Poetry Kills

I just finished reading The Caged Owl, which is a collection of poems by Gregory Orr. Reading poetry is something that I've only recently gotten into. I think I don't have the attention span for prose right now. Anyway, there's this poem, "Everything," It goes like so:

Is this all life is then--

only the shallow breaths

I watch you struggle for?

That gasp right now--

if it was water

it would be such a small glass.

And I could lift your head

from the hospital pillow

and help you sip it

to comfort your parched

throat

into the ease of sleep.

Your agony makes no

sense when air

is everywhere, filling

this room where you lie

dying, where we move

as if in a trance, as if

everything is under water.

So anyway, this poem got me thinking about my grandfather. Not a huge leap since, once a person gets to the gasping for air portion of the living/dying process, the experience really sort of becomes universal. I was looking on my old blog for posts around the time my grandfather died. I remembered posting the eulogy that I wrote for him, and I wanted to give it a gander. I remember getting a couple laughs and a few tears, and I wanted to look back over my own brilliance. I went to October 10, 2006 and remembered that I pulled the eulogy after only a few days, because keeping it posted seemed lame or disrespectful or something. Instead what was there was the post the I put up just a few minutes after he died. I'll include it here. Why not?

Then Came the Dry Humping

Grandpa died last night, which sucks the proverbial ass.
Here are some funny things about the situation.
There's this nursing home on the way to Hospice in Dayton. I forget the last names of the families running it, but the initials are S and M. On the awning outside the entrance is written, "S&M". I'm picturing leather and latex clad funeral directors whipping the shit out of those dirty, naughty corpses.
There was this group of folks parading around the circular corridors of Hospice last night singing gospel music. The organ music was prerecorded, and it was rather creepy sounding. Very Count Chocula. One of the songs they sang went something like this, "King Jesus is a listenin' for the sinners to pray." That feels perhaps more suitable for a prison than a Hospice, but maybe they had a limited number of prerecorded numbers on their little ChristCasio 5000.
At one point last night, the aids came in to change my grandpa's bedding and his diaper (obviously this was before he died). I averted my eyes, not because I was embarrassed or ashamed, but because my first concrete memory of my grandfather is of his penis and I was very aware that I didn't want that to be my last memory as well. Not quite the book end of 25 great years of memories I'm interested in.

My Best Friends' Wedding

A few folks at Tim's and Susan's Wedding asked if I'd post the poem that I read. It ain't literary, but they liked it. At one point, about three stanzas in, Susan and I had one of our world famous giggle fits. After the wedding, people asked me if I had gotten choked up because I had looked down for a few seconds. The truth is I was trying and failing to not be the kind of douche bag who laughs at her own jokes. Anyhooter, here it is for those of you not there or in the back and unable to hear my mumbling.


Observations from the Third Wheel



Painting his toenails

was the exact right way

to get the girl of his dreams



and the weight of holding

her purse is a small price to pay

if he gets to watch her dance.



After five years, laughing

until they cry is

better than holding hands anyway.



There’s good and then there’s gyood,

and it’s important to find someone

who knows the difference. And it’s hard



to get mad at a man in a green facial mask.

Sometimes he puts on that sweater

just to see the look on her face right before



she tells him to change. I see the way

they look at each other, and I know what I have

the right to hope for. I realize I already have it.

An Old Friend's Smell

It's strange the way you don't notice how good a person smells until it's 15 seconds after you've hugged her good-bye, her scent hanging in the air around you, as you watch her shrink away in your rearview mirror.