Ninety

Ninety

It's rather a shocker, to nature &; even myself, the fact
that I've survived. Most figured, &; I don't mind saying it,
that I'd die young, one of those frail neurotic types for whom,
to be borne, the world is too much. The thought could make one
nauseous, but all I can do now is laugh &; laugh, wondering
just who in hell is left for me to celebrate this with.
The cats, I suppose, Duchess, Periwinkle, &; old slant-eyed
Redcoat with his left ear half missing. I've nineteen altogether,
their life spans a collective karma for the incarnations I've
gone
through, who I was during this decade, that, each, more or less,
a bit of a scrap pile. Fingering the tatters, everything floods
back, the chain smoked years waking up to stumble over bottles
or into arms---
Ricardo's, Jack's, those throwing down lifelines while, in
actuality,
searching for their own, the mattress going, "Dao! Dao!", 'til
I decided friendships were the best intimacy. Then, as you know,
I fell into leaf-letting, demonstrations, &; the lot, even 24
hours
in some cold piss-stenched jail.
In between there were letters, books, the cinema, wash days,
picnics,
&; every odd job imaginable. I remember feeding Suicide Bernie
coffee one long night for hours. I remember C.C's cancer
ravishing flesh the way famine does. "Oh good." I think Izzy said
on the death of McCarthy. "Where's the mercy?", asked Shirl
on whatever occasion, the 3rd world, our own street, she came
up against the cruel.
But, as I've alluded, they're gone, gone except to me, cradling,
crinkling, smoothing such lace mentioned now 'n then to the
curious
visitors who trickle in. "What was it like?" or "What should I
do?"
Questions like that. Once in awhile, as if at a river, I see a
bright
thread, a flash of this unattainable masterpiece where their
reflection
is mine, rippling superimposed, first puzzled, then, placid, but,
come on, at ninety, once in awhile is still pretty fair odds.