May 2002 | back-issues, Jack Swenson, nonfiction
Getting old is no fun. The worst thing about it is that you hurt all the time. I’ve got a bum knee and a bad hip. Old war wounds. I don’t know what I would do without Advil. My cousin, who is younger than I am, says old age is not for sissies, and I agree.
When you get to be sixty, your friends start dropping like flies. I lost another one last year. An old college buddy died of cancer. It was his second go-round on the cancer front. He had colon cancer, but he survived that. A few years later, the disease showed up in his liver, and that got him. A few years ago another friend discovered that he had a tumor the size of a golf ball in one of his lungs. They took that out, and he’s still alive and kicking. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. You’re always looking over your shoulder when you’re old enough to keep an AARP card in your wallet.
My wife, who is twenty years younger than I am, watches me like a hawk. She’s worried that I will get senile or develop Alzheimer’s, both of which run in my family. Forget about it, I tell her. I’m fine. Worry about me when I get to be eighty. That seems to be the pattern. All my aunts and uncles on my mother’s side got dotty at the end. The good news is that they lived to be eighty or ninety.
I tell my wife to stop holding her breath. I’m fine, I say. As long as I can work the crossword puzzle, I’m okay. The New York Times crossword puzzle: that’s my Alzheimer’s test, I tell her. When I can’t do the Friday or Saturday puzzle, then you can start worrying.
One day last week, I came back from my walk and discovered that I had lost my house keys. Unfortunately, my wife was home; it was her day off. I had to drive across town to the business park where I take my morning constitutional. I found the keys in the parking lot.
The next day my wife told the story to everybody at work. They all thought it was pretty funny. I accused her of stopping strangers on the street to tell them about her mentally incompetent husband.
Actually, old age is a laughing matter–if aches and pains and the occasional lapse of memory are all you have to worry about. When it gets serious is when you are very old. I learned this last year when my mother, who’s ninety-one, had a stroke. She survived, but the life she lives today is no life, or so it seems to me. She can’t talk or feed herself. She spends her days in bed or in a wheelchair, looking out the window. She doesn’t seem to be in any discomfort or distress. It is as if the blow that took away her mind mercifully took her feelings as well.
And then there’s Walter. Walter is an old Dutchman that I met in 1988 when I first started going to AA meetings in the city where I now make my home. Walter was old then, in his eighties. At that time he had been sober for forty years. There were other old farts at that meeting, but nobody else had as much sobriety as Walter. I loved sitting next to Walter at meetings. I’d sit between Walter and another senior citizen named Frank, and when it was my turn to talk, I’d brag that between the three of us-Walter, Frank, and I-we had over seventy-five years of sobriety. Since I had been sober for only a few months, that always got a laugh.
I began driving Walter to meetings after that. I guessed that at his age, he had trouble driving at night, so I asked him if he would like me to pick him up, and to my surprise, he said yes. I was surprised because Walter is an independent cuss. Touchy, too. He wasn’t offended, however. He seemed to like the idea of having taxi service.
I drove Walter to meetings for ten years. I didn’t expect my tour of duty to be that long, but that’s the way it worked out. At first I didn’t mind; I enjoyed Walter’s company. Walter had a checkered past, as he would tell you himself. He had some wonderful stories to tell. Once he walked from Niagara Falls, New York, to Oakland, California, he told me. It was in the winter, too. The year was 1923. He was seventeen years old, he said. He hitched rides and hopped freight trains, but most of the time he walked. I asked Walter why he left New York, and he said it was because of a woman. He had a girlfriend in Oakland.
He had other stories to tell, too, stories from his drinking days, some of which he told in meetings and some he didn’t. He often told his bus to Portland story in meetings, about how he woke up one morning in a bus station in Portland, Oregon, not knowing where he was or why he was there. The last thing he remembered he was drinking beer at a bar in Oakland. He told about waking up in jail, too, and being told by somebody in another cell that he had shot a cop. It wasn’t true, but Walter didn’t find that out until they let him go.
Some stories he didn’t tell in meetings were how he quit smoking and how he lost his teeth. He threw his cigarettes out the window one morning, he said, because he had a cold, and they didn’t taste good. His teeth got the same treatment. He was having trouble with his teeth, so he walked into a dentist’s office and told the dentist to pull them all, which he did. Afterwards, as he was leaving the office, he almost passed out, Walter said. Tough old bird, that Walter.
