PEANUTS
I’m turning 47 in a few weeks,
living face down in the middle of the road
with my hands tied behind my back, gagged
and confused, my chest heaving adrenaline
with an insipid and innate right of belonging.
I stay up too late at night and write. it’s 4 am and
my 7th poem is falling into place with a degree of finely tuned integrity.
I like to eat fistfuls of peanuts when I write
and drink bottle after bottle of domestic beer.
it keeps my mouth busy and relaxes my mind.
the other day, my doctor told me my bad cholesterol
was taking over, the peanuts and booze had to go.
he suggested oatmeal mixed with a little apple sauce and some raisins
as a healthy substitute when I’m writing late at night.
turning 47 and giving in to the crowd: WHO ME?
I’m already a walking lunatic, a madman ready and willing
to bite the neighbor in the ass at a drop of a hat.
(do you have tin foil? he asked. FUCK OFF, ASSHOLE! I replied.)
I asked the doctor how much longer I had to live if I decided
to allow the bad cholesterol to inherit my insides. about 20 years if you’re lucky! he said.
I better stock up on the beer and peanuts, I thought,
and start writing like the walking time bomb that had now been activated.
you will respect my decision later, faithful reader,
after the bad cholesterol has finally slit my throat and I’m gone like the wind.
Darryl Salach
DOLLOPS OF POLYPS
I’ve had six colonoscopies and each time they took polyps from me, sixteen altogether. Somebody is making a lot of money and I want some of it, because living on a fixed income and everything going up I’m running out of discretionary polyps. They even gave me an endoscopy once but they got nothing that time and I paid through the esophagus for it. I’ve been over this before and I’m fed up to my duodenum with it. I asked where the instruments came from and they never thought to check, so guess what we all found out—China .
You’re not putting that Chinese junk
up my rear exit.
This is very good equipment, thoroughly
tested and certified. We’ve used it many
times before.
Certified by who, Mao Tse Tung? And
who have you used it on? I only want the
colonoscope you use on Irish people.
This conversation went nowhere and they went right ahead and did their little torture test, but under protest. Later is when I discovered there’s a huge black market in polyps so they made a fortune and I never saw a dime of it. When I reported this to the ATF people, of course, I got the usual brush-off. Same with the DEA and the FDA, they’re all in bed together. They send me a few bucks every month to try to shut me up, call it Social Security but I know hush money when I see it and I’m not being the patsy anymore, I want my polyps back and I won’t stop until I get them. If I let them think they got away with something, next they’ll be after my pancreas.
Jack McGuane
