Until They Fix You

They love you, women do, when you’re rumpled
like me. They love you, in beginning, when
challenge drips honey like o’er your body, sour
body, foul body washed once a week whether

needed or not so needed at all, with nose hairs
quite virginal, as virile as Sampson’s,
unnoticed, untended to, unending, fierce
tentacles, sweet sprouting things, God’s

innocent things, growing lush, lewd and pretty,
but she sees them, ladies see them, giggle
hopelessly and endlessly, beg to pluck them,
merely pull them, simply grab them, yank them

tear them, oh they love you when yet they don’t
have you, what a challenge, an innocent awfully
virginal, unattached macho man. And they
titter, tragically titter when they see you oh so

rumpled, hair so tangled, clothes so formless,
soul so innocent, pants so unpressed, shoes so
unshined. And you are single, how they love
you until they get you, grab your privates in

lustful haveness and they own you, really have

you, get to fix you till you’re fixed. Then
they wonder, oh they wonder why they ever, ever
loved you, you’re so incredibly terribly boring,

always awfully totally boring.

Poster Boy For The Aged

I was young innocent virginal younger than I should
be,
when suddenly, one day, abruptly, before my very eyes,
ears, soul I became a -- how can I say it subtly?

Poster boy for the aged. A shock, a shriveling of
ones
very core -- yet true, beyond doubt, acknowledged by
far too many, by those despised, yes, but by those
indeed, too,

that one admires too much. Poster boy for the damned.

For the ancient. For the used to be, those who were,
vibrant entities only yesterday, how sad. The aged,
the elderly,

the past their prime, the hard of hearing seeing hard
of
peeing hard of doing any goddamn thing at all. Poster
boy
for the aged. Ah, if I could see me now.

But can’t, thank God, encased as I am in youthful,
blissful cast iron fantasies of who I am, used to be,
will be tomorrow, no changes, just started, junior
member of the

team, ingénue, trying out, fresh behind the ears nose
throat, holy youthful boy just bursting with the sweet
pure joy of youthful rotten energy, but now --

they pin it on my back, tattoo it on my head, shout it
in my ears:
ah, sir!, ah, sir!, we’re proud to let you be the
first to know,
we’ve chosen you, honored you, you are the latest
winner:

Poster Boy for the Aged!

Grant Flint has appeared in The Nation, Poetry, Weber, Amelia, Slow Trains, Common Ties and other print and online journals. He has recently completed a series of seven memoir/novels. Shy, he does stand-up comedy.

Email: Grant Flint

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