Walter began to fail badly a year or so ago. His hearing went first, then his legs. Taking him to meetings became a chore, but, I told my wife, it was the only way he got out of the house at all. I’d like to have a tape recording of some of our conversations on the drive in recent months.
Me: Blah, blah, blah.
Walter: What?
Walter could walk, more or less, with the help of a cane, but getting him in and out of my truck was an adventure.
They put Walter’s wife in a nursing home two years ago, and about a month ago they did the same thing to Walter. They’re both in Sunset Acres in Hayward. Walter didn’t go quietly. I got the story from Mae, a shirttail relative of Walter’s wife, who in recent years had looked after the old couple in exchange for room and board. I don’t know if what Mae told me is fact or fiction-probably a bit of both-but this is what she said.
Walter got sick, and Mae called Veronica, Walter’s daughter-in-law, because Walter wouldn’t go to the hospital. Veronica called for an ambulance, but when she did, all she got was a busy signal, so she called 9-1-1. The fireman arrived first, and they tried to get Walter into the emergency van without much luck until they strapped him onto a gurney.
“He smacked one of them,” Mae said.
“He hit a fireman?” I asked.
Mae said she had gone down to the firehouse the next day to apologize. “You should see his face,” she said. “It’s black and blue.”
I told the AA folks about Walter’s little adventure, and most of them thought it was pretty funny. They seemed to be more delighted than surprised that Walter had hit a fireman. I had everyone sign a card that I brought with me to the meeting, and a day or so later, I went to see Walter at Sunset Acres.
As far as senior homes go, Sunset Acres is neither the best nor the worst, but believe me, I wouldn’t want to live there. The place has “last stop” written all over it. There are lots of people in blue or white coats bustling around, and lots of pale, wrinkled old people in sweat clothes sitting in wheelchairs.
I didn’t recognize Walter when I saw him. He was sitting in the corner of one of the common rooms, his chin on his chest. One of the employees roused him for me and wheeled him out to the foyer where I could sit down and get a good look at him.
He seemed okay, not in any distress. We talked for a few minutes, or rather I talked and he listened. He kept nodding off. I put the card that his AA friends had signed into his hands, and he looked at that for awhile, and he seemed to be pleased.
“Tell me one thing, Walter,” I said just before I left. “Did you really pop a fireman?”
That seemed to rouse him. He smiled. “Maybe,” he whispered.
When I left, I looked back, half expecting him to be shaking his fist at me, his eyes bright with mischief and defiance, but his chin was back on his chest.
May 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
up these stairs to
this room
and all the times
i tied you to
the bed
all the times you
begged
and all the ways your
father died
seven years now
coming down hard
windows broken
doors left open
the soft drip of
the kitchen sink
i know i’ll find you
crying
i know
every moment will
be wasted
there is no
great trick in
living the same
frightened life
again and
again
May 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
how many years now wasted
weighing the word [i]love[/i]
on broken scales?
there is no religion
to be found here
only stigmata
and the taste of dust
empty room
after empty room until
you finally reach the one
you call home
in this corner
a man shot in the face
from less than a
foot away
in that one
the woman who loves pain
screaming for the baby
she never had
you will become
one or you will become
the other and
either way
your future has been
determined
there is nothing left
but to be
nailed to it
April 2002 | back-issues, poetry
[b]Tongue Tied[/b]
I don’t know how to say things anymore,
Whether what I say is any good,
Or merely crap that has collected
At the mouth of the pipe
All those years since shutdown,
All those years ago, blasting outwards,
Yellow and greasy, fetid, stinking
Forced out by the flood.
[b]Rat Tailed Wanting[/b]
Long tailed want gnaws hard,
old friend, grinds at the heart,
digests old dreams, defecates
desires we never had when young.
Our days of poverty are gone –
days we walked through Simi heat,
pregnant with hope, dreams packed
tightly, seeping out our eyes. We
have made it, as they say, made
a thousand deals, made a life,
made our bed, and lie here panting.
This rat tailed want gnaws holes,
masticates those younger days.
