They wheel my gurney into the colonoscopy
procedure room,
a procedure for which I’ve been prepped by a night
of GI lavage, employing an inaptly named laxative
called “Go-Lightly,”
followed by two tap-water enemas,
cleansing my alimentary canal so thoroughly
I imagine my intestines as shiny as chrome at a
roadster show–
shiny, that is, except for the blood that has brought
me here,
having lost half my red-cell volume by the time
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,
wrinkled, 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?”;
you get in our dish, you better defend all your
self-righteous bullshit or we’ll slap you upside
the head with our soaked Depends
or strangle you with our catheters, or with a rope
braided of the weird hairs
now growing from strange places on our bodies–
ears, eyebrows, elbows, nipples–
and if that doesn’t work, we’ll tie you spread-eagled on
that desk of yours bigger than most of our kitchens
and beat on you with our colostomy bags
(and if we don’t have half the energy we did
in our youth,
refinement, I assure you, has tripled the efficiency
of its application
in whipping ass on soul-killing systems);
and if nothing else works we’ll call a General Strike
and then stage a massive occupation of your
headquarters’ suites
where we’ll make you listen to our every bodily woe,
how our hearts and livers are wearing out
and our patience already worn thin–
yes we’ll force you to listen to endless shifts of us
old farts
describe in interminable detail our rising bile levels,
EKGs, EEGs, CAT scans,
blood panels, liver function, ingrown toenails,
and every bowel movement for the last two weeks,
and generally bore you into madness unless you
change your ways.