Recently Written 01/16/08 - (2)
Youth's Flush "Once a king, always a king. Once a knight — that's enough." "'Balls,' cried the queen.
"'If I had two, I'd be king.'" Oh, all those stupid, dirty jokes That were the coin of our juvenile realm.
Almost every one of those pruriences Was pitched in two fundamental keys — Sexual and scatological —
As though we needed continuous doses Of genitalia and feculence, To get in touch with our throbbing manhood,
When inconvenient, uncontrollable boners Would alert the girls to our hormones And embarrassing wet dreams
Would expose our fantasies to our mothers. Why, at almost sixty-seven, I still recall, with such vivid sensitivity,
Those undeniably traumatic awkwardnesses, In classrooms, boys' locker rooms, And coeducational gyms
With eleven-, twelve-, thirteen-year-old girls Budding into Annette Funicellos, Whose brains we dreamed of fucking out...
Why I can still see to all that distance ago, When I'm indulging in loneliness, Night after isolated, solitary night after night,
Must have to do with my youthful inhibitions, Unhealthy relationships Rubbing, awkwardly, against each other,
Setting up dysfunctional adulthood patterns, Which, in my middle years, Transformed into a sad, damaged marriage.
Now, I spend despondent evenings inebriated, Virtually exempt from memory of my past, Except for those formative days,
That rush toward maturation, Before I discovered youth's flush was evanescent, Penises, testicles, breasts, vaginas
Just so much mortal, corporeal stuff In a lifetime of survival's weighty exigencies, Which, ultimately, led me, fast, to old age,
Solitude I share with Art Nouveau Mucha beauties, Who never come through, When my fantasies cry out for flesh, orgasm,
And my existence goes humiliatingly limp, As I whimper inane echo-fragments Of jokes I used to rattle off,
When puberty graduated to raging adolescence And I was expected to grow up, mature, Jettison those puerile attempts at humor,
Assume responsibility for my evolving identity, And focus on the purpose of my being. Only, that never quite materialized.
And so, tonight, I repeat the once-a-king- Balls-cried-the-queen thing and weep in my cups, Realizing childhood has been my jealous lover.
01/16/08 - (2)
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