It’s Harriday! August 6, 2020

At such an age, all that’s left is Rationalizations.


Harry@75

It’s not the breathing
Not the beating of a crackled heart
It’s the back and forth
Across the willow swings
Back and forth
That’s hard.

Started with a brace of questions
“Jesus, Judas, what did they do to you?”
“Judas, Jesus, what did they do to you?”

Ended with this stagnant storm
Called Aldomorro
To and fro in Rio.

I cannot get warm
On my balcony
I overheat my own gleam
I am the perfumed chimes
Of doom and bleeding tomes
Singing blue anew
With each false dawn
And still I am cold
As icehouse ice.

Voices rattle in my head
Allatime my punks
Talking of nothing
Allatime.

I was gonna
Still maybe wanna
Not gonna
The fire is out
In my small back yard
The gas is out
For the barbecue.

Love was the thing
At one time
We all believed
Her breasts would cure the terrors of the night
And they were round like the universe
Of her
Which began and ended
To and fro
Back and forth
With two old questions.

“Jesus, Judas, what did they do to you?”
“Judas, Jesus, what did they do to you?”

I know the answer now
Is not breasts
Not cosmic magic
Not the beauties of my balcony
It’s only breathing
On the willow wings
Flown round and round
The circle that enfolds
The warm that holds
The mere handful of ice
I can melt
If I try.

Is this The End for him? Almost certainly. Given the life he’s led, what else could there be?

Comments

Readers also liked…

A Near-Perfect Microcosm of “The Swamp”

The Best Book on the Trump Phenomenon

A Reclamation Project Begun

Manuscript Submission, The Boomer Bible

The CHYOS Superscript

The impenetrable NYC Bubble