“Birthdays are a good excuse to bite off more than you can chew and to eat as much cake as you want to.”
It was my 62nd birthday recently. As I do every birthday or almost every one I take a long run (nowadays ride) and feel alive. I also write a poem to put another nail in the coffin I’m building.
I thought I’d take the opportunity to mention, you can find some of those birthday poems and 1,000s of others on my old poetry page. It’s old, dated but a catalog of just some of my writing. This substack is just a new shoot off this old tree. Scroll down and you’ll get some downloads of old books of poetry of mine - for nights where Netflix bores you and nobody is knocking your door down.
So yeah, it was my birthday. A bloody humid one. 99% humidity it said and I looked behind my bike and could see a long, snaking trail of water. But like everything, once I survived and neared home, the weather broke, the sky cleared and paradise revisited. An omen perhaps.
“I don't mind getting older; it's a privilege denied to so many!”
Birthdays, they don’t matter much. But if you live well, you got to take any opportunity you can to celebrate, mark a milestone and flash those hidden gods your behind - still here, still standing. However surreal it is. It’s not that there is any meaning to things, it is that you make it meaningful.
So here is my birthday poem for this year, 62 years on, swimming in this fish bowl.
“Happy Birthday! Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” Dr. Seuss.
Every day is a birthday.
Hell ya, why not?
You got outta bed, didn’t ya?
Pretty much the same as
dropping out of a uterus, dontcha think?
We are born each day and
we die each day and with
the time alloted inbetween
we live out our insignificance
in the grandest of ways and designs
if you are doing it well.
You can blow out the candles.
You can eat two pieces of cake.
You can sing any song on the karaoke machine.
You can drink - they’re buying.
Hell, it’s your birthday!
Why limit it to one day a year?
Every day, get up and
say what you want to say
be who you want to be
think what you want to think
walk like you want to walk
love who you wish to love
and
call the bluffs of all those who say
wait, wait, another day.
If anyone asks why your
wearing purple boots and
walking down the street with
your pet iguana in your
more purple underwear
(as so many stare)
tell them, even the police
Hell, it’s your birthday!
And then, god damn it.
Get up and do it all over again.
Why?
’Cuz it’s your birthday!
Happy I survived my 60th with good friends in Cancun. I was kind of speechless here after a day of dozens of tecquilas! 4 day long b-day, twas.
Every Day Is A Birthday