FAT SKILLS


FAT SKILLS


Tomorrow
I shall visit
the City

But tonight
the Catskill Mountains
having kissed away
the aches from
muscle and gristle
and road-weary dogs
having filled up
my lazy pockets with
lazy country club cash

now kisses me with
lips of summer twilight
bathing the forest in
that blue-white haze
which dulls the eyes but
gives birth to fairies

now invites me to
spend my life dreaming
with Rip Van Winkle
of the thunder crack
of geriatric ghosts
playing ninepins
never hungry or horny
or even keeping score
forever content to let
the Revolution pass them by

But no
the Big Sleep is
the last gift of age
and I live in the age
that invented Youth
worships it like an
altar of horns thrust
into the forest floor

and I have not yet
tramped through
all of my forests
nor swum through
all of my storms
nor howled at
all of my moons

So tomorrow
I shall visit
the City
the Fat City

veined with fat avenues
where fat cars swim
among fat skeletons of
cornerstone and steel
humming beneath a skin
of fat urban lights in
a skyline made brilliant
by megawatts and megawatts
of high-voltage fat

of alleyways whispering
their fat little secrets
to poets writing fat words
about fat patrician families
guarding the fat of the land

and more words for
new immigrants hungry
for legends of streets
paved with fat and
I could grow fat
eating those words

Perhaps I will
find myself a fat job
earn a fat paycheck
browse galleries hung
with fat globs of paint
and dance off the week's
accumulation of calories
in nightclubs where you
pay for your drinks
in rolls and rolls
of negotiable fat

Join Rastamen smoking
fat Jamaican joints
Witches weaving fat spells
to fat-bellied Godesses
Gypsies scrying fat
and happy prophesies
to fat Stock Brokers
ever fighting one another
with fat swords of finance
over still more fat

while old priests
kneel in cold cells
confessing fat sins
to their starving God
and musicians blow into
their fat jazzy horns for
the soul-deep rivers of
ordinary men and women
who march by whispering
of slender lives
and fat desires

Yes tomorrow
I will visit
the City

But for tonight
I will sit up and
drink good German beer
feed the mountain fairies
my gracious good-byes
until the first
crack of thunder
puts me into what will
hopefully be a fat
mortal night's sleep
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