A tune for the time

The name of the song is "God's Gallipoli" by Poi Dog Pondering, and it's been spooling through my head for the past two weeks or more. It's not a happy song; it captures the bittersweetness of life and the all-too-often sucky end of life-- so it pretty much is right on the point of what I've been thinking and feeling since my father's hospitalization. Worse yet, the tune is spectacularly catchy, the lyrics poetry, and the beat is exactly, EXACTLY the pace of my exercise-walk. Thus I cannot get the flippin' song out of my head. So I'm going to inflict it on everyone who reads this in hopes of throwing my callous, officious, heartless exterior into sharp relief.... er, or something. :) On the bright side, I measured my waist at 27 inches yesterday, which I thought I'd never see again. At least I'm channeling all this obsession over death into, um. Leaving a beautiful corpse?

Ok, now I'm just being silly. ;) I've actually been working on getting my cholesterol down into the "Gee, maybe we won't have to medicate you after all" level, as some of you may recall. My followup blood test is in a week, so I will be sure to report! Now that I've been confronted with how strongly stroke runs in my family, I've been triply motivated to eat right and exercise daily, in hopes of selecting a death strategy of (C) Drop dead on the track at age 90 of a heart attack during a 30 mile run.

Yeah, I'm definitely going through the "anger" phase of grief. But there is hope on the horizon for my twos of poor beleaguered readers left! My son's birthday is coming up at the end of the month, and I have planned a cake that will either be AN AWESOME WORK OF ART or ANOTHER CRAP-TACULAR WRECK!!! Hooray!!!! I can't WAIT to see which it will be, myself! :D


"God's Gallipoli" by Poi Dog Pondering

Sloping head bent to the wind as always.
Slugging it out 'til the end, the boxer
going over the top, in God's Gallipoli.

Set me up Joe, body lean but mind obese,
maple angel leaves once shifted in the trees
when light was a truly wondrous thing.
But now they crackle under my feet
like the old life's longings
of sailors once robust
in buttons and coats now just mud and bone
and teeth beneath me.

Grist for star dust, the bone crushing rock of ages.
Cancer took the spring from my lover and gave us forever Autumn.
No thoughtless smoke now, no blind drink.
No idle lunches dreaming of a whole 'nother world of things.
It's down to brass tacks and saline sacks,
Vincristine injections and early detections.

Take me in one swoop God don't let me dwindle.
I watched the light leave my mother's bed-sick eyes.
She's so scared-- once gone, I kissed her cheek,
and the cold of her skin held on my lips.
It's hard to think, "So this is how it ends?"
stretched out on a bed sheet,
sorting through a wreckage of regrets.

Back in the ring now,
with eye held just high enough to see the prize.
Head bend forward at hip into wind as always.

Slugging it out 'til the end, the boxer.
Going over the top, in God's Gallipoli.

You know the thing that haunts me the most
are all those crystalline moments,
where adrenalin and light filled my belly and head.

And the moon winked as if to say yes.
And I ran in the cold night and sweated and it felt good.
And I could hit the nail on the head
and drive that fucker home.

Going over the top, in God's Gallipoli...