Prostate

Oh I wish I could pee like I used to.
Not standing for ages like this.
There's more in my life that I would do,
Than wait here all day for a piss.

The fountains of youth have now faded.
Strong jets have dropped to a drip.
Now my prostate has strangled my willie,
It really does get on my pip.

Sound sleep is a fond distant place now.
Along with a night on the beer.
A small shandy an hour before bedtime,
And I spend half the night standing here.

I spoke to the doctor about it.
He said he could cut it right out.
But then the wee dribble might be all the time,
And a hard on would be in some doubt.

So I left it, and stand here for hours,
Reflecting on life and its boons.
I sip on some milk as I do it,
And dream of young girls with big boobs.



Plenty more poetry on my blog:
http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/poetview.php?poetID=256

Hello, Malcolm, here's a lament for an historical figure who died in the 1960s -- I guess he counts as an older man? It's also the solving of a mystery once and for all.

JFK MAGIC BULLET MYSTERY SOLVED

The CIA commissioned modern art to annoy the Russians.
The CIA commissioned weapons based on modern art to annoy the Russians.
JFK was handed the first cubist firearm as his motorcade entered Dallas.
Like cubist art, the cubist firearm had all angles visible at once.
The cubist firearm fired cubist bullets.
Each fired cubist bullet had multiple entry points.
JFK accidentally squeezed the trigger, because it wasn’t obvious it was the trigger.
AKA JFK was murdered by perspective.

Thank heavens that matter is resolved. All those theories have been worrying me for more than forty years. I knew that Picasso was up to no good as soon as I saw where he had put his mistress's nose.

This is a true story. One day at work I had to deal with a particularly large and disturbing incident which I knew would have some wide repercussions. The very first thing that happened the next morning was that I received a telephone call from a man who said he was from the CIA and he would like to talk to me about what had happened the previous day. After I recovered the phone from the floor and turned my underwear inside out, I probed a little and he was from the Chemical Industries Association. Their disguises are infinite.

I've got Moxyitis
My name is also apparently spelt 'Anon'
Maybe we long lost twins.
Baz

I tell you, there is no conspiracy theory that MoxyLogic(TM) cannot solve to the satisfaction of all parties. Picasso knew that parts of the body all start off clustered after initial differentiation. Embryonically, the larynx develops from the anus, or vice versa. This bit of info upset Artaud, I can tell you. He went into a right strop, wouldn't wash his hair, and started wearing his Bastille Tiara (it was shaped like a silhouette of the Bastille) to every photo opportunity.

I bet the bloke who rang you enjoyed the frisson (fry up?) of saying he was from the CIA. Unless, as you suspect, he really was from the other CIA, but he was just enjoying telling you the letters stood for something else. Personally, I am a member of the Cryogenic Ice Acrobats -- as I mentioned previously, my hobby is figure skating on cryogenically frozen people to test frost levels.

Baz, my long lost twin!

I'm of to get my own website. See ya later!

Mox
Was your mother called Gladys Boothroyd, ferret sexer and local good egg of West Glamorgan GW3?
No neither was mine, but we could arrive on her doorstep and make her contemplate her drunken sexual activities of yore!
Be a day out. I believe there is a nice ice cream van to visit.

Just watch it Mox. Remember that got you thrown off MySpace. You could end up getting thrown off your own website if you persist in talking through your Anurynx about your skating habits.


Bazanon

Nostalgia

I know when pigs had chitterlings,
and brawn and all that tripe.
There were no lambs, but mutton
was a breast of common type.

The table of scrubbed pine, had
grooves, deep ridged and strong.
I liked to watch the pigeons,
but the septic tank did pong.

The milkman and the baker,
all called to chat to mum.
She sent me out to play then.
I wished they wouldn't come.

The hock and sticky trotters,
were more useful feet than food.
Bread and butter pudding,
was stodgy, bland and crude.

With carpet hung on washing line
we beat out clouds of dust.
Pluck turkeys in the pigeon loft.
Pull giblets full of slime.

Clothes boiling in the copper,
were poked with wooden stick.
We wound them through the mangle.
and it stuck where they were thick.

Collecting empty bottles
to get some pennies back.
Then buying broken biscuits
for a sweet and secret snack

I know when mum worked as a maid,
Dad biked off wearily.
I trudged to school in pouring rain,
And dreamed of what might be.

Dad

Those feeble, ulcerated legs
which cannot support your shrunken body
are the powerful pistons that
drove your heavy old bike to work.

Your faltering, tearful voice speaks,
but your bellows echo down the years.

"Look at that silly tit over there"
A nurse smiles back from her patient labour.

"No bloody rabbit food or foreign muck for me"
You eat the steamed fish and salad in a plastic dish.
All politeness and compliance to
the faces of black doctors and staff
serving food you would have thrown in mum's face.

"Want a new suit boy?" You grinned
as you came in from the betting shop.

