Every night is Saturday,
Every Monday's Sunday.
If Tuesday is my lieu day,
Then Wednesday is my luncheon meeting.
Thursdays are long coffee breaks,
And Fridays are my Personal Days.
Saturdays are Saturdays,
And ****,
It might begin again.

early retirement                                           2.11.22 Mercury/Pluto conjunction

I’ve been cracking jokes lately,
when in the company of others.
When there was an opening in the conversation
I would insert a comment;
I would joke about my life in early retirement.
I would joke and say that I am retired.
It's obviously funny because I’m only 35;
fairly early in my second Saturn returns.

Over the last 18 months I’ve made modest acquisitions
fit for a retiree;
house slippers, a few extra lines in my face and
even a piccolo pipe with dark cherry Cavendish tobacco.  
They all fit rather nicely,
(according to my eyes)
when worn with my gray cardigan with the red whip stitch
suring up the right pocket;
the same cardigan I wore the night of the accident and the
morning of the ward.
That was an equinox to remember.

Maybe it's in poor taste to joke about early retirement.
Perhaps that it isn’t very funny to go on about,
or maybe it was only funny to me.
It hadn’t quite occurred to me until now that
it may be kind of awkward for a grown man to crack
funnies about his lack of income or industriousness.
I suppose I just gave myself a pass.
Because I figured everyone already knows I’m
a little unhinged-
a little ungrounded-
certainly a bit touched…
and that “he just needs time to heal because he is
an activated Light Worker and the benefits reaped
by his inner struggle to anchor the
Light upon the Earth plane is in everyone’s best interest,
and that it takes an untold exertion of Will to exact such an incarnation,
and that it takes more than a few several months for the
risen Kundalini to come to maturation.
Quick, can someone please get me a tourmaline.

Well, here I am in
southern Jersey
Manchester Township
Ocean County
Riverside retirement community
side of the pond (man made)
composite bench under a gazebo erected on a concrete pad.
Sitting inside my cardigan next to my piccolo pipe and a pen in my hand,
wondering how I could feel so lost and so found at the same time.

I’ve been a stubborn *******.
Afraid to bear my Light within my hands and
expose it to my kin in a meaningful way.
But here I am,
early retirement
on an early afternoon
in a retirement community
full of elders
slinkin through the
early dusk of the
twilight of their lives.
And I don't like it.
I am not equanimous with what is.
I’ve excreted so many toxins that the
re-uptake is nearly too much to bear.
I’ve carried empty green notepads in my back pocket for years.
Pen and pad with scotch tape holding down the binding;
worth about three or four poems max.
“Yea I fancy myself a writer, just not very prolific.”
You can only speak something into being so many times
before the universe starts agreeing with you.
Old man Saturn couldn’t give a **** about
little fears and excuses.
The limits of necessity were only
bad wiring
rendered by
my own hand.
And that goes down smooth like a fish-bone in the throat.

I own enough scarves and robes to
circumambulate the globe a few times.
If only I could fly
it would be in such style
because on the outside I look how I want to feel on the inside.
Before my heart center I hold the dharmachakra mudra and
I stare into a candle flame.
I could of sworn they prescribed this treatment
early in the Rig Veda for guys with ailments like mine;
running mad like beside his shadow and
fleeing all the house flies;
sliding down the side of a waxing crescent moon.

only the moon it is a scythe;
a crescent knife.
Waning in early retirement,
old man Saturn coming for his life.

at breakfast
another hotel restaurant
another choice to be made
of mediocre cooked
or bland continental
a fish bowl
of floor to ceiling
panoramic windows
people-watching
strangers passing
insignificantly through
one another's universes
parents desperate
to negotiate the morning
without a scene
suits with shirt and tie
top buttons undone
for now
retiree couples
happy in each others silence
or those lucky ones
who still find words
when alone together
or the curious
solo diners
alone and lost
in their own thoughts
or striving to hide
how they watch
those others
as they go about
their business
of goodness-knows-what
another banquet shared
unbeknownst to all
in attendance

1
if and when I'm retired

I'd expect the world to be kind
and reverential:
so I'd expect when I drive

all people get off the road 

when they see me approach;

and at the bank 
for all to step aside

for a man whose daily 3-time meals

is nothing but baked beans


2
I'd expect the world to be in awe, and to admire
so the women would say: *
”My, look at this retiree
in his psychedelic shirt and rainbow hat
and his bell-bottoms – real cool, baby”
and the men would concur, dazzled:
“Owww - this guy, what planet is he from?”


3
and 
of course I'd expect
 the govt
to send me my cheque
 weekly –
no, wait - EFT
will be the way to go;

and the Minister for the Retired
should call me every 30th

to ask if I’d like a raise

4
Also I’d expect
to wake up each morning
to find a cup of coffee ready on my table
and I’d turn to my wife and say:
“All our lives, you always put the ****** salt
in the coffee”
And I’d expect her to say
(cos that’s always been the way):
“If you want sugar in your coffee
fix your ****** coffee yourself!”*

5
And  all these things I expect
of the world (except of my wife)
to be kind 
and reverential
if and when I’m retired -
but then again, I might just die
at my table at work
after a coffee I fixed myself

The child opens his eyes and sees
a million points of light, each one
an open door to an endless
possibility.
The adolescent opens his eyes
and sees a hundred thousand
points of light, each one a door
to new hopes and adventures
The adult opens his eyes and sees
a few hundred points of light,
each one a door beckoning him
to new experiences
The retiree opens his eyes and sees
perhaps a dozen points of light, each
one a door, welcoming him to well
earned relaxation
The old man opens his eyes
and sees but one dimly lit point
of light coming from a single door
from which he hears his name
gently being called
In trepidation, he closes his eyes
and walks slowly towards that
final door, and nervously passes
over it's dark threshold

When he opens his eyes,
he is a child with a million
points of light before him,
each one an open door to
an endless possibility.

