ein toast

It is my birthday today, siblings. Like those awful greetings cards needle, I have pretty much stopped counting; I know this because often I miscalculate my age by a year of two when somebody has the effrontery to enquire. I have to think carefully and tally up the lost decades.

In preparation for the opportunity at least to engage in polite celebration, I shaved off some alarmingly grey stubble. Most of my head hair is thus far immune, happily, but the growth on my face has been bleaching out for quite some time. Having experimented with some close cropped facial topiary this past several months, I finally decided I was beginning to resemble a Captain Birdseye in training. I can think of far worse potential jobs, of course, but it is not the kind of look one wants to sport recreationally. While a more youthful countenance might comfortably advertise a fashionable pussy tickler, there is a fine line between just that and the suggestion of something altogether more unsavoury in the older male.

In my impatience to vacate the bathroom and pour myself a tall glass of something alcoholic, I managed to nick myself in several places. Those deepening creases between nostril and upper lip; cheek and jowl. I dispensed with the sidewhiskers entirely.

The first glass, then, was ultimately medicinal.

Prost!

▼ ALLEN GINSBERG: PUNK ROCK & OLD POND from "The Nova Connection" LP (Giorno Poetry Systems) 1979 (US)