The Ring-A-Ding Solution

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

Frank
The interpreter of maladies
And melodies
Was the toughguy 
Priest of the Church of Me Too
Who preached from the cathedral of barrooms
In a 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
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 foreceps 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.

Being a man
His 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 
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 staggerd home
And slept it off
Did not mean that you
you left your troubles on a strip
Of towled down bar mahogany
like
A tip

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

Because 
in the wee 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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