash
It seems we can go from
EARTH to
TRASH
In one long, slow step.
A very early hominid
stood barefoot
near a fire
and discovered
good
beneath the limitless sky.
A very late hominid
kicked off his Crocs
near a fire
and cut his foot to the bone
on beach glass
beneath a sky interrupted
for low latency internet access.
