There's no old, only ALIVE !  

I woke up bleary, real beery, and saw 

the old woman’s wig, like an oven-warm

Bundt Cake, warming on the sill in the morning sun. 

She wasn’t old, of course, and never would be, 

she only seemed so to me because I was 27 that morning 

and she was 72, that morning, and she was playing Elton John, loud. 

I was on her couch in a cold wet foggy clump 

of blue jeans and green corduroy, my Donegal cap 

still on as I yawned, and then she came in

the front room of her flat and put on the song 

“Honky Cat” because she said it had come out in 1972 

and she always played an Elton John song for every year 

of her birthday, on the year the song was released. 

What a system, I thought. 

“Happy Birthday!” I said.  

I was in her apartment because the night before she 

saw me drunk-driving my boots through the snow 

on Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay, after last call, 

and she’d inconceivably asked me if I wanted to come home 

with her for the night and get warm. 

She said I looked homeless but that I reminded her of her son. 

This woman didn’t remind me of my mother, 

who didn’t know that I was homeless or even out of town.

I like your flat, I said, and yes I’d love some coffee, 

because she’d just asked me, and it smelled so good. 

She said she saw me seeing her wig perched on the windowsill 

warming up for the day

I said no offense but it looks like a Bundt Cake, hee hee!

Hell if it does! she hollered spontaneously, but her eyes

were like Christmas twinkle lights so she wasn’t really mad. 

She said my wig looks like one of Van Gogh’s haystacks, 

alright? I said oh yes, you’re right, I stand corrected, 

I still didn’t know her name, but I doffed my cap. 

She accepted that, and dropped the needle on Elton again. 

“I had cancer a few years ago,” she said, she didn’t know 

my first name either, it wouldn’t matter in the end,

“it went into remission, but first I had the treatment, lost all my hair, 

and for some reason, my crops didn’t come back. So, I do wigs.” 

“May I see it on you?” I asked softly. Drama in the room.

“Why yes,” she said. “Ready?” 

Then she dragged the drama out, walking slowly across the floor, 

across those creaky old Back Bay Boston boards to the window, 

and she slipped on her wig. 

She looked over at me across that well-appointed Brahmin room, 

coquettishly cocked her head to the side, waited for my compliment. 

It came right away, my biggest smile all that winter. 

I could tell she was getting ready to go, 

wherever she was going

so I drank up the rest out of my coffee cup, 

getting ready to go wherever I was going. 

She knew how to walk. 

I liked watching her move around, striding across her 

hardwood floors for her coat and keys, hat and bag,

her shoes sounding like shoes should sound on a floor. 

Jingling her keys, she strode over to her stereo, 

played “Honky Cat” again, and it was still playing 

as we went all the way downstairs and out into the snow.

We got out to the Commonwealth Avenue sidewalk, 

came to the moment when she’d go one way, me the other, 

and she put her jewelry-shiny hand out for me to shake. 

“Well, maybe you won’t pass this way again,” she said, “but 

if you do, knock on my door. Otherwise, get back to Kansas City 

and get out of your homelessness ... get on back home.”

(I must have told her about Kansas City last night, probably 

in a very after midnight sort of sentimentality, I thought.) 

“You know what to do. And give my regards to the Rafael Hotel!”

Then she turned, her perfume still on my hand.

I watched how she walked walking away, 

walking like she was really going somewhere. 

I copied her walk and went the other way. 

 

Borderline personality 

Not to mention a borderline sense of humor. 

Laughing out loud (or quietly, alone, driving) can save anyone’s life

but after so many of my young years in the midsection of the country—

that neighborhood’s Sunday clothes on all week, zippers up tight 

—I know what no one laughing sounds like. 

So I’m not only going to mention it, I’m gonna poetically describe it. 

Two days ago two guys approached the casita, smiling sunny and easy, 

they looked like fun, their big white delivery truck lounging on the curb. 

One of them looked like the lead singer from Los Lobos and the other 

guy looked like Frida Kahlo’s twice-cooked husband, the great Diego Rivera. 

They dollied the new oven in, unwrapped the plastic and threw it 

out the door into the after-Christmas snow; 

the Los Lobos guy hooked up the gas hose, closed his eyes, 

playfully bracing himself, testing the front and back burners, then 

the Diego Rivera guy walked dramatically to the center of the cocina. 

“Would you like to hear a joke now?” he asked, breaking the ice. 

I looked around, the time seemed right, so I said yes.

“Do you know why Mexicans cross the border in twos?” 

I was new to New Mexico, and he was still looking at me, so I said no. 

“No TRESpassing.” 

Alright, that was the poetic part, and now I’m so worked up

I’m going to write the rest of it straight out.

These Mexican men, who knows, I don’t want to be a know-it-all

and assume anything—maybe they really were Diego Rivera 

and David Hidalgo—but here they were, making a high 

piece of wit in my kitchen (wittier than anything from even Noel 

Coward, who was a scaredy-cat anyway) about something insulting 

that could have happened to them, or their friends and family. 

I mean, I was enchanted. That joke was good, he did it well.  

Of course, the idea of borders between people and places 

has always been painfully hilarious (you cry until you laugh) 

but it looks as though they’re hard and here to stay. 

I come from a part of the country where the men and women

look around suspiciously, not all of them, but enough of them.

When you’re that scared out of the corner of your eye 

you don’t ever dare change your mind 

because it would sink the family boat

(and after all, they did their best, maybe)

and laughing at anything is inappropriate in that neighborhood. 

