Are these “blogs” just for belly-aching? Is fifty-nine old? Don’t answer. I don’t feel old, but went to this furniture place IKEA. I guess I’m the last person in the country that hadn’t been there. Was going to buy a rug since Cherl took our shag throw when she moved on/out. Took sixty-five minutes and twenty dollars in gas for the Pontiac to get me to the new center in Trellis County where they have this IKEA as well as all the other soul-sucker stores. Big Boxes they’re called. Original. Wasn’t drunk at all but hung over, and this twenty-ish girl in blue titty-shirt at the entrance, fellow-customer, mistook me for her dad from behind. Touched my shoulder and everything. “I’m not your dad, kid,” I said, and never felt older than when I called her kid. Christ.
It’s no comfort or great honor to be called, as I too often am, the “Last Man Standing” of American poesy. Bolger Press is putting out an anthology of “Best Living American” and I’ve been told I’ll be amply represented in there. Ok, fine. I would hope so: there’s hardly anybody else around. There used to be a great many people doing this for a living, and that run-in with the girl reminds me of the thinning ranks. Also reminded me that I will never go home with a girl like that again, maybe never did.
I was never exactly Valentino even in my prime, hiding as I did too often in boystown camaraderie, in writing the poems. I’ve suffered rejections from pretty young women but this was like a pre-rejection, before I’d even seen her, let alone worked up the nerve to try anything. Not just rejected but mistaken for her old man. I feel sorry for the guy, if he looks like me. (In ’73 I agreed to be on the Jimmy Nichols show in Paramus, after seeing an old tape of Kerouac on Steve Allen, but I got bumped for a trio of poodles who balanced things on their noses; so I know from humility.) Many poets have used their poetry to get laid. I’m not one of them, but God knows I tried.
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