Old Men Walk Funny
(V2)
Old men walk funny with shadows and time
eating at their heels.
Pediatric walkers, prostate exams, bend
over, then most die.
They grow poor, leave their grocery list
at home,
and forget their social security checks
bank account numbers,
dwell on whether they wear dentures,
uppers or lowers;
did they put their underwear
on?
They cant remember where they put
down their glasses,
did they drop them on memory lane U.S.
Route 66?
Was it watermelon wine or drive in
movies they forgot their virginity in?
Hammered late evenings alone bottle up
Mogen David wine madness
mixed with diet 7-Up, all moving parts
squeak and crack in unison.
At night, they scream in silent dreams
no one else hears,
they are flapping jaws sexual exchange
with monarch butterfly wings.
Old men walk funny to the barbershop
with gray hair, no hair;
sagging pants to physical
therapy.
They pray for sunflowers above their
graves,
a plot that bears their name with a
poem.
They purchase their burial plots,
pennies in a jar for years,
beggar's price for a deceased
wife.
Proverb: in this end, everything
that was long at one time is now passive,
or cut short. Ignore us old moonshiners,
or poets that walk funny,
"they aren't hurting anyone
anymore."
Just Because, Bad
Heart
Just because I am old
do not tumble me dry.
Toss me away with those
unused
Wheat pennies, Buffalo nickels, and
Mercury dimes
in those pickle jars in the
basement.
Do not bleach my dark
memories
Salvation Army my clothes
to the poor because I died.
Do not retire me leave me a factory
pension
in dust to history alone.
Save my unfinished poems refuse to toss
them
into the unpolished alleyways of exile
rusty trash barrows
just outside my window, just because I
am old.
Do not create more spare images,
adverbs
or adjectives than you need to bury me
with.
Do not stand over my grave,
weep,
pouring a bottle of Old Crow
bourbon whiskey without asking
permission
if it can go through your kidneys
first.
When under stone sod I shall rise and go
out
in my soft slippers in cold
rain
dread no danger, pick yellow
daffodils,
learn to spit up echoes of
words
bow fiddle me up a northern Spring
storm.
Do you bad heart, see in pine box of
wood,
just because I got old.
Canadian Seasons
Exiled Poet
Walking across the seasons in
exile
in worn out house slippers, summer in
Alberta prairies-
snowshoes, cross-country skiing winter
in Edmonton, Alberta.
I'm man captured in Canadian wilderness,
North Saskatchewan River.
I embrace winters of this north call
them mercy killers.
Exiled now 10 years here I turn rain
into thunder,
days into loneliness, recuperate loss
relationships into memories.
I'm warrior of the trade of isolation,
crucifier of seasons
hang torment on their limbs.
Ever changing words shifting pain to
palette fall colors and art.
I'm tiring of Gestalt therapy, being In
and Out the Garbage Pail.
I'm no longer an Aristotelian
philosopher seeking catharsis.
My Jesus is in a vodka bottle soaked
with lime, lemon juice and disco dancing.
Pardon amnesty I'm heading south beneath
border back to USA-
to revise the old poems and the new,
create the last anthology,
open then close the last
chapter,
collected works before the big black
box.
I'm no longer peripatetic, seasons
past.
Injured Shadow (V3)
In nakedness of life moves
this male shadow worn out dark
clothes,
ill fitted in distress, holes in his
socks, stretches,
shows up in your small
neighborhood,
embarrassed,
walks pastime naked with a
limb
in open landscape space-
damn those worn out black
stockings.
He bends down prays for dawn, bright
sun.