Maturity is knowing what your limitations are…(my daily chore)


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“Maturity is knowing what your limitations are. Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.”
Kurt Vonnegut


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maturity comes when you cannot,
even try, to fool oneself,
indeed, you preposterousness,
make you laugh hardest
at your very, fully owned, selfhood
preening mirror disguise

Is this a poem, a lamentation, a pithy regurgitation
of Vonnegut, and you say: “Don’t care, it’s words
that gotta come out, be released to empty the heart”
a daily excess removal of that daily overflow of the
days first words when new day light and nighttime’s REM
sleep overlap, and the music starts of a life time of favorites,
and like a pleasant thorn direct into your temples brain,
the leaking, then the spilling spirals unstoppable onto the pages, and the first true relieving exhalation comes with
the excited exorcism of the stones of your life, come outside
your body and there is a freshly born stripe upon your face,
not yet a scar for it is yet to ripen by healing, but it is your
creature for loving…and it is good company with so many
prior guests who have checked in, stayed for a moment’s
observation, departed after getting an extended checkout
time, joining the many who came and went, disappearing
in to the internet’s ether, where we one will join them eventually,
though you smile at that thought, cause you’re mature
enough, baby, an all growled up dude, to know that when
you reached that stage, you will be, non-stop laughing
at *** serious you imagined you were, and wondering out loud
why it took so long to recognize that mirrored visage as
one big ole fool with a smile upon his face…

p.s so much for that promise to take a break from beating
yourself up, but you know what, it is pleasing, in that way
when upon the grand occasion of waking up to another
unexpected day of living deserves a deep, but rueful,
laugh out loud and others’ look at your self and argue to
only mischievously agree,
you are indeed,
still crazy after all these years…

when you would have thought that nerve had gone, worn down,
when you would have thought that sense was a nub, tuckered out,
given a well deserved rest, after all, it was the best of each of us

maybe a glow, flickering in and out, a summer sun between clouds,
the occasional pang pinging, radiant, radiating in forgotten places,
luxury good, can’t longer afford, once, given with a happy reckless

crazy how love stays with me, low grade infection, ready to spread,
bud by morning, afternoon full blossom, black wilt by next daylight,
can’t decipher, finally decide, these tremors make old age life worthy?

absent, but memorized slivers, old poems, drive by glances of places,
hurt like hell so briefly, double over, no one notices, so fast dispensed,
it’s crazy how love stays with me,
and it’s a crazy that tastes so good,
hurts so awfully good, so badly bad

perhaps that is why behind my back,
not to my face, they whisper,  call me,
the guy, still crazy after all these years,
just still crazy after all these tears, or just,
                                 still crazy

them creaky noises:

many
years ago wrote of meandering this old house,
in the creaky hours of-should-be-sleeping,
listening to the varietals of noises old houses speaking,
how the floorboards talk among themselves when
no human about to trod them, to elicit their groaning,
solicit their tales of who, when and memorizing the ending,
where.

nowadays
I wander same as before, same house, same wee hours,
no direction home, as I am technically “at home,” but still
directionless, still crazy after all these years, but that’s not
the only still, still left unheard, now new creaks demand a
hearing.

the house
still talks to me in its language peculiar, but now,
my body, of its own free will, in its poetry of groans in bones,
creaking, two dialects of getting old, always being cold,
sleeping with your socks on, your twisty back named Jack,
who hijacked your invincible good health and getting up is a
hysterical funny musical of snap, crackle and pop, coming from
places inside your body, that supposedly don’t posses the skill of
speech.

nowadays,
kept awake by a united nations assembly of them creaky noises,
whirring motors turning me and things on and off all night, what
a racket, only early dawn calls them to order, to quiet down please,
everybody shush, the old house and it’s content, an old poet, needing
some winks cause soon enough the sun and the fog will arrive to
commandeer his overnight recollections, write them up, & write them
down, still crazy.



like the one about them creaky-sounds, coming-from god-knows
where?

I don't ask your permission
to make a fool of myself,
tell you publicly
what my near, dear ones
have almost no clue

my mental torment,
headache-constant,
imperial and impervious
poetry, pills, therapy,
caring words
don't pay my kind of bills

a man has a job.
Feed you family.
Protect and serve.

do  it well,
there is no acceptable excuse.
none.

was supposed to be easing on down,
slipping under.

come so far, my soul is old.
my tired is w/o definition.
the legs, knotted shoulders,
body aging faster than I can write.
the doctors only give me
if's and unless's,
contingencies in order
to die a little slower

warped, reversal of causality,
the older I get,
the more mouths to feed.
tough, this unexpected situation,
a nine lives time survivor,
do it again?

defraud myself,
living like I can afford
to write,
with courageous reckless abandon,
when earnest is deadly
and Lady Luck gave me the finger.

simply amazing.
eyes, constantly tearing,
nobody notices.

Do not ! Like this poem,
don't.
hate weak,
been strong so long.
this well, just got dregs left,
drudgery ain't potable, or even
worth drinking.

need nothing,
for myself, need nothing.
not one object on this planet
want to posses or be possessed by.

Monday wrestle with strife,
star in my reality show once again.
now, deny reality.

Do not!
Like this poem,
don't.
hate weak,
been strong so long.

my voice is stilled,
it's poverty exposed,
ashamed of every word I ever wrote.

hush me not, for tis true,
write on for an audience of one,
on but one subject,
a life, mine,
yet, still unmastered,
after decades of trying.

poverty exposed,
a life unmasked
for what it is worth,
or not.