Sixty

Sixty


Because in my family the heart goes first
and hardly anybody makes it out
of his fifties, I think I’ll stay up late
with a few bandits of my choice
and resist good advice.
I’ll invent a secret scroll
lost by Egyptians
and reveal its contents: the directions
to your house, recipes for forgiveness.
History says that my ventricles
are stone alleys,
my heart itself a city with a terrorist
holed up in the mayor’s office.
I’m in the mood to punctuate
only with that maker of promises, the colon:
next, next, next, it says, God bless it.
As Garcia Lorca may have written:
some people forget to live
as if a great arsenic lobster
could fall on their heads at any moment.
My sixtieth birthday is tomorrow.
Come, play poker with me,
I want to be taken to the cleaners.
I’ve had it with all stingy-hearted
sons of bitches.
A heart is to be spent.
As for me, I’ll share
my mulcher with anyone who needs to mulch.
It’s time to give up search
for the invisible.
On the best of days there’s little more
than the faintest intimations.
The millenium, my dear,
is sure to disappoint us.
I think I’ll keep on describing things
to ensure that they really happened.


Stephen Dunn

Posted over on Read a Little Poetry