[b]On Meeting Honest Abe[/b]
“Let go now. I won’t call the police,”
I tell him, sorry somehow, although
he’s tried to run off taking with him
almost every damned thing still useful
in this remnant of a life I now
can call my own. You see –
beaten, I arrived by Greyhound bus,
took the northern exit to Fifth Street,
stopped at Eldora’s, bought a latte.
Sipping, I set my carryall down
(carelessly, I guess). Whistling, he came
strolling up the sidewalk.
“Good morning,” he said, quite lazily.
“Good morning,” I replied, thinking why
not be friendly to him? He’s poor, but
so am I. “I’m Honest Abe,” he said.
He peered at me. “You troubled. Why, babe?”
So I told him about leaving you.
I don’t know why. Just did.
He wanted to know, then, why I left,
what you did, how I felt, what I said.
“Babe, he beat you?” he wanted to know.
I told him it was me, just me, not
you. Not anything you said or did
or were. He rubbed his chin.
Then, I don’t know why, I told him how,
eight months after Richard fired me
(eight months of dark blue suits, interviews,
trolling the canyons for one small bite,
one infinitesimal chance), I
just simply stopped trying.
How I had puttered in the garden,
artichokes, guavas, celery, chives.
How you came cheerily home, happy,
supporting me in my stabled life,
contented, so pleased, supporting me
in my corralled milieu.
How I rose later each day, each day
finding less of interest. How each day
cleaning, tending chives, cooking dinner
took one more measure of my freedom,
one more ounce of blood. How each day dawned
hard and unrelenting.
How this morning I had turned to you,
kissed you fondly, for the husband you
had been, rose, packed, weathered your questions,
left the car keys and dog, called the cab,
caught the Greyhound bus with just my clothes,
some jewels, and ninety bucks.
Abe yawned and stretched languidly. He said,
“That all you got in the wide world, babe?”
and before I finished nodding, snatched
the handle of my carryall. But
he tripped a little, see, so I grabbed
it, too. I stopped him. Now
we’re playing tug-of-war. I promise
not to call the cops, if he’ll let go.
I don’t know. It’s something in his eyes,
his slick survival of the poorest,
and it’s something in my soul, maybe
mercy seeking mercy.
So I tug, holding the thief who heard
my secret, the secret I couldn’t
tell you. Here I am, wondering why
I could not tolerate compassion,
why your kindness was so cloying, why
I am here, being robbed.
[b]Faustus Law[/b]
1. Devil Paramour
He came to me as lover,
said, “You are belle tournure,”
metamorphosed into flesh and blood,
laid me down, rucked my mind.
He flew me to the high place,
stood me on the cliffs, wrapped
sinewed arms around my waist,
cupped my private places in his hands
showed me panoramas in deep dry lands.
Enthralled, I arched toward him,
gave to him my hands, my pen,
my mind, took from him ambition,
and paltry plentitude.
2. Daeva Solicitor
Sold on high, sold on goods,
goods delivered, signed and sealed,
I wander lonely, thirsty, dead,
eyes seeing nothing, hunger great,
burdened with directives from the junta,
the soul eaters, the hurry-ups,
the managing mentoring higher-ups
whose eyes are wild as mine, whose
souls are lost as mine.
They hurry me.
Each week I get a check, each
day I have plenty. I wander endlessly
the caverns in my mind, pushing
buttons, searching for the answers,
chained to my station, jangling
in the recess of my mind.
3. Old Love
My old love calls to me.
Old Love, I hear you say:
Where did you go? I know.
I followed Faustus’ cries,
unwound myself from you, not
wanting poverty, not trusting
in the beauty that you gave me.
4. Doctor Demon
He tells me: if you leave me
you will die. I have examined
you and found: We are entwined too much,
melanomic fingers insinuated you, as they
did me so long ago. He throws me this,
stands quietly. We are
frozen together, souls
echoing in mists of time.
He says: It happened long ago,
and then I know. I know that I
will woo someone, grab lives,
take loves, place shackles
on some souls, sell woe.
5. Dreams of Angels Far Away
I rise to moonbeams
on smooth parquet floor,
pad to the window, part
curtains, feel the icy smoothness
of panes turned cold.
