Come of age—it’s easy to grow too old
to ever mature & stay too young, a failure at fame,
selfies in party hats celebrating a non-future.
Never white again underwear barely hanging on a baggy bodies;
believing sex is both a right and a duty.
Inflated gassy pairs moaning before, during, and after.
Layin’ up on day off, never admitting to tired.
Drinking is just drinking, a way of life, not a party game.
Liquor, pills, ashtray, and a cough share the nightstand.
This ain’t the days of bobbysocks and poodle skirts
where beat boys were surrendering nihilist anxiety
to every whim with rolled up jeans and heroin.
This is music without tune rolling through the night.
It is without explanation or divination.
People punching for the right to be what has become.
© M Durfee
1/4/2020
to ever mature & stay too young, a failure at fame,
selfies in party hats celebrating a non-future.
Never white again underwear barely hanging on a baggy bodies;
believing sex is both a right and a duty.
Inflated gassy pairs moaning before, during, and after.
Layin’ up on day off, never admitting to tired.
Drinking is just drinking, a way of life, not a party game.
Liquor, pills, ashtray, and a cough share the nightstand.
This ain’t the days of bobbysocks and poodle skirts
where beat boys were surrendering nihilist anxiety
to every whim with rolled up jeans and heroin.
This is music without tune rolling through the night.
It is without explanation or divination.
People punching for the right to be what has become.
© M Durfee
1/4/2020
There is no doubt an art to growing old/not too old/too young--not sure that I've found it yet, but better to wait for it than pretend...than run from it, with nothing left but relics like these: "Liquor, pills, ashtray, and a cough share the nightstand..." Your last stanza is incredible, Welcome to yet another unknowable year, Mark, which we can only ring in with the voices we have left.
ReplyDeleteThank you Joy. Growing, changing, watching, participating, and mostly trying to navigate the way through--while trying to maintain some semblance of "rational" has been both the tunnel and the light.
Delete… and that's how the cookie crumbles … was good while it lasted … the cookie, that is:) Love, cat.
ReplyDeleteAin't that the truth Meowzer?
DeleteYour poem changes the way I look at New Year's Eve, except I don't really look at it as I was asleep by 11!
ReplyDeleteHave you read Tom Staton's recent book on Detroit in the Depression? "Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball, and the Secret that Shocked Depression Era Detroit"?
Happy New Year, Walking Man!
www.thepulpitandthepen.com
I have not read that particular book Jeff but I will look into it. You actually stayed up until 11, that shows you're still a youngun. I was in bed by 8 or so. This years NYE was not so much gunfire in my area as in past years.
DeleteDo we remember it better than it was? Or is now always a disappointment?
ReplyDeleteI dunno Jean I think the disappointment comes from the looking back at times we were living through. success after all is found in the present and rarely the past.
Delete'music without tune'--that's a hard one.
ReplyDeleteThis is a sterling poem, mark. The last line is amazing. In our own ways, it seems we do punch to the end, "for the right to be what has become'--I think you've nailed that.
Myself, I woke up this morning with my damn back pain and as I'm bemoaning it, JB learns her good friend was found dead in bed. That changed my thinking. Now I'm aware I'm lucky in too many ways, including the right to life.
I hope your year surprises you, Mark. In a good way.
love
kj
I do hope that JB counts herself fortunate to be able to be a testimony to them who pass. The living are all they have left.
DeleteI get that back pain sucks but comes the day you either decode for surgical intervention (know it has limits) or to live with it. There is no middle ground there.
I just hope that there is light and that ot is bright enough to expose the lies we are forced to live with.
mark, I hope for light to defeat the darkness and lies. It's a terrible time in our country and world. I can hardly understand how so many people choose to ignore truth.
Deletelove
kj
It is easy and convenient KJ to accept that the same parameters we grew to know over the past 50 years still apply.
DeleteSo gutsy to read and so authentic Mark. I say you are young at heart. Happy new year!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you Grace. I am not young anymore anywhere except in my perception that I am still 21 and able to walk across mountains and swim in oceans.
DeleteI do pray your year is all that you choose it to be and accomplish all that you desire.