Old ladies carrying yoga mats
Chain their bicycles to the
Parking meters on Larchmont,
Then head to the yoga room or
Whatever it’s called above
The newsstand. I salute them.
I applaud these women,
I admire them, I mentally compare
Them to Bess Turk, who, holed up
In the Shoreham Hotel and sleeping
On a Murphy bed for thirty years,
Developed dowager’s hump.
Yet – and I say this as an old man
Myself -- my gorge also rises and
Acid reflux pains my sense
At the sight of the yoga crones.
With incorporeal ear I hear not
The Little Old Lady From Pasadena,
Nor does Jan and Dean’s joyful chorus
‘Go granny go granny go granny go’
Echo in my teeming brain. I hear instead
The ominously salacious closing words
Of Die Verwandlung: ‘Die Tochter sich
‘Erhob und ihren jungen Korper dehnte.’
Yes, it is the daughter who stretches
Her young body, not some grandmother
And still less a dithering old grandpappy.
This is simply the natural order of things.
Although W.B. Yeats had monkey balls
Implanted in his scrotum, he knew this
And wrote, ‘That is no country for old men’
Apropos of which Mosemolleus Tronsork
Notes how country in a literary context
Always means cunt. Thus, Hamlet to
Ophelia (III:ii), with his head in her lap,
‘Did you think I meant country matters?’
Thus also in Dustin Hoffman’s revolutionary
Portrayal of Willy Loman, Biff is horrified
Not that Willy is tired, defeated, limp,
Flaccid, drooping, detumescent, suffering
From erectile dysfunction, and old,
But that he still wants to do it, whereupon
Biff discovers Willy with a whore.
That is Georges Bataille’s definition
Of obscenity: ‘Showing what should
Be hidden.’ Take it to heart, seniors.
Were I to write a poem about getting
A room with a hot twenty year old
UCSB anthropology major with a tattoo
Of the Greek letter omega above her ass
Would you or anyone want to read it?
I don’t think so, and I don’t blame you.
Twenty years old? Smokin’ hot? Feh!
Omega tattoo above her ass? Feh! Feh!
-- Mitch Sisskind
