I am getting older

and my body is in tatters

My Doctor's say, "You're fine, You're fit"

I think they're mad as hatters

Each day a new pain rears it's head

My body falls apart

My Doctor's say, "You're fine, You're fit"

As they listen to my heart

My bladder's my new stop watch

Each night I rise to ***

I get up once at half past ten

And then just after three

I'm cold and then I'm sweating

Sometimes both in  one breath

It makes me feel I'm crazy

It's a slow, nervewracking death

My knees ache every morning

And my hips pop as I walk

I have to work my jawbones

Just so I can start to talk

I've had surgeries on my body

Just to help me stay alive

I can't see where I am going

I'm can no longer go and drive

But, my Doctors say I'm healthy

They say I'm healthy as a horse

But isn't "Flicka" served in restaurants?

His flesh is now a new main course

I use a cane when I go walking

I have a seat to go upstairs

I wear a wig when I'm in public

I seem to dress myself in layers

I need a pill to wake myself up

I need another so I sleep

But because my bladder's my new stopwatch

I never go to sleep too deep

Today I'm going to get tested

To check the hearing in one ear

Please excuse me for a moment

What was that you said my dear?

Now my Doctor's keep insisting

That there's nothing wrong with me

Like I said, I think I'm crazy

They're the nuts and I'm the tree.

they've got me tricked out special

I've got orthotics and a cane

My bursititis hurts like crazy

And I think it's gonna rain

My oxygen tank is empty

And my voiding bag is not

But I'm still having those flashes

I still feel cold and hot

With the bag I sleep much better

I don't get up twice to ***

But it wasn't fun last birthday

Having a colostomy

But, my Doctor's say Don't Worry

Your'e as fit as fit can be

But I tell them it's distressing

For I'm not yet thirty three

I'm sick of always hurting

Each day more vigor do I lose

But today I am excited

I'm getting velcro for my shoes

I think some exercise might help me

With all my aches and all my pains

It may help me to feel younger

Feel like thirty two again

But my Doctors, Oh my Doctors

Say there's nothing wrong at all

It's just a natural part of aging

It's mother nature come to call

But I know, I 'm getting older

and it's just a part of life

I'm just glad I have a drug plan

To help me with this strife

Now, my O2 tank is full now

And I've got a buzzing in my head

That means my battery is running low

So...Goodnight...I'm off to bed...

Isn’t it strange that the same bloodlust
Which feeds the *** drive, drives
Deep into one’s Egyptian appetite,
Feeds deep, deep around the campfire at night,
Flames of carnal desire: and by carnal, I mean
Literally a yearning for rib-eye steaks,
Pork sirloin & Horse Meat.
Horse meatballs.
Horse sausage.
Horse stew.
Hi-** Silver & Trigger,
Fury & My Friend Flicka, &
Lest we forget:  The Famous Mr. Ed.
Oh Wilbur, I'm talking about Horse Cuisine!
(God Bless the French!)
Dartagnan & Brigitte, typical post war
Parisians with slim pickens
(No relation to the actor)
Survivors with little to choose from
Whatever scroungy edibles offered on the pushcart.
The one good thing about those years, you might ask?
It was a jubilee time, a precursor to
Lean Cuisine & Weight Watchers
Jenny Craig & Nutrisystem, & the lovely
Marie Osmond looking especially edible lately
Having dropped a dumb-bell 50 pounds, yet
Still crammed tightly in Spanx.
“Hey Marie, it’s good to be the King!”
I am Mel Brooks ******* you,
From behind, History of the World: Part I.
Marie is looking  tasty, n'est–ce pas?
France after WWI and WWII: a starving time,
Yet ironically a meat-eater's ****.
The French Cavalry, no longer needed,
It meant liquidation of the local Lipizzaners,
War-weary, would-be Man o’ Wars,
Secretariats, Seattle Slews, & California Chromes,
Shot twice in the head,
Carcasses hung & butchered.
But I digress. Or do I?
MEAT: gives the same ecstatic rush as ***,
Carnival Season, a pre-Lenten animal s’morgasm,
Identical, as nourishing as, perhaps as
A horse of a different color: ***?
SEE ME/FEEL ME: ****** cheeks, dripping jowls;
Shredded flesh betwixt my teeth—oh yes!
I confess that among my forebears,
(Not to be confused with The Three Bears,
Which would, of course, be a whole 'nother story)
Somewhere ‘long the spiral helix
Was a seriously carnivorous naked ape,
Some troglodyte Alley Oop, evolving over Time,
Into a reptilian, puffed-up, junior broker,
Impressing some ***** 21 year-old
In some Chichi Manhattan bistro, trumping
The waiter's or waitress’s shopworn query with:
******!
A fresh ****:
****** & still warm.

