I was born today three-hundred years from now

It looks like Blogger will mess up the line breaks a little bit for this one. Ah well!


I was born today three-hundred years from now
of an atom and an eon on the verge of collapse
one triplet of three surviving, thriving sperm
a baby spread beef-like, dripping juicy and fresh, unappetizing
arranged as part of three on white paper hospital sheets
crinkling our arrival like so many royal trumpets blasting

I’ve grown old, my face is nice suede
folds on face and neck wrinkle and hide nooks of flesh
that wait alone, blind to the sun: the sun which brought my skin to such a prime state of puppy face wrinkling
I am the christmas present bulldog
with fold upon fold of
wrinkles and jowls denoting wise elder status

along with the sun beams,
my age spots and facial creases count other causes:
sleepless nights during which I just could not remember
the fourth line of “Howl” or a different poem
and fancied myself insane; also-
movements, uprisings and revolutions.
they spring up year after year, annual, perennial, flowerless plants pollinated by cash and sowed by
casualties of capitalism
and movers and shakers that would soon become tyrants
revolutions:
women’s. black’s. immigrant’s. women’s again. disabled.
I worried for all of them
til my lungs turned black out of chronic anxious smoking
tried to quit and see a therapist instead
it was even more expensive.
I sold my TV and have felt better ever since.

Revolutions come in smaller scales
some I went through all on my own
These were the Nourishment Revolutions:
born, I drank only breast milk,
first from the tit of my mother or the milkmaid
I weaned early
because my mother needed anti-depressants again,
and the milkmaid was stealing from our house.
so my two brothers and I
revolutionized and drank the same milk from fake nipples-
later an uprising occurred
and my baby teeth joined forces
to organize, revolt
and decompose the structure of solid foods
it went on like this for quite awhile
until the bourgeois came out of patient waiting
and seized my kidneys and stomach in a vengeful war.
now I am back to mush and milk,
and diapers at that
but I maintain a few teeth to soothe my pride.

I cannot wear dentures with those gnarled-end canines jutting out of elderly gums,
the structure of false teeth demand a valley-smooth slate
but I find the absence of solid food worth it
my steady-standing teeth are relics of younger days

curdled brain cells!
I can see you now
laid out on egg shell colored bed sheets
in a Dartmouth autopsy room
or else under a glass dome for observation
a snowglobe which medical students lean over
like children .
oh will their expressions reflect the same wonder
that darling faces light up with on christmas eve,
peering into those half-spheres of glass?
snowglobes swirl with flakes of plastic
but organs under similar domes, well, I hope that they are just as wonderful. they could save a life
if they held the right secrets
and the scientists and students had the key
to discovering them

I was born yesterday
eighty-eight years ago
the one surviving twin, an immediate successor to
my still-born brother Charlie Parker
oh god where have the years gone
too few revolutions and too many
sun spots and slabs of drooping skin…