Sean Bw Parker, Blue Army Elvis
I Think I’m Going Senile
Nathan D. Horowitz
Every night, I stay up watching
my brain wane like the moon,
melt like a polar ice cap,
pace like the last ice bear
on the last floe.
I think I’m going senile.
But how do I even know
I’m the bear
who thinks that?
Sometimes I wonder if I’m a bear at all.
For the blink of an eye,
I think I might be
a man.
But, believe me,
I’ve counted our deaths
down to the last bear.
I can’t pronounce the number,
only indicate with signs of my paws
that, in Gematria,
it means “You’re going senile.”
Which is why I think I’m going senile.
Can one of you young folks tell me
where they sell cloudpunk spam around here?
It’s an ’80s thing. You wouldn’t understand.
Ah, the paradoxical measures
we take to stave off death.
Little by little, one by one,
one’s neurons go neutron star.
As each collapses in one’s head,
it is reborn in the mind of a child.
Body dissolves,
breath breaks down,
brain to bruise,
skull to scud.
The Devil showed up and said,
“You’ve lost your senses.”
I told him, “I sent them away!
Now I navigate by the echo
of the beating of my heart.
And time is corrosion.
And the universe comes in a can.”
Yes, I’m pretty sure I’m going senile.
Yesterday, someone suggested I see a therapist.
I said, “Well,
I’ve started seeing a three-meter lobster
with very short white fur
named Alice.
Alice tells me I need a vacation
someplace under the sea.
Atlantis is crowded.
She says Mu is real nice
this time of year.
I know this sounds weird.
But she’s right about the vacation.
When she talks, she moves her
furry, white maxillipeds–
the jointed plates that pass food
to her mandibles–
as if they were lips she were moving
to speak for real.
At one point, Alice insinuated
that she was a product of my imagination,
a symptom of a deadly affliction
whose name she dared not breathe
in which one’s mind is ‘bombed
like a slow Nagasaki,’ she said.
If my imaginary, white-furred
lobster friend is right,
I have to face it, I’m going senile.
But can someone who doesn’t exist be right?
Just this morning,” I went on,
“at 3 a.m., I awoke suddenly
to find I was gargling mustard in the shower,
juggling two microwaves, a chainsaw,
a thought experiment, a sonnet,
ten hummingbirds, and a rake!
Tell me, is that a sign of sanity?”
My interlocutor shook her head.
Another way of looking at it is,
I feel like there’s a prison riot in my mind.
I’m like, “Work, damn you!”
And my neurons are like,
“No, we’re gonna have a
lesbian orgy instead.”
This explains the anomalous presence
of a lesbian orgy in my brain,
which showed up in an MRI last week.
The doctors at Johns Hopkins were amazed.
It’s a kind of exclave,
if you know what I mean.
I don’t know how else
to explain my incapacity.
It’s not me, it’s the neurons.
They refuse to work.
I’m not going to force it.
I’m just going to let them
fuck themselves out.
The lesbian orgy in my brain
is another reason why I think I’m going senile–
though, again, when I think that,
I’m not sure I’m the I who’s thinking it–
or even if I am a bear–
or if I’m a man, after all.
Nathan D. Horowitz
Every night, I stay up watching
my brain wane like the moon,
melt like a polar ice cap,
pace like the last ice bear
on the last floe.
I think I’m going senile.
But how do I even know
I’m the bear
who thinks that?
Sometimes I wonder if I’m a bear at all.
For the blink of an eye,
I think I might be
a man.
But, believe me,
I’ve counted our deaths
down to the last bear.
I can’t pronounce the number,
only indicate with signs of my paws
that, in Gematria,
it means “You’re going senile.”
Which is why I think I’m going senile.
Can one of you young folks tell me
where they sell cloudpunk spam around here?
It’s an ’80s thing. You wouldn’t understand.
Ah, the paradoxical measures
we take to stave off death.
Little by little, one by one,
one’s neurons go neutron star.
As each collapses in one’s head,
it is reborn in the mind of a child.
Body dissolves,
breath breaks down,
brain to bruise,
skull to scud.
The Devil showed up and said,
“You’ve lost your senses.”
I told him, “I sent them away!
Now I navigate by the echo
of the beating of my heart.
And time is corrosion.
And the universe comes in a can.”
Yes, I’m pretty sure I’m going senile.
Yesterday, someone suggested I see a therapist.
I said, “Well,
I’ve started seeing a three-meter lobster
with very short white fur
named Alice.
Alice tells me I need a vacation
someplace under the sea.
Atlantis is crowded.
She says Mu is real nice
this time of year.
I know this sounds weird.
But she’s right about the vacation.
When she talks, she moves her
furry, white maxillipeds–
the jointed plates that pass food
to her mandibles–
as if they were lips she were moving
to speak for real.
At one point, Alice insinuated
that she was a product of my imagination,
a symptom of a deadly affliction
whose name she dared not breathe
in which one’s mind is ‘bombed
like a slow Nagasaki,’ she said.
If my imaginary, white-furred
lobster friend is right,
I have to face it, I’m going senile.
But can someone who doesn’t exist be right?
Just this morning,” I went on,
“at 3 a.m., I awoke suddenly
to find I was gargling mustard in the shower,
juggling two microwaves, a chainsaw,
a thought experiment, a sonnet,
ten hummingbirds, and a rake!
Tell me, is that a sign of sanity?”
My interlocutor shook her head.
Another way of looking at it is,
I feel like there’s a prison riot in my mind.
I’m like, “Work, damn you!”
And my neurons are like,
“No, we’re gonna have a
lesbian orgy instead.”
This explains the anomalous presence
of a lesbian orgy in my brain,
which showed up in an MRI last week.
The doctors at Johns Hopkins were amazed.
It’s a kind of exclave,
if you know what I mean.
I don’t know how else
to explain my incapacity.
It’s not me, it’s the neurons.
They refuse to work.
I’m not going to force it.
I’m just going to let them
fuck themselves out.
The lesbian orgy in my brain
is another reason why I think I’m going senile–
though, again, when I think that,
I’m not sure I’m the I who’s thinking it–
or even if I am a bear–
or if I’m a man, after all.