Power Outage

Power Outage

Sucking greedily for air not there,
silence descending like a blanket of snow.
No boom nor blast hearlds the lack,
just panic attack as mortality seeps.

Gone the hum of AC vibration over my head.
No whine of CPAP in my ear,
the hiss of exhalations silenced.
Wife, too, silently regards me above her breathing mask,
Now sucking greedily for air, mask discarded in disgust.

Two words her condemnation, disgust contorting normally placid features ...
"Fix it!" -- While the black monster of aphyxia ascends.
I will live another day.

First, the hop, jump, trip and fall
brief interlude to my shorts hiked above knees.
Check the cable at the wall.
Plug mates deeply with socket; no leakage there.

A trip into the house next reveals
they, too, are powerless.
Not surprising, only felines exude power,
the freezer stubbornly silent, ice maker motionless.

Back to my trailer, hovel, home,
I stare at the neighbors' home
for signs of electrical activity ... no air,
no cheerless housewife a slave to her range.

Firing up battery-powered gizmos,
soon the Internets beckon from DC heaven
summoning information,
Demco-style.

Alas, a map, clear delineation of our plight,
robbed of the exchange of electrons to drive
entertainment ridden visions of the rumors
that pass for "News" these days.

It is, indeed, a failure of power,
even her "sweet baaboo" cannot fix.
Despondancy. Depression. Hunger. Anger.
All on hold until the electrical genie returns.



That's how my morning started. I hope yours was better.

Season's Greetings, 2010

Snow sparkles in front of me
as dog snuffles his way to nasal nirvana
in the chill evening. Grass tufts, here a rabbit,
there be wolves, ready to pounce.

Moon rising above the neighbor's trees
throw long shadows clear across the road to me.
A full moon, its icy reflection a frigid echo
of the ice in my heart.

Lonely is just a state of mind, alone a way of life.
Live life to its fullest, for tomorrow
may be no more in your experience.
And so it goes.



(Written quickly in the Airstream trailer, parked at the Farm in Maine. SWMBO was in Louisiana tending a very sick son. I was alone, listening to 7 hours of Leonard Cohen. I'd just walked the dog and peed on the snow. A nearly-full moon rising behind me, the steam rising from my pee casting wispy shadows across the snow. And so it goes...)

On Birthdays...

Time Marches On
or
It Sure Beats the Alternative

It’s hell, they say, when you get old.
Your toenails all are caked with mold,
Or maybe other kinds of fungus.
It’s hard to breathe with ancient lungus.
All bloodshot are your rheumy eyes,
All weak and stringy are your thighs.
Your pancreas is stiff and sore,
And buttocks droop towards the floor.
With exercise, your muscles ache,
It feels like all your bones will break.
You day by day get soft and flabby,
Your disposition loutish, crabby.
Digestion, once a simple task,
Becomes a chore (and please, don’t ask.)
Shoulder joints all get bursitis.
Your bladder wakes you up at nightis.
Your backbone gives you many pains.
Increasingly sieve-like grow your brains,
Until you cannot keep in mind
that “this is your elbow, that’s your behind”:
Getting old, it is not kind.

But whene’er these thoughts go thro’ my head,
I think: “It sure beats being dead.”