F O R T Y • S E V E N • I AM • A L I V E by J.C. Hawkes

My appendix is gonna burst
in my in my sleep
and I have
kidney
stones
that keep
me up hourly
to wait and see
if they’ll pass through
like the fire I’m expecting
or hoping will come
before the
surgical knife
is required. 
On top of that
a second hernia
in the same spot
as where
a super wire
type of mesh
is covering
the first
one.

Libido
is a distant
memory
after two
divorces
before
my 45th
birthday  - a celebration
I could not have
asked for
if I wanted to -
but maybe, this is me
and where I came from
- and maybe
I’m where
I am

because it’s me.

I was a yellow B M X
and striking
pair of
brown eyes,
which turned
dark green at the close
of marriage number one.

I was a rag doll -
a testing
post
for the
anger of a parental
guidance which only
encouraged me
to chase a
death
in a creek bed,
a will to run the
fuck away into anywhere
Nowhere and over there, any day
Anything in the context of space time

Anywhere - but, here.

So i picked up a pen,
a book and a cigarette
and a lavish fuck you sentiment
which grew and grew
into the arrogant
k-unt I can be - the
wintertime lover
and a failing green liver
I once was a masculine man,
in a shell of artillery
and fields
of fuck
off
now
before
you see
too much of me
a battery when I closed my eyes
I could never be with her
and she could
only see
me.

So as the corporate world then
threw me down
the stairs
in a
heart
attack
fashion
statement,
I died four time
- that year. Who fucking cares!

Then I found myself  ( - oh what a treat )
I became a psychiatric nurse
to prevent others
from falling
too far,
to use
their heads
instead of their
fists, to stop biting
the walls and
chunks
of flesh
out of the
new workers.

I was good at it
stopping
the
insane
from beating
their brains
against
the walls of
dread of contentment
and hopeless
dreams.
Falling away by the fraying of seams. 

So then I grew a pair of cast iron balls
and threw myself into
the river to learn
how to swim.

So after a few attempts
at building a house
in my field of
vision
I decided
to keep going,
into the headlights
streaming on the
highway -

At 47,
I have the joy of
my kidney stones
which are changing my face
and making me write
the memories
and the
methods
in my madness. 
The dreams
of horses
and the
punishment
Of the storms
and their reckoning.

But I am alive
 - practically speaking,

For the First Time

J.C Hawkes  - is an alien who arrived on this god-forsaken planet in the territory  of AUSTRALIA - in the middle of the decade he’d have preferred to been of age as to party with the poets he admires to this day. The Burroughs’ and the gorgeous Patti Smith, the Ferlinghetti’s and the David Bowie’s ( in his Coke Daze) - yes! the dirty filthy 1970s always suited his fantasies.  He was of age in the 1990s instead and somehow survived, the day that fuckin’ Kurt Cobain died! By discovering Jim Morrison, he never did care for teeny bopping lights. 

Now in his later years, he is approaching 50 and he is quiet and reflective and writes pages of poetry daily about his memories he actually lived. While on the inside he only ever wanted to write books, grow an old man beard and live in the mountains in a cabin built for one.   Grow old and die there - this would be fine  - by me.