Live LARGE
Go ahead have your beloved Starbucks’
iced coffee after dinner even at 8 p.m.
so it will be impossible to get to work
early in the a.m. but tonight
it’s caution to the winds
I’m going to live crazy
like tomorrow will never come
Of course it comes (thankfully)
and this morning I vow
to be smarter about this, curtail
my evil caffeine habit after 4 p.m.
But sometimes it’s impossible to let
the day go, turn off the documentaries
or put aside the poems of Byron,
Whitman, Williams or Bishop,
simply for sleep.
Hearing Aid
I’ve become a broken-down old man,
taking all these damn pills,
drinking prune juice,
sitting on my heating pad,
turning the TV up louder and LOUDER.
I recall my Grandfather,
so hard of hearing
but never admitting it, never giving in
to turning the sound up on the TV
or trying one of those newfangled
hearing-aid gadgets,
not even if his life depended on it.
I suspect he didn’t hear a thing,
not a thing, the last 15 years
of his life but apparently,
god damn it, he liked it that way.
Toes
Had to get to a game this year –
Fenway Park’s 100 Years Old!
(Oldest baseball stadium in the country.)
So here we are, the Red Sox versus
the Washington Nationals, an interleague game,
but a game is a game: balls and strikes
pop ups and pop outs a slide into second
a home run a double off the Green Monster.
All-in-all a normal run-of-the-mill
sorry to say boring game – and we are losing.
My wife never leaves the games early so I’m stuck
suffering in this hot seat. I turn my attention
to the 2 young ladies sitting in front of me.
They haven’t watched one minute of the game
instead they’re chattering like
they haven’t seen each other in 15 years
and playing with their iPhones and their hair.
Unexpectedly one of them drapes her long legs
over the empty seat in front of her and I
can’t help but notice that her toes
are painted bright, bright red – Red Sox Red
and she’s wiggling them around in the sun
flexing her feet up and down side to side
and suddenly the ball game
is not so boring after all.
Feeding the ducks
As Kerry’s wheeling the foodcart
in and out of the wards dishing out Alpo
and biscuits to the dogs while whistling
some stupid Supremes tune
I leap out pretending I’m a loose dog
clawing and scratching at his legs
growling and barking
making him drop everything and scream
and when The Doc comes in to see
what all the commotion is about
I’m out in the backyard
feeding the ducks.
Number 4
Since high school
my wife’s best friend and I
have had an unwritten agreement
if we’re both single at 70
we’ll marry each other
When her new boyfriend
who showed up
after her third husband died
overheard me reminding her
of our marriage-pact he growled
poked his chest and said
if anyone’s gonna marry Linda
it’s gonna be me
OK so he’ll become her fourth
that’s fine with me we only had
a friendly teenage pact
but I’m not so sure
it’ll be fine with Linda
she doesn’t go in all that much
for growling and poking
