May B-day Poem 2018

Finally! I worked on this one for  . . . maybe four months? Still not sure I "got it right" but I tried. If nothing else, it IS the longest B-day poem for myself that I have ever written. Did a little research too where I discovered Nicolaus Copernicus. Something in common I have with a historical genius . . . sort of. So, here it is. Needed four pics to get it all in there. Anyway, Happy B-day to me! P.S. If you want to read it off the pic, you can click on it to make it larger . . . if you need to. 

Septuagenarian-ism

“I’m but a shadow

a single moment

stretching Its legs out

as far as It can before

the candle goes dark”

*Pamiątki  

Alive inside a dream, it seems. A sugar memory

a touch, oh, that touch, I remember those scratches,

those brutally long nails strolling between my thighs.

It’s late, so very late, deep within a summer’s night

a hint of sadness swirling in the dark crevasses,

a silent moon spying on us, the sheer, white curtains

waltzing to the sounds of a cool morning breeze

and that crazy-ass black cat draped across

the far end of the mattress . . . yeah, that’s

what I recall . . .

Seventy years . . . almost.

Can barely see myself through the steamy mirror.

But I’ve no desire to step from the warm shower

and wipe my reflection dry, why should I?

Large canyons, the cracked, waterless river beds,

the great craters that time whittled into my face?

No need to visually confirm the devastation,

I know it’s there as it has always been there

like that damn cat, watching me with its unblinking eye.

My right hand is cramping . . .

broke it nine years ago

while mounting my mountain bike. I swung the right

leg over the seat a bit too manly and BAM!

over the top of the whole damn thing,
my entire bodyweight slamming into

the open palm, smashing the hand I write with

into the gravel driveway. A nervous Allsup's cashier

stuck his head outside the double doors, “Dude!
are you alright, MAN! You hit the ground . . . hard!”

Hitting the ground . . . hard, day after day

from the first moment gravity grabs hold.

That’s what living is.

Nicolaus Copernicus (February 19, 1473 – May 24, 1543)

Renaissance-era mathematician, astronomer, Spoke five

languages: Latin, German Polish, Greek and Italian.
Formulated a model of the universe
that placed the Sun at the center
of our existence . . . the church was pissed!

I feel his ghost tap me on the shoulder.

Seventy years old . . .er, almost.

Still breathin’ if only barely.

The legs still work—if only barely— but theycomplain a bit
during the winter months, the summer’s heat, whenever it rains.

The heart still keeps the time in concert with the rhythm

that the good nurse prompted into my DNA with her sturdy
open-handed slap to my bare ass. I still feel the bruises
every time I sit down in a hard-back chair.

@ Art Walk, April 13, 2018

A Mystery Kid, a demon, a big smile on his gremlin face.

He hands me a business card and then POOF!
disappears into the crowd:

“YOUR FATE IS IN YOUR HANDS

Readings by Lena
Palm & Tarot Card divination
Rated #1 in OKC”

“Hey, David look at this.”
“What is it?”
“Palm reading!

 Hold the card up so I
can take a picture of it.”
“No.”
Why not?”

“Because you won’t
take it back!”

“Yes, I will! Just hold . . .”
“NO, you won’t take it back

and I’ll have to throw it away!”
“But—’
“No! I won’t touch it!”

Knowledge of the future?
I’ve no use for it. Neither does David.

To me it’s like jumping to the end
of a good novel just to see

how it all turns out.
Where’s the fun in that?

May 23, 2018

This is THE day, “the big day”

as my sister would say.
I wake up, I think, my eyes open, Yes,
I think they do. The “BEEP, BEEP, BEEP,”
the coffeemaker nudges me out of bed,

the smell of coffee beckons me “Come drink,

come drink me all up, all this stimulating caffeine

all that electricity sliding down your throat.”

Dawn waits on my consciousness

to notice that daylight sits awkwardly
on the dusty windowsill. It has no reason

to be hasty, to slow down or to speed up.

No place to go. It never gets old . . .

I may dance a bit with both broken hands

stuck inside my robe’s dirty pockets,

my bony legs knocking together, Dancing, YES!

Dancing an old man’s version of an Irish jig,

a country reel, or perhaps a Scottish strathspey!

“Oh, my!” the knees will plead, “we’re not ready
for that!”

I might even sing this aging morning,

my gravelly voice crackling like rain against a tin roof,
or I might imitate a dying dog howling at his last train
or maybe I’ll bark at the countless ghosts that try
too hard to make me cry-out about the rude,
unforgiving nature of a nature that nurtures
youth and ignores the wisdom of that oak tree
that’s tasted time, sampled the bitterness
of each passing year

and has never given way to sapless tears

for its broken branches, and all those leaves

that have fallen to their death because winter
demands that it be so if for no other reason

than it pleases the tyranny of the season.

Crows gather underneath the elms outside

right before the day arrives and brightens

this dark mood I find myself indulging in.

**Renesans

(February 19, 1543)

Copernicus sat in his favorite, high-back chair
staring out the widow to the street below.

In the middle ages if you were lucky enough

to make it passed childhood,

IF you were rich enough, healthy enough,

and not a casualty of war or some other
freak accident, you might, you just might
make it to the grand old age of forty.

“Fuck!” Coper whispered to himself as he

slurped his morning coffee and watched

the last of the plague wagons roll by. “I’m

gonna live for fuckin’ ever.”

Nicolaus Copernicus had a massive stroke

four hundred, seventy-five years (minus one day)
before my seventieth birthday.
Nicolaus Copernicus, dead at 70 years old.

Another ghostly touch . . . this time

on the back of my neck.
                                      -By Woodie for his 70th B-day

*Pamiątki = Memorabilia

** Renesans = Renaissance