Paul Watsky - Two Poems

Paul Watsky

FORTUNATELY IT WAS LIKE RIDING A BICYCLE

When the skunk comes straight at me with its officious bureaucrat quick-scuttle,

I’m just inside the slid-back broad wood garage door, feet jammed tight

in the exercise bike’s peddle straps, and I desperately rummage my mental attic

for the kitty-speak phrase book discarded decades ago after we let our pussycat

franchise lapse

due to Clare’s late-onset asthma and the superannuated wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly Laverne’s

passing over (sad), but it’ll be sadder if the white-striped stencherina squats,

having sprayed me en route, among that junk beneath the derelict pool table, her attar

drifting noseward through the coming years, especially on damp days. Eureka!

I can visualize the lexicon page with the effective fear-of-God ejaculations deployed

against my own long-dead critters poising themselves to eviscerate overstuffed

furniture

or stick a hairy face into something on the kitchen table—those hisses and snarls

which convey your readiness to swat them, hopefully near-cognate to threats

uttered by the mephitidae—immediately launched, sotto voce, as an alert to the skunk,

still, though barely, on my driveway gravel, who freezes at such a reception, calculates

what comes next, and apparently decides it’s made an embarrassing mistake, then,

trying to appear face-savingly preoccupied, turns, tail low to the ground, and bustles off.

PREY TO BOREDOM-INDUCED DEPRESSION, DEATH,

with all grown

way

way easy—even

chess—hands

off the as-

sembly line to back-

ups, then checks

into a sani-

tarium/yoga

spa. Unso-

ciable, but para-

doxically horn-

ier than ever,

Reaper hangs

out in their pump

room, taking

the waters, which

tinkle as

they drib-

ble rib by

rib—beguiling an-

orexics, who caress

every bright ex-

tremity, and plead

for an es-

cort to bed.