The Ring-A-Ding Solution

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THE RING-A-DING-SOLUTION

Written By
David Steven Simon

When I am suddenly caught
In the 
swirling 
inlet 
riptide
Of
stress
Rather than drown
By holding my own face down,
I turn to my invisible
friends 
of record
Like Capitol Years Frank,
To sing 

Frank
The interpreter of maladies
And melodies
Was the tough-guy 
Priest of the Church of Me Too
Who preached from the cathedral of barrooms
In a tribal plume of Camel smoke
“This is a gentleman’s drink,” Sinatra once said referring to
His signature cocktail which was
 a mix of four ice cubes, two fingers of Jack Daniel’s 
and a splash of water.

He would never touch the rim of a glass 
but rather cupped it in his hand with a cocktail napkin
Like a dame.

And then he would proceed to
thinly slice
the gabagool 
of his wrists 
With the jagged blade edge of rejection
Like the times that he
Tried to commit suicide
To perhaps
match the faint forceps scar that ran
From his jawline
Up his cheek
To his ear
Whose skin
Was mutilated
By cystic acne
Which he
Covered up with make-up.

His voice
Arrived
In the ink well of night
Like the calvary 
Armed with the lyrics
Of broken soldiers
Stripped of love
Who grappled
with the wounds of
surrender
On the backs of stallions
Which to this day is the 
one and only
#metoo movement of men 
that we have ever known.

Frank’s prescription for a busted heart 
Was
Booze the sorrow,
Suck it up
Move on
And find some other
Broad
To take it out on
Because they were young
And easy to con
After all 
and you were the 
Prize
That was sought
By any
Chick
Who was worth her weight
In dreams.

But the truth was
The ring-a-ding
Solution
Was not the answer

Just because
You staggered home
And slept it off
Did not mean that you
you left your troubles on a strip
Of toweled-down mahogany
like
A tip

Because
Irrational hate
childish hurt
baseless jealousy
self-punishing despair
And crippling loneliness
Cannot be eradicated simply by
Flying to the moon
And playing amongst the stars.

Despite the 
diamond pinky ring
The compound 
the solid gold 
crucifix
And the fancy elder statesman
toupee
in the 
wee small hours of the morning 
When Frank was
Afflicted
by heart and breathing problems, 
high blood pressure, 
pneumonia, 
bladder cancer 
and dementia
His last words to his wife were,
”I’m losing.”

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