The traveling Butcher has recently arrived.
I just heard two shots ring out down by the
barn as my grandson's last two swine of this
year's 4-H and Fair met their final demise.

In perhaps an hour both will be butchered,
halved and hung in the refer truck for transport
to the butcher's shop for cutting up and packaging.
I did not attend this ****** and squealing affair,
as the older I get the more I appall that process.

Over the years I have chosen to not partake in
the eating of beef or swine meat, from our barn,
preferring to buy my meat from the store, the
contents having no remembered faces, names
or relationship to me or mine.

At least the boys have ceased naming the critters,
when they realized they were not pets, but meat
on the hoof destined for the table, a sound mature
decision in ones so young. In this at least my hands
and soul remain clean. Silly old soft-hearted fool
that I am.

From our teens through life we
play the waiting game, seeking
perhaps longing for that one very
special someone that will fulfill
our dreams and desires, a soulmate
extraordinaire.

Few of us are fortunate enough to
find and actually hold close that
special person, where love comes
easy and somehow lasts forever,
an anomaly of the highest order.

Lots of living creatures' mate for
life, beavers, swans, penguins,
albatrosses, even wolves, but
for most of we humans, it seems
we are not that committedly inclined.

So, what is the formula for that
so elusive of goals, of finding that
special person and everlasting love?

Frankly my friends other than dogged
perseverance and serendipitous, good
fortune, I have no earthly clue.

One of my classes has theater seating with little desks that two people share. I’m sitting by this huge man, who really should have a little desk all to himself. I don’t want to seem ungenerous but he just sprawls out like I’m not there.

So in a profoundly machismo gesture, this morning, I marked my territory with a pencil. It was carnal, feral, aggressive, and distinctly unfeminine gesture - more than a mere assertion of "First come, first serve" etiquette.

I’m familiar with life’s overlapping territories, like sidewalks, movie armrests and overhead bins and the subtle, shared space social negotiations when someone, say, introduces a laptop to a crowded library table and we all must  shuffle our stuff around or when someone desperately needs the only charger.

THEN, Friday morning big-guy starts this SUPER awkward conversation. To be clear - up until then - our ‘relationship’ had been blessedly non-verbal.

Let me tell it poetically..

He said he saw me signing in and timed it so I sat by him
he hoped to get to know me, and perhaps to ask me out.
They pass around these student info sheets, so we can form study cliques
and after a little bit, he smirkingly mentioned that he’d memorized my number.

Now, I’d barely even noticed him, I thought seating was left up to whim
before he could ask me out - I pointedly told him all about my boyfriend.
Now I’m sitting by a refrigerator-size guy who’s subtly giving me the eye
and as for his excessive use of space, I think he’s being passive possessive.

Monday morning before class, I’m going to catch the TA with her coffee and ask,
to change my seat to somewhere, anywhere, with someone, less transgressive.
I’ve been in classes, for years on end, I’ve been hit on and I’m not against making friends
but you have to know how to begin and not be so open, sneaky and aggressive.

I feel no enmity, just an awful awkward-ity and I don’t want him next to me.
Like the air-head I can pretend to be, I took a pic of him, disguised as a selfie of me.
If I’m ever concerned or slightly alarmed, I always manage to send a selfie to Charles.
.
.
Songs for this:
Messy by Lola Young
Every Breath You Take by Committed
Walk Like an Egyptian by Awaken A Cappella
.
.
Charles, a 55-year-old 6'4" retired NYC cop, has been my escort, driver, security and surrogate parent since I was 9 years old.

griseous risibility (the shrinkage of me, the hard way)


of course you're clueless
what the hll this means,
well, let your own fingers do
the pressing, cut & pasting,
my version, is the mockery
of me who grows grayer
daily, in every place, even
in the oddities where your
eyes cannot go, fingers can't
swipe, nor touche caresse,
alas, when I tell you, it's felt
in the tightening of the belt,
the squeezing of the vigor,
pressure on the mental vim

hiding under bed, doesn't
help the head, in fact, hesitate,
when you anticipate the congress
of neighbors called to get me
our from underneath, me, laughing
stock, the only stock I own that's
actually going up, yield to the
overwhelming defeat by the
totality grayness becoming
what's left of my shriveling self

cuddle, stroke pat & pet
what's left, of my disappearing
existential  marking of the spot,
in this ha! expanding uni-verse
of the shrinkage of me…
the hard way

YOU,
one of the  mainstay sails of this ship,
a timbered main, like so many others,
who come here to pray and be blessed
daily, sometime twice, and rare absent
from this battlefield of word worthiness,
where so many fall, unattended, but you
are not one of them

you cross my mind,
and bring me a smile,
all the time. line by line,
your bedlam blue, is our custodian

I repost what intrigues, makes me gasp, jealous and desiring
why and how you found these words, that trick my eyes,
in disbelieving belief, that you got there first,  com~bo~ing
craziness delightfully,  and says me ****, how could have I
missed this, the that, where you are at,  a missive missile firing
in a million directions, hitting every target...

so I thank you, twice times over, you
are the sailor extraordinaire that keeps our
leaky (bad gateway?) afloat, and it is you,
X 10,000  that I wish I could repost, this worthy cause,
but here I must pause, for you have given me a pleasured
insight, in right, it is us who should be shy, for not
honoring
you ever so much more.

with affection,
even I, Left Foot Poet
get it righted, sooner,
but never, is not permissible
so let us sail on...together...

Flowers do wilt and die
It seems pointless, yes
But have you seen a bud?
Open its sleepy eyes to the dawn

As if a young child was letting out a yawn
With petals for hands reaching out to open skies
And the sun smiled at it
Telling it to open its arms without worry