I am thankful even for incoherent bullshit. You don't have to be.
COINCIDENCES AROUND JULY 5 UNNERVE ME BECAUSE SOME OF THEM MAKE
NO SENSE AT ALL UNLESS YOU'RE A SOOTHSAYER, AND I CAN'T READ TAROT
CARDS WORTH SHIT
"Nobody loses all the time"--ee cummings
July 5, 1954
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My father died
I didn't kill him, but I spent years
wishing my tire treads were in his throat.
Even before I could drive.
How Freudian. How original.
Ezra Pound might get perturbed
because I didn't Make It New.
Every son and every father is
a unique entity, the journey to
the undiscovered country
where you are reconciled with your father
instead of killing him.
I was had. He left before I could go through the cycle
so I spent years punishing me for him punishing me.
The Official Cause of my father's demise
was a cerebral hemorrhage.
True enough if you are a big fan of the Clinical,
but it got real hot, a Desperate Housewife
meets the middle-aged stud.
The before-the-commercials truth
(I learned this in 1995 when I was 51)
was that the First Cause,
La Donna e Primum Mobile if you like,
was contractive vaginal stimulation from a woman
not my father's wife.
I knew who this woman was.
My old man's manner of death humanized him
and gave him a soul.
Works for me.
But because it took years, in the meantime
I took revenge on him by pointing the knife
at my own throat.
July 5, 1967
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There is a tiresome saying: when
you take revenge, you dig two graves.
On that date, I was arrested by Federal checkpoint guards in Laredo, Texas
for smuggling marijuana.
It was 4 AM. I was guilty. It's hard to hide when you're by yourself
with a car that smells like Astor Place.
I was a Wallace Stevens character: a mind
of winter, only mine was in a sewer in the East Bronx,
but no less frozen shut.
The arresting officer's name was Frank Zapata.
Stop laughing.
He didn't look like Marlon Brando.
He looked larger than my girlfriend's
confiscated car.
Now go back and consider this:
who but someone suicidal crosses the border
smelling like a wet dog at 4:00 AM
and expects to melt into the crowd that
isn't there, especially when you could
spot seeds and twigs on the car floor
Punish me O Lord for I wished my Daddy dead?
Again
a form of necrophilia
raping my father's corpse
from pure revenge for how I perceive he raped my soul
and emerging with the stink of death upon me
a crime that will follow me until 1993
and even beyond.
July 5, 2005
----------
Nobody loses all the time.
I quit smoking.
This is not an anti-smoking lecture,
if you take it as such that is not my problem but yours.
I bought the pack.
In the parking lot of the 711 stared at my hands trembling
like some hype poking around for a usable vein.
Voice: "Ken, what are you doing to yourself?"
It is 7:00 AM.
At 2:00 PM I watch myself flushing the remainder of the pack
down the crapper at work.
At 7:00 PM I am home watching myself put up all the pipes I own (23)
on eBay.
For what I'm asking they sell in 20 minutes.
I have quit before.
I began at age 16 and smoked until age 61.
Forty-five years.
I failed every year.
In my head I remained a loser
sucking on an overpriced paper tube of shit.
Our dog has more dignity.
A year later I am still clean.
One lust at least gone.
My tobacco brain is flaccid,
the vow of chastity took this time
the urge to screw myself gone
for the moment.
ktw/7-4-06
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Ken Wolman kenwolman.com rainermaria.typepad.com
"I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry." - Rita Rudner
"Whenever I date a guy I think, "Is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?" - Rita Rudner
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