Poem for my birthday month

Recently and Soon

Twice this week the feeling of someone sneaking up on me.  The feeling a ghost  got in.

Conversations with friends about whether we are more used to “penis” as a reference or “vagina.”  Or, rather, who is punished more for having sexual feelings and parts and talking about them?  Whose feelings and parts are co-opted more?

What if I were to introduce “vaginal slickness” into a poem about lawn furniture or clowns?

A feeling like a joke buzzer, but not in my hand.  Somewhere else. 

I can’t stand how beautiful things are.   So I neglect to dust or throw out old papers.  This helps a little.

All morning the mind drifts, gentles, then turns and does a dizz-wax thing before gentling again.  Yard work, irises, the sadness of Vincent van Gogh, cash prizes, the physical beauty of others as something to be withstood like, you know, the ocean.  Cash prizes (again).  Inner beauty like a winding spool in the sternum.  Then a far-off feeling like a  joke buzzer, but in another area.

I have to say it:  The blessing of having had friends with whom to discuss organs.  Breath.  Shapeshifting.  Note modulation.  The buzzing in my ear. 
   
So much drifting of the mind and body.  I’ll be 40 soon.  I’ll be over here reading Thomas Merton and doing leg lifts to get in shape in time. 

The sun swinging back and forth on its string all month every month like a slowly turning crystal in some hippie’s window, until later we’re not even the ones here anymore and it’s all people not even born yet.