I wobbled into the ER, entering the trajectory

that has landed me behind the closing doors of

Colonoscopy Central

and forced the realization that my body is wearing out,

and an appreciation for a homily that hits it right

on the screws:

Old age isn’t for weaklings.

I know that I, who have spent some heart and

spirit fighting

those who use their power to keep others powerless,

now must fight this failing body that carried me,

not without stagger and swagger,

through sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll,

that remained fast to its findings when the

bullhorns crackled,

“Disperse now or be arrested,”

that buckled numbly at the riot sticks’ blows,

yet swirled into water at a sweetheart’s touch,

a body that has borne the sally of my going forth

into this grandly mad adventure called “consciousness,”

tenor as much as vehicle, body of its own metaphor,

a 3-D tripod for the psyche’s movie camera,

and after reckless decades of excess and neglect–

running lucky, running fast–

Time, without regret, has called its markers due,

and I find my life thus far has suddenly come to this:

they’re about to slip a miniature camera up my ass,

an event certainly preferable to death,

but the first deep indignity accompanying

inescapable decay,

and it’s the first time since I was a little kid I’ve felt

so helpless.

Yet almost immediately I’m helped by the anesthesiologist

who pumps a potent mix of Demerol and Versed,

narcotic braided with the hypnotic, through my IV

into me, myself, and I, aye,

aye, I’m dissolving,

the lake freezing from the top down,

and for no discernible reason that defiant

five-year-old kid inside me

digs into that wild dignity at the core of rage,

and I understand, with unshakable delight,

that my will to fight is stronger than my feebling flesh,

and at that point of eclipse I have a vision:

I and thousands like me, hordes of psychedelic relics,

pie-eyed dreamers, pantheists with Taoist proclivities,

Trotskyite bandits from the emerald hills,

all standing together,

rinkled, twisted, worn, tweaked,

aging and infirm yet somehow indomitable,

fighting hard for what we love and what remains:

family, friends, freedom, justice, and ancient forests.

So heed fair warning, corporate heads and greedy

running-dogs,

mergered oligarchs swathed in the baffle of bureaucrats

and bought politicians,

you mess with us at the risk of grief:

not to mention our dentures latched on your fat asses

like deranged snapping turtles;

the Corridors of Power rendered treacherously slippery

with our long drool-strings of Malt-o’-Meal;

we’ll hack into your laptops the old-fashioned way,

with canes, crutches, walkers, axes, splitting mauls,

anything handy;

the Emphysema Brigade, left breathless by decades of

Lucky Strikes and trainwreck weed,

will beat you senseless with oxygen bottles;

every time you present another lying THP from

your pimp scientists

we’ll drown you out with cranky shouts of

“Huh? What?”;