SoMa Literary Review - Tender Loined Brothers

Tender Loined Brothers

By Gerard Sarnat

"It is the chiefest point of happiness

that a man is willing to be what he is."

--Desiderius Erasmus

Steel glass high-rise commercial huzzah

now near flaccid post business climax,

undoing the uppermost button

of a snappy (may I say so myself?) powder blue Oxford shirt,

slipping down the knot on a navy and gray striped silk tie,

(apparently just right to seal the deal on this particular occasion),

lugging a charcoal power suit,

index finger niftily looped inside the lapel,

attaché case holding a nifty black Mac in the other hand,

a bounce to my step this springy winter morning;

I rise like the phoenix at 6th and Mission,

climb concrete parking lot steps

filled with piss and shit and lots of used syringes,

sigh in relief at finally beginning

to exit the Tenderloin District.

In a stairwell's darkest corner,

I spy a bald graybeard hunched over,

cooking puddles of tarry ooze.

He wears granny glasses and torn jeans

with a wide-open front zipper.

A pint of Jim Beam hangs out his right rear pocket.

The guy's tan leather jacket's ripped, full of puke,

flaked with god-knows-what black stuff.

His stained white unlaced high-top sneakers

look a hopeless mess --purulent toothless gums

surrounding twin bleeding tongues.

Leaving the front-runner's tweedy ego behind for a moment,

dissolving completely as I can into this sad man's story

(at least that's mine),

melting into an unholy alliance with his body,

despite -- perhaps because of this fiefdom of gutter rot

-- for an instant I see my life

utterly reflected in this addict's bloom-and-die eyes:

in a way I can't exactly explain,

I'm reminded of myself, someone I used to -- still -- know…

Where was this soul mate when I was born in 1945,

when my bubby and ziede

stuffed me full of herring and love

in their third floor walkup cold water flat?

What have each of us lost, what have each of us gained?

As I pondered such unbearables,

a smiling young couple up from Fresno for a show

dashes up, asks me to snap a photo

of their vacation-happy faces.

Sure, why not?

After we exchange pleasantries, they leave.

My mood pricked, I slap a twenty in his fist,

pat his filthy back, drive home to the 'burbs.

Gerard Sarnat splits time between his San Francisco Bay Area forest home and Southern California's beaches, where he and his wife care for their first grandson. Gerry is a father of three, physician to the disenfranchised, past CEO and Stanford professor, and virginal writer 'til the recent tender age of sixty-two. He has been published or is forthcoming in EZAAPP, The Hiss Quarterly, Pens on Fire, Poets Against War, Thieves Jargon, Underground Voices, Flutter, Jack, Atavar, Wilderness House Review, Aha!Poetry, Spindle, Defenestration, Black Zinnias,The Furnace Review, Stonetable Review , Bird and Moon, and LoudPoet among others. "Just Like the Jones'," about his experience caring for Jonestown survivors, was solicited by The Jonestown Annual Report and will appear later this year. Gerry is currently working on an epic prose poem, "The Homeless Chronicles." He has been accepted into a four person writers' cooperative by The California Institute of Arts and Letters; Pessoa Press plans to publish his first book.