Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Hot

So many seasons to sew

harvesting last Winter

keeping its ice in my freezer

to cool my beer

the Anti Christ to my Summer

cause I’m blessed to be drunk on this hot as hell Summer’s day

smiling and sunburned

knowing with no photo

I’ll never remember this day

still Summer dies and Autumn dies and Winter gives way to painful memory

and painful future.

But I didn’t crack open that first beer to toast Winter

it would be sacrilegious on such a glorious Summer’s day

I’m just musing at the fact that the reason my beer tastes so good

is that it’s been chilling in the same ice that I scraped off the frozen ground

last January

then six months later I get my revenge

making this ice bleed out

slain by this Summer sun

giving me an invisible sweater to wear into the next Polar Vortex

stitched to my memory that no matter how sharp the ice is

Summer always slays Winter

eventually.

 

Putting the Lou Gerhig in the Lou Gerhig’s Disease

I’ll write a mark, a letter, any number on my left hand

something, anything to remind me

of what I need reminding

could be anything

from as trivial as: get soap

to as important as: call mom

thank God for this pen to flesh

and the word becomes flesh

like a tattoo

is physical memory

to those who can see such melodies

off their arms

in such inspirational

off the cuff moments

that make up the cosmetics industry

that make us more beautiful

so that the abstract can be abstracted from reality

so that reality can be seen from our pretty dreams

how art can be both surface and symbol of what we have seen

for the symbol for

4

now reminds me

of an Asian superstition

4 meaning death

while in Yankee baseball lore 4 means Lou Gerhig

who lives on in folklore and statistics

the iron horse torn down by the disease that bears his name

and still it took 56 years

till anyone could pass the 2130 games he played

in a row

to know such luck to keep playing

even though everyone around you falls away

and the flesh becomes word

and though your soul is in heaven

your statistics are in Cooperstown.