"STAND STILL! Too late it's in the tree."
Your pigeons were a fascination, but a terror too.
Excited by you clocking the winning bird,
and knowing that a loser would be my fault.

"Bloody Arabs 'll cut your throat as soon as look at ya."
The ranted bigotry lived on
fifty years after a brief military
encampment in wartime Egypt.

"What have you done with my bloody glasses?"
You squinted at the racing pages and
clutched for the telephone as
the horses lined up for the start.

"No pay today gal." You mumbled
as you came in from the betting shop.

"He's got the darkies disease he has. Bloody idle."
Revolting insult thrown at a black youth on the TV
without bothering to listen why he was there.

"Get 'em a cup o' tea gal."
The command shouted from an
armchair in front of the television
made a visit feel an imposition.

Glimpses of an inteligence
sometimes shone through
from your limited and distorted world.

Off to work before I got up for school.
Back from the pub after I was in bed.
I knew you were home when I woke
to the shouting downstairs.

In your eighty fourth year you told me
that seventy five would have been enough.
My stomach knotted.

Shame I never knew you.
I am curious now
you are dead.

Aren't dad's difficult? Both you and Paul have written lamentations. Both poems are extremely powerful, affectionate, sad and thoughtful. How can you assemble a true image, a faithful memory, one that offers some kind of comfort and even insight into ourselves, when the parent we are remembering was a mass of contradictions, some of them reversing the good we honoured them for?

Thank you for these works.

Now I'm trying to choose an avatar that matches the above. I think I'll plump for... that one

Just written this in response -- but about an elderly mother

RESPONSIBILITY
My mother’s respirator
Was one of the new pay metre ones.
Instructions on a laminated board above her bed stated
Family Responsibilities:
To always have sufficient 20 pence pieces.
To time toilet breaks so the gauge remains in the safety zone.
The penalties:
Failure to maintain credit will automatically result
In a consultant being bleepered,
And the patient being towed away.

Last night, during my vigil,
A curtain shifted and I saw
A small man in a crumpled suit
Busy at an ironing board.

What fell under his iron
were the jagged lines of cardiographs.
Steam hissed as he smoothed
And smoothed,
Flat lining them.
He looked up briefly, met my gaze.

I scooped the stacked change from the bedside locker,
And went and bought two coffees.

One for him.

Thanks Moxy.

I enjoyed yours.

No suitable avatar. Will stick to the usual.

More miserable memories.


Cardiac Ward


We shout quietly into mother's failing ear,
conscious of the others in the ward,
though their faces suggest they are absent.

She is sure that the thing which takes her temperature
is making her hearing worse.

Frail ladies clutch flimsy nighties
to skeletal bones,
while horsey voiced visitors
boom into unhearing ears.

A huge man in a greatcoat
strokes his lush, black beard
and fingers the silver cross
which nestles in his badge colection.
Menacing in stature, but meek of manner,
this Rasputin wanders
as his concentration lapses.
He is brought back to his dribbling relative
by the gentle, guiding hand
of an elderly father.
Is there any contact
between the voiceless senility
and the schizoid delusion?
Does the the blood that binds them
make understanding flow?

Mother ticks her menu sheet
although all the choices
taste the same.
The bland, mush of nutrition
makes her yearn
for the chips she despises.
Her strong heart passes tests
and she is freed.

The Rasputin lady's
empty head
gets new blood
from fresh cut valves.
Her deluded mind
can ramble strong
with a sturdy pump.

Mother's sharp brained
frail form,
walks from the ward.
Awareness dulled
by eardrums long destroyed.

Oh how miserable we are.

And I meant 'meter.' That's the problem with writing on the hoof, as the devil said.

Sad sad sad and very moving, Malcolm.

Mum

You silly old bat
with your tea cosy hat,
and your dirty old giggle.
I love you.

No, I don't think the bombs
caused those earthquakes and storms,
but don't worry mum, 'cos
I love you.

Was it really a wink?
Not a twitch or a blink?
Did that man make a pass? And
he loves you?

Have you food in the house?
Yes, I know there's a mouse.
Will you eat something now? If
I love you.

Oh damn that your dead.
If only I said,
once or twice when you lived, that
I love you.

Fifth Born

Strong in my foetal memory,
Lies knowledge of distress.
Of wrinkled, horrid, prune like home,
Where others took the best.

From puny, feeble blood supply,
Umbilically, I starved.
In dried up shrivelled carapace,
My small new life was carved.

Within that worn and wrinkled home,
I'm sure my feet'll kick it through.
I muse upon fragility,
And wonder at my birth anew.

Siblings stole the freshness that,
I should have had for me.
Birth's feat'll be a burden such,
As none should have to see.

My dad would not have taken,
Second hand tattoos.
But then he chose to impregnate,
A womb that's four times used.

They conspired to create me,
In a place unfit for one.
Bound to befeat allegiance,
Between parents and their son.