One For Jennifer

It’s happening already

I can feel it

A little bit less of what I once had

A little fog where once was clarity

Age

Granted, I can still physically do

Most everything I ever could

And I can write circles around

Many of my contemporaries

But I am slower, just slightly

I can feel it

I am also wiser

I can do things I could never do in youth

Which makes me want to find

My younger and faster self and

Strangle knowledge into his head

I would start with

Don’t worry about women

Diagram the sentences of the writers you admire

And then diagram your own

And that’s your style, so don’t betray it

Because that took longer than it should have

Maybe an extra year

I’d move on to

Don’t buy so many books, because

You need a better monitor and you’re poor

And when you finally clean the house

There’s a whole shelf you haven’t read

Because books have a suck to win ratio

Much like anything else, and your boredom

Will be your future eyestrain, keep a register

I would say

Don’t strain your ass to save enough money to write

Strain your ass to write, and stay with people

Who will support you. There are worse mooches

Really

I would say

Lose weight now, fuckhead, because it’s just

Five, ten pounds over, but that’s much harder now

Then it was then

Otherwise, I’d do everything

About the same

Oh, except dating Jen

That was an awful, desperate mistake

Fuck her