My Ass Is Grass

MY ASS IS GRASS
By Carl Edgar Law (c) 2006

Lynne says
I have no ass, butt
how crass to sass my non-ass

somewhere hidden in these baggy jeans

and Nancy agrees and
can’t see the wood for the trees
the emptiness of her tease, no
ifs, ands or butts about it, so I

consulted with my Korean tailor, said
make me tight-ass jeans, this
sailor wants the sails to swell
to that nice tight roundness which
women say they
love so well – well – that’s just swell

but my Korean tailor demurs, saying
gobbledegook in that curious language of his
point is
Levis can’t be taken in
(as I have often been)
ass-wise, Lynne says

you’re wrinkly – put a bit of meat
on those old bones, you’re wrinkly and
so it is, I am – candidly, all that
weight I lost
from not drinking Dom Perignon
or Heineken of which t’is said

refreshes the parts that other beers cannot reach

(but in a kind of funky Dutch accent on those British TV commercials)

Lynne’s last had a fulsome ass, a swelly
little tum above his stones, love handles
to pull on and pull
and pull, tighter and tighter
but I’ve lost 40 pounds of beer and wine
just in the last 12 months, and
being an old fart have LOST that part
that women find so squeezy, so teasy
when they squeeze and tickle and pull in and
that’s not all, my teeth are disappearing, my

false ones make me lisp, I
don’t know where the food has gone
when I chomp on it, I don’t know

what to do, I am
62 and
that’s not all
I’ll soon be 63 and have to flee
the beds of women
who can’t
just let me be me

no-ass Carliebear, that wrinkly guy, that
wrinkly guy with too few teeth
for a Wendy’s meal, no ass
to make them squeal, OK

I’m kinky – I can refresh
the parts
that other partner’s parts can’t reach, yes
kinky

but oh so fucking wrinkly that I soon will be reduced

to sipping apple juice
through straws in the old poets home
writing Valentines to the five sisters
who toil
even as they spin
to paraphrase the Book of Luke
Chapter 12, verse 27

(a little blashphemously I might add – Sorry Lord!)

with all the other no-ass wrinklies, whom I’m sure
will soon
become not-so-firm friends, my

friend Carol is sanguine about all this, she says
"Just sew a skirt on your North Face Parka – who’ll know?)

but I don’t wear parkas to bed
when I rest my head with blonde,
brunette or even redhead, I just

wear a thermal top, underwear
with long johns over, woolly socks, a T-shirt
over the thermal top

you might think that foppish, but
I’m at the end of my tether with
Lanark County weather
even when it’s silk sheet time

but I don’t wear a toque and
rumours to the contrary
are just a fluke I don’t
wear a toque to bed, my silver head
is just that
naked
hair falling out on the pillow

I watch women shaking out their pillows in the AM

me sipping tea and tasting phlegm
(these Native cigarettes have really got to go), because
I know

I may soon be lungless too

no lungs, no ass, no teeth and wrinkly to boot, it’s a hoot

good thing I have nice blue eyes
and a thin simpering smile
to hide the gaps
in my dentititon-challenged countenance

so what’s it to be, pump iron on bended knee?
wolf steroids till I run down the street berserk
run amok in the murk of Lanark County night
what a fright, I could

buy one of those womens girdles with the butt panels
that might do it
and since I wear
so much in bed that women despair
I could wear
a big-ass girdle with impunity

and put in my false teeth and say "clickety-click, clickety-click"
and other clacks of pillow talk
and puff out my tummy winsomely, flex
my fading muscles till the wrinkles

would disappear, as ironed sheets, rustling in the wind
grow smooth and comforting

or I could enter a monastery
wear a hair shirt or perhaps
live in a yurt where all hurt disappears

in the first rush of fermented yak’s milk to my
non-tummy
(though it might expand my butt – drinking in that hairy hut)

where wizened oriental folk
tell jokes

and ALWAYS at the yaks’ expense

Yak herding, I believe might help
unless the yaks, if I turned my back
truly believed my ass was grass
and et it all up.
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