Lick a
lick a
stick a
stamp,
my friend
flicka.

The sadnessss$%!&!!
Inside is barely assuaged
By the makings of a new day,
The sun filtered through the river of clouds,
The love curtain hanging from my window,
To my cheeks is barely alive,
Barely breathes morning,
The room shrouded in this lifeless glow
A gray, drowned pallor
And i didn't get drunk last night
And blast the night with fury
But my sadness$!@@#$!!! Kept me
Up
All
Night.
And a true friend doesn't just keep you down,
They get down with you.
And in the morning when she is gone,
The sun does not greet me,
Merely a showing of face.
A courtesy. A head nod.
A flip of the hand.
Flicka da wrist.
A wraith hanging back in the mist.

You want to dance with me,
Gyrate and percolate,
Clap it up, clairebear, and jigg.

C'mon, my flicka bonnie lass,
Jeg and bustamove,
Chica bonita and stella konstatine,
I love all night, now you.

Welcomed me
as a newly minted
lucky penny
I guess

My world
left behind
revolving dictators, military juntas
state police arresting, holding, never to be found again
university protesters
the lucky ones
pushed out of a plane in the middle of the night
their tortured bodies washed ashore
their families at the morgue demanding justice
that never came
All of it
erased from my mind
on my arrival in a nonstop American Airlines flight
at least
that is what I thought

“We must change your name, you must learn English quickly, don’t worry WE blend in,” my uncle said

My first day of American school
not all a Norman Rockwell painting


My teacher spoke above me to the class
while making room in the far back corner for my lone desk
She handed me “word searches”
for a language I did not have
and at recess she showed me the library
but after that
I did not count

I should thank her

The library become my sanctuary
all those books for me to read
The librarian pulled these for me
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
My Friend Flicka, Little Women

I was so proud
when my broken English
could finally pledge
with my hand over my heart
my allegiance to the flag
and I could feel the idea that …
“This Land is Your Land”

As time always does
it infuses light color and clarity
I realized that the paintings
Norman Rockwell painted
the Americana he sold us
was missing so much
They really are fakes

Well maybe
not total fakes
but maybe an incomplete pictorial
a one-sided legend
one half of an complex whole
the oxygen removed one could say
now making it hard for me to breath

Each canvas needs another side
Another story is owed
These canvases are a forgery of the truth

It is more comfortable like this
We give ourselves license
to whitewash our “American” lives
but now
hear George Floyd’s words on repeat
“I can’t breathe”

Rockwell, your Ruby Bridge painting is a fantasy

You robbed her and me
missing the black doll in a baby's casket
which the crowd used to taunted Ruby with
giving her for years recurring nightmares


How about the terror
in her mother’s heart

You did not paint in
the white cop, yep, I said white cop
that pulled his gun to **** Ruby’s mother

You missed the horror
You missed the terror

You painted a splashed tomato
as if this was a bad comedy or play
The background you painted a peachy peach wall
with gray capturing the hate
how apropos
nope, you cannot take it back  

I cannot unsee
the Americana you invited me to see
or unpave the world
over blood spilled
or pretend I do not hear…
“I can’t breathe.”