| Author | Message | ||
| M
Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 4342 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention Birthday Poem Charles Levenstein The Fall is officially launched, radiators squalling in honor of my 64th birthday: No denying it – something I say, watchwords, every year now. Cancer is sprouting among friends and acquaintances, diseases of age, of misspent youth or chemical dessert. This summer when the miners went helmeted into my gut they clipped a polyp and threw it on the pile of parts for re-cycling. In time I’ll have my skin scraped to see if any of these new flaps and warts are interesting or just the usual secret ugliness of old age. I wonder if I will kiss my grandchildren with sloppy kisses, forget to speak English, complain that my children have abandoned me. Will I be reduced to bananas and milk, leap from a Bronx roof rather than go on welfare? Perhaps I am destined to become a Miami geezer when E. leaves me for a handsome young painter – I’ll buy a short-sleeved floral shirt to mask my belly. I’ll buy a gun and pay for sex. Maybe not. October’s flaming trees are late this year, the leaves are gnarled and old, but still green: I could pass for 62. I creak and groan like the radiators in yoga class; the heat of asana, of the sun, of Kali inspire me. Some cells die, others flourish, still others are born: no suicides, heavy traffic does the job. Weight watcher ladies induct me into the cult of conscious eating, I meditate on points, transported by the mindful child’s eye, Kabat-Zinn attention taught in the basement of Holiday Inn! And why stop there? I leap on the stationary bike, play basketball, ride into the lives of Mexican soaps and MASH, catalogue ER and Seinfeld, and when sufficiently bored, stop to lift tiny weights for old people. When I am fit and slim as a Yankee tanned in the Everglades, I will contemplate Thanksgiving, prepare a seder plate for indigenous people, including bitter herbs and tortillas, wonder what the children of Iraq are eating, not much, but they pay the price that Texas exacts from uppity rivals. It’s good to be old, the mind can wander after Hansel and Gretel, nibble the crumbs of hope they left behind. What mad Designer did this to us! Just when I am becoming not-an-asshole, the innkeeper announces last call! Oh, Lula, if you had only won on the first round, I would dance in Bahia, I would be a child again with wide eyes and hope for the human race. |
