Yet Sometimes They Do
Handling Impossible Tasks for Old Farts to Handle
“I’m in my prime,” said Doc Holliday a few months before he died of TB.
Somehow, and I’m afraid I know exactly how, our dog keeps escaping and getting out of our fenced yard and wandering around just beyond the fence staring at us as if to ask, “Hey, why am I out here? let me back in.”
Way back in the lower northeast corner of the yard, the wild roses have grown so big that they’ve pushed the gate open just enough for the dog to sneak out.
So today, donning a heavy jacket and leather work gloves, I’m going to wade into the thorny branches to tie the gate shut and remove this escape hatch.
I want to minimize the damage to the plants which bloom so lovely each year and provide a natural privacy barrier against the deer, raccoons, porcupines and possible human predators who might want to enter our little Eden.
But I am absolutely too fuckin’ old and weak and techinicaly “frail” to take on such a daunting task.
This is how old farts break their hips and shit.
The wild Rose thorns are as vicious and intimidating as any thorns this side of cholla cacti, but I have to do this.
Life is a balancing act: the rose or the thorn, the thorn and the rose.
We humans, imagining we are masters of it all, are equally its slaves.
It is no accident that Christ was forced to wear a crown of thorns.
You might recall that roses were never mentioned.
An hour later, absent either serious head and scalp cuts, not to mention no crucifixion, I emerge triumphant.
Now I’m ready to climb a tall ladder and clean out the rain gutters.
Never let me succeed at any difficult task, it can only lead to more folly.
The Skanky Air of Western Fires
The way words go wayward
I’m usually pretty opposed to pun type humor and limerick poetry. But I do love the way language changes and words and phrases take on new, often specific meanings.
It used to be that I could say to anyone, anytime, let’s “hook up for a beer or two —” now, ‘hooking-up’ is generally understood to have zero to do with drinking beers with a pal. “Would you like to hook-up?” seems to be the equivalent of “you wanna marry me, Andrew Cuomo?”
I may be wrong about “skank” in how it’s meaning has changed but I think while it was previously a broad terms for “unappealing,” it’s come to mean, and only mean, a rather sexually promiscuous female with low standards for herself and her prospective sexual partner — as in, “that girl is a skank”
Say no more. We got it.
How can the air surrounding us in Spokane Washington today, smoky, smelly, unhealthy for man, beast and foul, be “skanky”? Well, it just is.
Ask Shakespeare or Daniel Webster what “niggardly” means, but be careful of your volume and take a quick look around before the words come out of your mouth. Or you could be fucked,
And I don’t mean in a good way.
When I Wake-Up
Not deep sleep either
When I wake-up, early in the morning in that darkness a few hours before dawn and I try to put my mind into a neutral place where worry or hopes, joy or pain can’t reach me and keep me sleepless, lately I’ve been guiding my ruminations to my writing and poems and thinking all I have to do, because all I am that matters, is to write my truths and heart and spirit in my poems thinking: “Poems, poems, poems, my poems” over and over until the next thing I know the sun is coming up.
Then I stare out into the room, low-lit but visible, and to the world opening itself to me again to be captured, caressed, by poems, poems, by my poems.
Or, I suppose to not be opening itself to me or captured or any such nonsense but to just be out there, staring back maybe to be smirking, maybe laughing outright but most likely disinterested in me because, it doesn’t do shit like “notice” and even if it did some naked old bald man lying in his bed mumbling, “poems, poems poems,” over and over again isn’t exactly like watching a beautiful woman taking her bath, washcloth, beaded drops of hot water, her expression one of calm, relaxed, perhaps even happy, contentment.
Yeah, I’m guessing that the universe, which truly notices nothing about us would have far better choices, if it did pay attention, than listening to me thinking about my poems so that I might doze off again for another half-an-hour or so, so that,
when I wake-up...
never mind.
A Dream of Incompetent-Driven Failure
Trapped on a one-way dead-end street of life
In this dream last night, I was driving a gorgeous dark red very cool Mustang GT, one of the newer ‘hotter’ models, ubiquitous but still gently head-turning.
And there was this young, pretty blonde a teacher, early 20’s, very “cute.” She and I were somehow in charge of getting a passel of rowdy pre-teen boys to some sporting event, and I was supposed to follow her (she had all the kids in her car).
