Happy Bday, Kari
You are a blessing to this world.
Here is a poem I wrote when I turned 30. (we all know how long ago that was
)
-------
HUMP YEAR BLUES
Only the Rattlesnake: nefarious blues reptile,
would give Bukowski for a birthday
(but I had dreaded this day for months)
And I woke up thirty
Sure enough
certified last chance for adulthood in this culture
Jim Erwin --
Blind old Scotch bastard
like a father to me peering
at me through spectacles thick
as a drunken tongue
told me: "If you don't make it by the time yer thirty --
fergit it."
So that made me run like Hell for a time --
being twenty-seven or so
What is this "making it?"
Does that mean your pecker is forever enshrined
in some Glass Temple Vaginal
Juiced Eternal Twat Monument?
Do they freeze your seed for some Lucky Mother yet unborn
when you make it?
Do you get embalmed in pleasure, a mummy wrapped in property?
How do you know it when you make it?
Is it a little grey-suited clerk from the government
with letters you have to sign for?
Do violins swell on the soundtrack?
I think I made it several years ago when
those Mexican kids left 8 cents on my doorstep
for a flutesong I played.
So, I don't know about "making it"
but for sure -- I ain't gonna
fergit it.
Cautiously I approached this morning's mirror
I couldn't see any lines that weren't there before.
I wasn't greying, receding or for that matter
noticeably older in any way
but when I came across that pimple on my nose --
that fixed it
Fuck this thirty year old trauma!
I have MADE IT for thirty years -- I have survived
this asylum circus murder university soap opera
for three decades
not only that -- I'm doing damn good for it
I'm healthier than when I was
eighteen --
can fuck longer, do more drugs, don't need to
prove nothin'
I'm a happier person than when I was twenty
or any age
and all day long I walked around with a thousand
dollars cash in my pocket
Thirty ain't bad.
