Fuck But Youth Is Beautiful

30 March, 2007

Fuck but youth is beautiful
in its exercise and practice.
There is no replacement for the irreplaceable, unpaced mash
that is the face full of watery plumpness
framing pink lips.
Damn, I used to be there,
and I hated it; it was ugly, salacious, loud;
I wished there were a turnstile
through which I could walk and purchase a different form of transport.
I desired
and was repulsed by the suggestive twist in every shape and event;
I wanted Plato's pure form;
I wanted simplicity scrubbed clean.
I scoured my skin with a green plastic scrub pad
and wished that I knew more than how not to live.
I waded through tall grass and bushes,
I felt the sting of nettles on my knees,
and it made me feel old.
Youth was fucking beautiful
when I watched others turn their hips at corners and doors
or brush their fine hair back from fat skin
with ripe hands.
I knew that my own youth was also watched
and that it was not mine to pickle in
but something to behold in the round bottoms and lean legs,
the soft chins of the freshly suckled,
a thing to watch and shape an appetite
my own light walk could not inspire.

I Could Do Anything

21 March, 2007

So, what of it?
I like to smoke dope
and get stupid in the middle of the night.
I swear it keeps me young,
or at least forgetful,
which is like being young,
because you don’t know as much then,
although I thought I knew everything,
just everything.
Back then I always felt like
I was on the verge of becoming famous.
We were all going to be discovered;
we were going to make great strides
in world-changing fields of study
and people would take our pictures
and talk about us years later like we knew what we were doing.
The problem was
we were all so good at everything
that we ended up doing everything mediocre.
Now I wish I had been like one of those kids
you know, those savants,
who play the violin like a master
but never advance beyond stick figures with anything else.
That way, you, me, that other guy,
we’d all be something,
at least something bigger
that would have people know our names.
But I'm okay with this now.
I mean, I get to hang out,
do pretty much as I please.
My mother used to ask me
why are you always jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire
when you shouldn't even be in the frying pan in the first place?
I guess that's how I got here,
but it's not so bad, uh uh.
Least I know that I've got talents, more than one.
I could do just about anything.

4 March, 2007

That grass you're showing off
lies in long lines of light and dark
along the green,
snipped and shaped and fertilized
into an outdoor carpet
that requires special shoes with nubs
and carts with soft wheels.

Your bedrooms have closed doors and heavy drapes
and secret drawers,
suckers that have you lick the clothes off naked people,
and magazines full of ladies with heavy breasts called pendulous
lie in and on clean and modern furniture
while the bedskirt hides the shoes.

There were sparkles on the plastic flowers
and sparkles in your see-through plastic summer footwear
and sparkles in the stippled ceiling,
the ceiling to which I would never refer out loud,
because stipple was far too close to nipple,
and God knew what my thoughts were.

In those days, I was made to wear dresses on Sundays,
and although I pretended to be a co-conspirator,
they were too straight and clean,
and my nylons made me horny
when they bunched to one side in the car
on the way home from church.
I liked how wrong it was to want the painful stick
of my damp legs stuck to tan vinyl
in the Buick's hot back seat
and how the red impressions on my thighs
would burn all through Sunday dinner.

Come dear Lord and be our guest
was the prayer before consumption
in the days when asking for grace meant automatic receipt
and I didn't know that gravy was a violent reduction,
Jesus was the co-conspirator,
and I was to be an outdoor carpet with secret drawers
in the suburban mould.