in olde spite of self,
that crattling nip or tuck that wanders out the door. yes, i’ve seen the old man of the sea, or maybe the old man in the mountain. there’s too too many old men, roundabout the hearth and home and lurking behind the eyebrows. just waiting, given time, give him time, to jump out, take the forefront, bow to the floor….
—or he would, youknow, only the arthriticals keep him solid, like a block of wood roasting on a furnace. mmm. feel that burning onceler. feed him mashed up taters and saucy sauce. (saucy sauce? sigh)
i’m remembering a certain logan and his certain run and the cranky old man daguerrotyping, i mean, lambobbling, i mean, um, roustabouting, no rather, fillibustering in that cracked, unhallowed hall. wobbly and false, he was, with his pasteon white beard and his faux theatrics and monologicals.
but that’s enough of the reminiscing. there’s nothing so sad as a mockelder. made my living, in younger years, playing mock old, fat men. with the pasteon wrinkles and the occasional pasteon beard. and the pasteonbelly. wheee! who’s the man in the fat suit dancing down the stairs? chances are, if it was THAT time, it was yours truly.
so, when i’m staring at the picture of my heart, going pa-TOOM pa-TOOM, right in fronna me, watching those flaps and valves and dowhats, dojiggers, or -hickeys or whathaveyou, watching it skip its beat (and were those red and blue pixelations the blood moving back and forth? don’t even know for sure…) but while watching, the faintest dizziness: this thing has been going going going for how long now? and for how long from now? that old mortal coil seemed loose, then, like some quick jerk could send it off, posthaste, for the fruit of heaven–ambrosia, i think it was. that was a weird feeling, that sense. like, what purpose is this serving, doc? except to highlight (in electronickal display in that darkened room) that very mechanickalness of everything. even those things we think of as fleshy, fleshpots, are only just scaffolding and repairwork, hastily painted over with whitewash and shored up here and there, against that inevitable crumbling…
my mind, for the nonce, keeps strolling back there, like a tongue-wag against some loose tooth. or that finger, with its torn cuticle, catching on this that and the other (lemon juice, ow!)
so, here’s the heart. the flexing, pumping muscle-thing: heard it all my life, going pa-TOOM pa-TOOM in those quiet moments. those still moments, when the night creeps around on little sock feet. (stealing a bit) and but then, here’s some unwieldy contraption with unguents and wants and whatnot, sending some crazed image of that gurgling thing. and, what’s this? whooshing, thumping noise? microscope, microscope, where do you rest your saucy gaze?
ouch, seeing that thing in me like that would cause my own consciousness to become less so, or more so, or something so. I can’t think about how it’s all machinery, a mass of pumpy engine and levers and pulleys and the places where everything comes together. It’s all so soft and squishy, driving cars at too-fast-mph on freeways amidst thousands of others, all too tight and too tired and too close and if just one of us lets go for a minute all that hard stuff could make sauce of all the soft stuff. I just want to be one solid hunk with nothing in the middle, a cross-section of me looking plain and unremarkable, not some weird tubes and sticks and gummy stuff.
Perhaps all of your own heart’s skipped beats are being stored up, put in a bank, so that you’ll get to have a savings to draw from while the rest of us have used all of ours up as they came to us.