Can you hear the sound of the indomitable wind?
It breathes in great heaves
through these sun-beaten leaves,
so boisterous it could flow through ears to the mind.
The eucalyptus’ standing in disciplined lines
seem disturbed by it,
and by the sun that’s lit,
illuminating their aging signs.
From some stark desert some miles to the south
bundles of dry wind roll
up, over, and down this grassy knoll
that unknowingly beleaguers the skin of both
infants playing with their blocks on the lawn
and an older patron
visiting from Dayton
who naturally rises some hours before dawn.
The wind can easily uproot and tear the land apart;
it can dishevel
a garden neat and level,
desolating work to which the retiree gives their heart.
The lascivious sound of the southern wind resonates
past the final palm of the mind
where Wallace Stevens’ bird went blind,
lying low in the recesses of cranial plates.
I say that that sound is no sound at all,
just a loosing slip
of the cerebral lip
attached to a thing abstractly beautiful.
But it sings its song all the same.
Perhaps it is physical.
It’s certainly divisible.
It pierces the sky like a transparent flame.

I went to Walmart this morning - yes, it was very brave.
My dander was up - I was on high alert - for active shooters and the unmasked.

Then I saw him! A man on the cookie aisle - he looked like he had the monkeypox!
So I kicked him in the nuts and ran - you can’t be too careful out there.

It turns out that he was just an 80-year-old retiree wearing a polka-dot shirt.
I apologized - from a safe distance - as the paramedics carted him away.

It felt like a close call.

sometimes i miss the touch of your hands that run through my hair.. i miss the way you laugh at me when i swear.. i miss those times when you and i were just unaware of anything but ourselves.. i sing a poem for you.. for me to be able to bear the despair.. sometimes i still say i love you even it hurts most of the time.. but what i do is no crime.. im starting to clean the dirt and grime thats rotting in my mind.. creating rhymes to pass the time.. why is it that  always have to suffer? my whole life has been rougher.. yeah, i know these things have made me tougher.. but now that youre gone, i dont even have a buffer to save my thoughts that are still blurred by who you've become.. you see, i miss the days where it was just you and me.. pushing forward just so we'd be happy.. singing songs even if we were ******.. still seeing each other knowing i was snappy.. i guess after seven years, things change.. feels like having a mobile phone thats out of range.. i find it strange how our lives are now arranged.. thinking i must be out of my mind, deranged.. like a wild dog trapped in a cage.. this is  why i pour my rage on this stage.. wanting to place this insanity on this page..  wanted to write something out of this world.. but this is how this is how this unfurled.. thinking my mind must have left me totally swirled.. i miss those days we were carefree.. seeming like either one of us is a retiree.. but i know i was never a guarantee.. all i knew was to love thee.. to show you what love really meant.. needing nothing but each other, not even a cent.. im not quite sure where all of that went.. suddenly all you felt was discontent.. and all i did was ask myself to represent..to represent something i believed in.. i shared with you what i thought was the best of me that i couldnt segment.. i fixed everything except this dent.. carving a deep hole thats wide enough to pitch a tent.. things were empty for me since you left.. feeling like ive been involved in a theft.. sometimes i miss waking up with you right beside me.. the warmth of your heart was enough to make me feel ecstasy.. but now i find myself alone and  starting to like it.. learning about myself just for the hell of it.. pushing pens out my arms just cause the world is full of ****.. once again i take a hit.. a good **** to avoid my mind being split.. staying away from you cause i got the hint.. drinking a pint just so my world wont get bent.. writing this poem so my soul wont get spent.. so i tuck my head down.. pen in hand, thought in head, spit on page.. halfway through i close my eyes to see what lies beneath this broken spirit.. seeing fires burn where your place used to be.. trying to drown this fire so i can feel free.. fighting off demons and banshees.. thinking of where to go when im out at sea.. oftentimes i thought of you as a burden.. piercing me with the sharpest blade you own.. which was yourself, a clone.. bashing my heart and spirit with a sharp stone.. feeding me with lies, thinking it was a bone.. now though, i really dont know.. unsure if what im feeling is that fire or the snow.. so i close my eyes and go with the flow.. waiting for an attach from this foe.. dodging sharp arrows like a pro.. im thinking to myself that i have to go.. to a place where people will teach me how to grow.. now i know i have to thank you for opening up another path for me to take.. singing a tune cause i know this aint fake.. riding a boat across the lake.. starting to feel better knowing i dont need to punch on the break.. never looking back, cause everything right here and now is really what's at steak..

pauldeeeeee
3apr2011