ADULT-LIFE NEEDS TRAINING-WHEELS

Adult-life needs training-wheels, full hip-replacement,
squatting on a dream, of wit, of wetness, of a Mugs Reality,
Mug Life, rank-&-file.  I look out of the car window as I drive
down the highway & I am flipped-off repetitively.  Only fools
use “fool” as an insult, repetitively, or do I “read” their lips
transiently?  I downgrade people’s anger, as if windbaggery
to some is the meaning of life, tackles the whole person—
the heart, head & hands of daily living.  The woman at the diner
tells L. & I that her girlfriend wasn’t wearing a seatbelt on April
fourteenth when she wrecked, & now she is in extensive care.
She showed us pictures of her lover’s battered body; she
repetitively told us how her life is screwed up.  I wanted to
tell her that most people’s lives are screwed up.  Truth often
warrants bad, unbearable esteem, steaming from out-of-nowhere.
Being book-smart doesn’t mean one is street-smart, or
even practical, but the mean, slimy, coal-black streets are where
one’s mistakes happen & where one’s mistakes happen often
& where mistakes get accepted amongst everyone else’s woes.
This woman, this same woman, with tattoos of hearts above
both thumbs, also made it a point to speak of her vagina.
She had shaved her pubic hair “down low” one night,
& obtained a staff infection, spent seven months in the hospital,
& now her lawyer warns that she will probably be sued by
Insurance companies.  She told us how her life is so screwed up
with a laugh that Sean Connery would’ve had if he had of been
a woman. I wonder what Bukowksi would be doing right now
if he were alive, were not a writer & hated post offices.