A sense of humor is almost sexual!

When it was time to go, everybody hugged those two guys, the two guys hugged 

everybody, the kind of hug where it feels like everything’s already alright, meanwhile

the truck flashed its lights at me and those guys weren’t even behind the wheel yet. 

Do I smell gas? 

No, but I’m laughing 

and my oven is HOT. 

 

Dancing in and out of jail with Twyla Tharp

It was 1985, closing in on Happy Hour

and the city had just won the World Series. 

I should say, the rest of the city. 

I had just come out of a make-shift, garage-style opium den 

where me and my friend Goldblatt had gone deeply

into weed and the wonders of multiple bottles popped. 

I drove, in this elevated Christmas Eve exuberance, 

straight (and conveniently, for the police) into a trap

where I was politely, but pointedly, asked to walk a line. 

I did that (politely, wanderingly); the cheerful police began 

to laugh, jingling cuffs, and the clearly-cultured police woman 

said that I moved like something right out of Twyla Tharp. 

Well, I said, we’re all in good moods here, the baseball 

team won, now we’re discussing modern dance, surely 

you’ll let me drive on home, I’m really ok. They didn’t like that. 

Someone jingled cuffs on me, I was jerked in a car

driven then walked to a cell, that night was not on the list 

of memories effervescent, just gray and fluorescent. 

BUT. When I got out, back to whatever my house was, 

I looked up the Twyla Tharp performances to see, 

and twenty-five years later, I stopped drinking for keeps. 

And now, years later, one way or another, I am dancing! 

Paris on crutches (minus one) 

There I was, resting suavely, after surgery in a cafe in Paris 

having gotten my hip replaced up in Belgium, and a tooth  

popped out of my mouth and dropped into my croissant. Hilarious! 

So naturally I laughed at that, slipped on my black leather jacket, 

walked out of the cafe over to the Seine and threw the tooth in, incisively

with some kind of upbeat prayer and a goodbye to my tooth,

all of this to keep any silly sadness (about falling apart, ha!) off of me. 

It had been a bumpy bunch of decades so now I was feeling festive. 

This surgery (replete with a sparkling smorgasbord of morphine!) 

sewed up a year to the day of my reservation at the rehab with a view,

sobering up after drinking every day from junior high school onwards. 

Back at the hotel, my tooth already having a made a splash in Paris, 

something was pulling at my drinking sleeve to go to the American Cathedral

across the river and a few doors down from the Champs-Élysées, then down

the ancient steps to the crypt to the secret meeting to talk it over. In French!

That meant crossing Paris on crutches—streets, trains, the subway

under the Seine, up and down the stairs—could I do it? Oui, oui, oui! 

Get up out of bed, down the hotel stairs on my wooden crutches, flashing 

down the street, across the city on the Métro, considered going way down 

those stairs into the Catacombs but I’d be out of my skull to try that, so 

I kept on across Paris and under the river, through the Arc de Triomphe!

Those deliciously fun French making way for me on the sidewalk, 

offering their seats on the subway, smiling and saluting me 

like I’m Jean Gabin, and what a wonderful day, 

such a long, long way

from junior high, my body still alive! 

 

Butterflies running away from home 

Cool, crisp, sensually expectant Fall 

right around the corner and I can barely keep my pants on!

Cold night air smoky in your window, candy corn glowing in the sheets

new kids at school, new clothes and school supplies new 

all there at the foot of your bed, or under your pillow

(probably no kids under your pillow) and, then ... 

touches of lipstick and blue jeans in the backseat of some car. 

Some see decay and death in Fall, Winter blowing in next

(but there are forever romantic secrets sparkling in the snow drifts) 

and though I could drop in my tracks any second, 

I don’t see it that way at all. 

Last year I saw a skyful of red dry yellow wild  

leaves blowing sideways 

like butterflies running away from home. 

This year I’m going with them!

 

Sinead unafraid 

The kind voice of a fierce rebel angel 

and I hope she’s somewhere beautiful like her 

somewhere loud with laughing and love runs free,

where shame’s gone out the window

somewhere the pope lost his dress and Sinatra 

(and other one-note choir boys!) can’t get a gig. 

 

Drinking in a blues club at seven in the morning, 

then getting breakfast

I had been drinking like it (or I) was going out of style since ten 

in the morning the morning before, then I heard a yellow clock

humming behind the bar across the room, glowing like the yellow 

Moonbeam clock in my grandma’s kitchen across the state line. 

Snowing all night, so we didn’t know where the state line was 

anymore, and anyway it was just us now, sweetly and privately. 

A woman real close to me had her yellow pumps up on the table 

crossed at the ankles, some of her fingers interlaced with mine,

the rest of them loose into her loose red hair, she was smiling sleepy 

but her fingers were squeezing me awake. Still smelled of Chanel. 

And then, breakfast. Eggs rose like suns on the tables, pancakes 

piled up hot and smoky, syrup and butter lathered in, the warm woman 

near me kicked off her pumps, dipped her toes in the egg yolks 

and acrobatically fed me the drippings as I dangled bacon like grapes 

to her lips, then I dangled her the grapes (I owed her, I liked her!) 

and everyone ate, and ate, and kept on eating until they all passed out. 

This was all friendly, no one was going home for days, a warm shaft of sunlight 

came in, some of us in the room were cheating, with other lovers, blame

it on the snow, but everyone was alright, smiling at each other, and the smell 

of the kitchen lighting up was so homey, all of us so far away from everything.