Your voice came through the mists
of transient dream, on whisps
of wolf calls. Ayyyyeeeeiii.
Souls touch but can’t unfetter,
can’t unclog the waxy sludge.
I felt your skin against me,
welcomed you like old
infiltrated yearnings.
I want infusion. I want
the joy we used to bleed.
There’s no escape from Hades,
once you eat of Hades’ seeds.
No singing loud to spouses, no
Shoeless Joe bellowing into ears
of wives and nights. No jumping
funny devils to confound.
I am captive, here at window,
hear your voice call through
the mists, unable to respond,
eternally chained, enthralled
to him, prestigious want.
by Harley Hill (c)2002
([email]harleyhi [at] lemoorenet [dot] com[/email])
[b]Author’s Notes:[/b]
Harley Hill is a lawyer and writer living on the Californa Central Coast. She resides, with her dog Roma, in a quaint cottage near an avocado orchard, an orange tree, and a camellia tree.
April 2002 | back-issues, poetry
[b]The Miracle of the Kisses[/b]
That night, the cock denied him thrice.
His mother and the whore downloaded him,
nails etched into his palms,
his thorny forehead glistening,
his body speared.
He wanted to revive unto their moisture.
But the nauseating scents of vinegar
and Roman legionnaires,
the dampness of the cave,
and then that final stone…
His brain wide open,
supper digested
that was to have been his last.
He missed so his disciples,
the miracle of their kisses.
He was determined not to decompose.
[b]In Moist Propinquity[/b]
Hemmed in our bed,
in moist propinquity,
’tis night and starry
and the neighbourhood inebriated,
in the vomitary of our street.
A woman,
my stone-faced lover,
a woman and her smells.
The yellow haze of melancholy lampposts.
Your hair consumes you.
[b]When you wake the morning[/b]
When you wake the morning
red headed children shimmer in your eyes.
The venous map
of sun drenched eyelids
flutters
throbbing topography.
Your muscles ripple.
Scared animals burrow
under your dewy skin.
Frozen light sculptures
where wrinkles dwell.
Embroidered shades,
in thick-maned tapestry.
Your lips depart in scarlet,
flesh to withering flesh,
and breath in curved tranquility
escapes the flaring nostrils.
Your warmth invades my sweat,
your lips leave skin regards
on my humidity.
Eyelashes clash.
[b]A Hundred Children[/b]
Tell me about your sunshine
and the sounds of coffee
and of bare feet pounding the earthen floor
the creaking trees
and the skinned memory of hugs
you gave
and you received.
Sit down, yes, here,
the intermittent sobbing
of the shades
slit by your golden face.
Now listen to the hundred children
that are your womb.
I am among them.
[b]Cutting to Existence[/b]
My little brother cuts himself into existence.
With razor tongue I try to shave his pain,
he wouldn’t listen.
His ears are woolen screams, the wrath
of heartbeats breaking to the surface.
His own Red Art.
When he cups his bleeding hands
the sea of our childhood
wells in my eyes
wells in his veins
like common salt.
[b]Prague at dusk[/b]
Prague lays over its inhabitants in shades of grey. Oppressively close to the surface, some of us duck, others simply walk carefully, our shoulders stooped, trying to avoid the monochrome rainbow at the end of the hesitant rain. Prague rains itself on us, impaled on one hundreds towers, on a thousand immolated golden domes. We pretend not to see it bleeding to the river. We just cross each other in ornate street corners, from behind exquisite palaces. We don’t shake heads politely anymore. We are not sure whether they will stay connected if we do.
It is in such times that I remember an especially sad song, Arabic sounds interlaced with Jewish wailing. Wall after wall, turret after turret, I re-visit my homeland. It is there, in that city, which is not Arab, nor Jewish, not entirely modern, nor decidedly antique that I met her.
And the pain was strong.
by Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. (c) 2002
([email]vaknin [at] link [dot] com [dot] mk[/email])
[b]Author?s Note:[/b]
Sam Vaknin is the author of [i]Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited[/i] and [i]After the Rain – How the West Lost the East[/i]. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press International (UPI) and eBookWeb, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com. Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia. Visit Sam’s Web site at [url=http://samvak.tripod.com]http://samvak.tripod.com[/url].
