Maintenance

 

Geezer Guesses, Poems, Fancies, Random,

Odd Thoughts, What’s Left of Me, and Who

Cares…

******

Getting old is not magic. All you must do is live long enough. No talent required. Just wait. It will happen to you. The question is what does it mean. It involves your mind, your body and spirit . It is the final act of a play that you can’t make out.

No GPS or Maps. You must take each step into the unknown, alone.

*****

In 74 years of bouncing around this planet. I have met many men and women. And yet people remain a mystery. I meet, observe, try to understand, but never quite manage. They remain like Homers shades there, but not.

*****

Brain Bounces

Tense

Hold fast to

the demanding, alive

present tense.

 

Past Tense but a

catalog 

of finished failures,

lost lovers,

squandered 

opportunities,

tragic lives that never

bore fruit.

 

All the wearying weight

of what might have been.

*****

Rented Rooms 

Every time you think

you are landing

at your destination,

It’s just another layover

In Purgatory.

*****

The Sixties

So many dreams.

So many failures.

Best party ever!

Sorry you missed it. 

  

*****

 Years ago I was ambitious, but now I know that nothing will happen. Had I known this earlier, I would have taken more naps.

 

*****

 

 

Maintenance

"There's birth, there's death, and in between there's maintenance." Tom Robbins

Maintenance. I hate maintenance. What is maintenance? Everything that we have to do to maintain the accepted status quo.

Take dusting. Is there a more boring fruitless activity on earth? You dust, you wait, the dust returns. All housework falls under maintenance: dusting, vacuuming, doing dishes, everything cleaning related. All that you accomplish is the forlorn opportunity to repeat the process endlessly. Ad nauseum. Until death you do depart.

Or personal hygiene? How much of your life has been spent brushing your teeth, taking showers, shaving? A whole lot. Yet unless you are a hermit, maintain you must. Given all our wonderful technology why can't we invent self-cleaning teeth. How could that be harder than going to the moon? After all, we've had self-cleaning ovens forever.

Washing clothes, cutting grass, changing oil: all meaningless maintenance. Do you really enjoy any of it?

I recently joined a gym. You might think that is some kind of meaningful activity. I work hard and regularly there. I already see and feel results. But why? At 62, it is unlikely that I will end up on the cover of Men's Fitness, that 23 year old super models will fling themselves upon my buff carcass or that I'll win an Olympic gold.

Nope. It's really just a pathetic attempt to stave off inevitable decrepitude; to maintain my faltering body for a while longer. Maintenance. That's all it is.

I think that (if we think) the older we get the more meaningless maintenance becomes. We know that the end of maintenance is death. We know it. Yet we maintain, because it is expected, because we always have. And we always will.

One virtue of Getting old and downsizing is that the less space and stuff you have, the less maintenance you have to perform. Yes! 

 

***** 

 

Pomes - Para algumas senhoras

   

Fog

Deep loves never depart.

Decade after decade

They remain, a yearning mist

floating in your head

repeating the impossible,

eternal lie:

I will love you forever.

 

**** 

Loneliness

All the women
in my life,
came from
the same
temp agency.

***** 

Marriage

What does that mean?

Two meet. They are young.

Fall in love. Begin a life.

But lives change. The honeymoon ends.

Finally, they are roommates.

Love, sex, even affection disappear.

Their lives diverge. They sign the papers.

Easier Than buying a car.

They move on, so they say.

But the sad question remains:

How do these two who began

as one die apart and so far away.