Sixty, by Stephen Dunn

Because in my family the heart goes first

and hardly anybody makes it out of his fifties,

I think I’ll stay up late with a few bandits

of my choice and resist good advice.

I’ll invent a secret scroll lost by Egyptians

and reveal its contents: the directions

to your house, recipes for forgiveness.

History says that my ventricles are stone alleys,

my heart itself a city with a terrorist

holed up in the mayor’s office.

I’m in the mood to punctuate

only with that maker of promises, the colon:

next, next, next, it says, God bless it.

As Garcia Lorca may have written: some people

forget to live as if a great arsenic lobster

could fall on their heads at any moment.

My sixtieth birthday is tomorrow.

Come, play poker with me,

I want to be taken to the cleaners.

I’ve had it with all stingy-hearted sons of bitches.

A heart is to be spent. As for me, I’ll share

my mulcher with anyone who needs to mulch.

It’s time to give up search for the invisible.

On the best of days there’s little more

than the faintest intimations. The millenium,

my dear, is sure to disappoint us.

I think I’ll keep on describing things

to ensure that they really happened.