Happy Birthday, Dear Jerry

“Happy birthday, dear Jerry, happy birthday to you!” The hospice staff sang.

“Say my man, how's it feel to be 296 years old? I can't imagine anything cooler than eternal life,” said Doug, his head keeper.

Jerry gummed his jaws a bit, spit out some yellow phlegm, and responded, “Well, let's see. My ma and pa died 'bout 8 generations ago. I saw all 27 of my kids go before me, plus of course six wives. Then I buried 84 grandkids, 316 great grand babies, 997 great great grandkids. OK, you see my point. I got more death in me than a convention of morticians. I seen more caskets than whole wars ever buried. I done wept enough tears to fill this here city's water system. Go ahead. Drill into me like a basin. I'll fill you up with tears.

“But hey. It ain't all bad," Jerry said with a wheeze as he sucked on an unfiltered Pall Mall. "Let's see, I also served in 4 wars, had a hundred or more jobs, doing everything from mayor of this here city, plus its fire chief, a principal of the high school, janitor, dental surgeon, car thief, pimp, and drug dealer. You can do bunches of shit in 296 years.

“And all because of that damned shot they gave me back when. ‘Try this,’ they said. ‘We're experimenting with a new anti-aging serum. We think it could add maybe 10 years to your life.’

“Well, I was coming off my second heart surgery and thought, ‘Hell yes. We got debt. My family needs my earning power.’

“I never imagined that those 10 years would last 240 more. And look at me now. I'm 4’2” from my original 6’1”. I weigh 79 pounds. My ears are longer than my hair. I wear quadrifocals that give me at best 20/70 vision. In other words, I'm looking at you, Doug, but all I see is a shadow behind a cloud as if inside an aquarium filled with sludge. And I hurt all over. My arthritis has arthritis. I'm bone on bone. I can't walk no more. My legs are as brittle as dry spaghetti. I've broken every bone in my body dozens of times, just from coughing.

“I've got so many wrinkles that I hide my extra pain pills in them. Yep, I'm collecting. I've tried before, don't you know it. Getting out of this purgatory. But every time I think I've got enough pills to pull the plug, it don't work. I fall asleep hoping to never see another dawn, but come sunrise, there it is again.  Life.” And Jerry spit more phlegm, black as anger this time, black as hope eaten by a murder of crows.

“One day soon, though, I'll have enough pills to kill all my lives. So, to answer your question, ‘How's eternity feel?’ It feels like having a root canal every day for a century, like seeing man's stupidity rerun on a loop in slow motion every second, like eating razor blades for breakfast, lunch, and supper, with snacks of African killer bees, like losing love and your heart shredded by zombie fangs dipped in botulism.

“You want that? Eternal life?”

Doug thought a bit, rubbed his jaw, and then replied, “Oh yeah, give me the shot. All I see is an eternity of drinking beer, watching sports games, and dating killer chicks.”

Jerry closed his eyes. Another rerun on a loop in slow motion.

Submerged Under Eclipses

Drowning in her laptop monitor, streaming Hulu horror shows, she wept dry tears. Her anxiety, red as fear, boxed in her heart racing like rabbits from foxes, each beat a skitter of terror, her chest a constricting cage, her breath heaving for escape. And she scratched welts on her bare arm.

”Why?” she asked, more a shriek than a moan, a groan more than a scream, as if her angst bubbled up from being submerged in sludge, a life trudging through want.

Each day, today, last week, tomorrow, she darkened, the darkness creeping on her skin like cobwebs dreading daylight, filaments fearing a dissembling breeze, like kelp wavering in the doubt of cold currents.

Sometimes her fears unsealed and she saw relief. She breathed breath in ease. And the sun shone, though clouds gathered in the east, a distant thunderhead building with serrated edges.

“Yes, I'd like that,” she cooed when asked to meet. “Yes, I can be there at 8:00,” she demurred, though 8:00 was late for her needs. “Yes,” she said, though she meant “no,” her voice muffled as if under waves. “Yes, that’s ok, if that’s what you’d like,” she said, looking for an exit, her eyes darting like bait fish from predators.

But, often, too often, undertows appeared, bruise-colored, blue-black, deep in panic, darkness again, the hole opening to emptiness. And she'd sink, grasping at options that tore her fingernails ragged as hope.

And the day became night, always. And she swallowed eclipses.

Under water, breath burns.
Sight blurs in cataracts.
The Sea’s blue blackens in depth.

Teeming Shores: a Triptych

1.      What it must

What it must have felt like to land on our shores a dark sea behind them dark clouds of oppression dissipating like a swarm of bees the hissing becoming silent and now just open skies a land waiting to be tilled my grandparents arriving with an alien language of consonants and only hope filling their baggage now reoccurring daily at our borders new Americans wanting to quench their thirst and breathe air without bombs with the unlimited opportunities of  limitless horizons what if must feel like 

2.      A hint of

She left the boat from Haiti sailing on a 20-foot skiff to Jamaica sea-washed salt-sodden with a Coke bottle of fresh water and cooked cornmeal wrapped in plantain leaves hunger as constant as fear she and 22 others barefoot ragged Levis she and her infant daughter tied to her bosom as tightly as a dream and landed in Port Maria darkness becoming dawn wading through the Caribbean onto wet sand her toes digging into a hint of freedom soon

3.      Camino Real

Roberto y Isa walked weary through saguaro thorns past coyote screams and dry gulch bones broken dreams of hope scorched in heated air casting mirages on the sand of freedom sought like water in empty canteens toward the Camino Real a royal road over a wall of anger a shout of wrath shredding like concertina wire into Eagle Pass and there on new land saw a future that opened like air intake on breath-wary lungs

Steve Gerson, English professor emeritus, writes poetry and flash about life's dissonance. He has published in CafeLit, Panoplyzine, Crack the Spine, Decadent Review, Vermilion, In Parentheses, Wingless Dreamer, Big Bend Literary Magazine, Coffin Bell, and more, plus his six chapbooks Once Planed Straight; Viral; And the Land Dreams Darkly; The 13th Floor: Step into Anxiety, What Is Isn’t, and There Is a Season.