I lost track of her and ended up alone on this weird street that got narrower and narrower until finally the Mustang and I were trapped at this dead-end with not even enough room to back out of there.
And then, thank god, I woke the fuck, up.
I’m not saying that this dream relates to all of us here on Medium, writing writings for mostly other writers in the hopes of attracting readers either for cash or immortality but in our subconscious we know this is a flashy dead-the-fuck-end pursuit, as reinforcing as racing a hot car on the open road and every bit at rare and unlikely.
I’m not saying that this dream is for sure or even probably about that. Maybe. Maybe not.
I think I’ll check my stats again and my Medium Earnings Program: 12 views and 4 reads and zero fans. I’m up to a little over 2 bucks a day for the ten hours I spend each and every day, typing-up this immortal shit.
Immortal?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
When Intimacy Isn’t That
Sometimes you can tell, and lots of times you can’t, and sometimes it’s too late
I keep being reminded by a racist bully with whom I used to be friends, and who stalks me and won’t leave me alone, of my problems with intimacy.
These are not so much a dilemma As a superpower If I choose to frame them that way.
But like every superpower, mine Has a built-in destructive code Guaranteeing, Or at least hinting at the likelihood That this superpower will lead to my doom.
So far, I’ve only had A few nicks and cuts and minor flesh wounds In reaction to my intimacy superpower.
But even these take a cumulative Form and effect, And a little piece of me Over and over.
Here’s the deal: I make everyone With whom I come in contact Feel that they are my Best friend forever And when they find out that they aren’t They usually leave, Remembering me, If at all, as simply that fake friend, That guy who acted like he liked them But who liked everybody else just as much, So his love and friendship Was useless.
Again, Most people do this, But psychopaths like my nemisis have a little harder time Letting go Especially when they are well-armed And convinced that Jesus loves them. Instead they leave voicemails After months of being repeatedly ignored Saying shit like, “Just calling to make sure you’re on the path of righteousness” I know, Pretty creepy huh?
They feel left out in the cold. I’m not sure of a better way To describe this.
I apologize to all of you Who I led to expect much more from me Than I was/am willing or able to give.
Next time, I’d suggest that you Accept that The Golden Rule doesn’t always work. In truth, no rule always works.
So once again, sorry To all of you who left me disappointed.
And please Don’t shoot me Racist, creepy stalker and former friend.
You Never Know . . .
Be careful in your crimes
…just what you might be remembered for; not by family and friends, who you guess will hopefully remember you lovingly and with heart rather than like jilted lovers, or angry employers snarling at you as you walk out the door, fired yet again.
Although even there, the angry employers thing, you can’t know for sure.
For instance, if you get famous enough for good stuff, those angry bosses will revise their memory and recall only the plus things about you. Nobody wants to be the guy who fired Martin Luther King, Jr., ’cause he couldn’t get those bibles sold fast enough.
But if you’re Donald T***p or Bill Cosby or Subway Jared or Fatty Arbuckle (look him up) or some other person who has done horrible things that over-shadow a lifetime of trying to pretend you weren’t the kind of asshole who did that bad shit, those guys know what they’ll be remembered for.
We all know it and will neither forgive nor forget. I suppose this may be taken as a cautionary thought, an existential warning, if you can’t be good, at least be damned careful to make the kinds of trouble that leave you okay with the consequences.
Any “crime” that requires the dropping of yer chin to yer chest to hide from the cameras, is a crime you probably shouldn’t have committed.
Is that clear enough?
Shame
Yesterday I felt it again
I’ll be 75 years old on December 15th, and on Dec. 16th, I’ll be a day closer to 80 than I was the day before, closer to 70.
And yet yesterday, and a few more times recently, I’ve felt ashamed of myself. Sometimes undeservedly so. Most times richly deserved. Like Michelangelo said at 81, “I’m still learning.”
Yeah Mikey, me too.
But listen, I know that not many of us fail to realize that we’ll fuckin’ NEVER have it ALL figured out. We do our best to know more and more all the while knowing that for the new things we’re learning, some of the old lessons are being forgotten.
If you think the possibility of attaining wisdom in getting old is a guarantee,
Well . . .
It ain’t!
And if you’re paying attention, this is one lesson, you’ll feel and much as know.
