Kit Kelen #1083 - to be sixty

1083

to be sixty

revised standard rant

for all my doggy codger/codgerina cobbers and china plates

here is the garden I am

two rounds of a whiff

past 36

and lean back

among webs and dust

adorned with years

shot through sun

so here's a bunch now

and farther back than you can count

(that was the cloudless night)

behind a curtain of the creek

remembered in what rudeness once!

here be lifted

let the chorus come

skins thicker by the day

let this then be the record

how time was

how we've passed on

and round again

and Father Christmas too

visited in wrinkles

I can't see

can you?

Earth Dog round the clock

jia zi!

jia you

oil to add

hung by a web's thread glint

we take no prisoners today

but lost in a forest of friends

and memories

mulberry under as much as shade

here's the dauber, spider wasp

building and building

and out of my way

you curly tree

and flit

you who are coming into names

you whose names are falling away

each nevertheless sixty years of my epoch

by virtue of having always been

in the deeps, easily foretold

come to live in such time

know that I am the garden

as I started out to say

of picnic tradition

bears park their bottoms

and listen up

each to a calling

a shedload of griefs

(bears drop their bundles)

then rumble up for us

sky, tin drip

wrack thy evening

bolt from blue

scribble it down as fast

dog with feet of clay

(ursine fantasist, now winged

now dragon deep) now nodding into

strange shallow nap of transgression

infested with old ideas

flaunting the new

humbled with

wild in applause

still you're that once-upon kid

wink of never knowing

just a wandsworth of spell

admitting something long ago

wired to the wild, just say

mea culpa

do you recognize someone here?

by heart youngster still

everywhere's the mirror

and a little wander in

paths fork

now a blessing count

of reasons to be

more in love with this world every day

ranting for it, lost to lusts

and all this text

– it's just a scratch

in continents!

here's the flea unharmed

treatises to go

nail up

get a new door

spare me the exegesis

it's the sort of thing you'll have to swear off

in favour of the real

no time for

moon shines through

and I have done

after all my golden ages

still this sun tumble

silvery

in all my lacks and lusting after

this one goes straight to the music box

leaf deep mulched with

I have been pre-heated

run econo-cycle

it's how I've puddled home

shook

and I ran dry

put on something red for it

kanreki

of the dog come kennelling

calendar brought home

gone up

woof

kero-soaked

in one go too

or spread out over seasons

sillier, each succeeding

cup half what then?

some of the flimsy have fallen

for whimsy

hoping I'll praise incapacity

prodigal re-emergence

because I am now dad?

huh!

and like the present

gone

so fucked up

midst all

short of a boundary

I throw the roof

I pier up

plaster

take to tip

whose shite in pigswallow?

take a deep breath there

I tie my tongue

trot off

in other words again

crept to comfort

all year lit with shadows

in this place

rainbows other end us

with

here's the pot

pass

and once upon a time to

every third won't-give-a-thought

nor bury, drown staff, book

but 'tis a good tiredness, give it way

climb out from under the pile of myself

a song yet

few facts left to say

shall I give the rundown?

grist for the mills I run

much abused

say winter for the leap of it

imagine ice sleet snow

and turkey

Christmas is a throw away

in all this plenty I've brought on

fish half plastic and to barbeque

the ocean too

save these koalas' trees

save everyone's

the bacon is brought

so say home of us

and brightly into sprightly

force the wind at heaven's trap

so touching

it is to decide

I only let the music in

and cultivate abandon

hoot!

jolly good after all

for he's...

bathe palmily with it

and friendlove

gather me

as deathbed on

(moons of another world here must imagine)

continuous rant

as breath's become

just as trundle

and off into

afterward

(mere preface in time to be)

let rattle every heart this little

such failings

as average out to

codgerama!

codgeronomous

codgeresque

our codgerdom

now

codger

codger

coo

preserve me in hard liquor thus

smoke to me when gone

I'll love it if no one will believe

if someone asks to see the card

so marvel

disabuse clean living

say self-indulgence was the thing

played with it till …

yet sprung back to life

genki soo da

it was always too much information

so sorry for another self

never this sorry self of mine

but it was outwardly I've lived

to give

we have been given so much

(some haven't and some won't)

better of course to push the barrow

(than be borne)

to stand on the soap

(than slip)

conceal disgust

make vagueness of virtue

necessity of home

really no one can ever believe

who is it lives this life but me?

hard to stretch things so far

remember to back everything up

ye know not when the system fails

irrational outburst

let's now and then

so tearily

borne upon time's thus-far palanquin

afloat all the day with well wishes

so life be with me

gentle till the flame

and bless my self

all ways

to be sixty

and never again