poem of the day 01.07.16

my memory

seems to be going

in small fits and starts

not the big things like where i live

or each grudge and slight

i’ve accumulated over the years

all the women then girls

who wanted nothing to do with me

no, for me it’s the small things

that i’m missing

forgetting items at the grocery store

even carrying around a goddamned handwritten list

dumping the parts of vegetables i need

into the garbage can

and keeping the skin or rind

occasionally a name won’t come to me

it’ll take me a few minutes to remember the title

of a good movie from long ago

or one of the few truly great books i’ve read

in those moments i’ll get scared

and think it’s age finally setting in

here it is i’ll say

a little early onset dementia to go with the gray

i’ll blame the alcohol but only sparingly

still, you can’t do what i’ve been doing for years

and not think the brain cells

have finally started to give up

to my wife i’ll worry that it’s alzheimer’s

when my memory slips

i’ll get nuts and tell her that

i’ll be one of those guys at fifty

stuck in a home with people twice his age

my mind tattered and shot full of holes

no traces of a present or past

no hope for a future

she looks at me like i’m insane when i go on like this

she says, all of this drama because you forgot the gravy?

i want to tell her that it happens though

the corrosion of the mind at such a young age

the horrors done to memory

i know i read a novel about it a few years ago

by this author whose name

slips my mind at the moment

and whose title

i can’t even begin to remember.