RECIPE FOR LONGEVITY

When you’re old enough to know
you could keel over any day,
you’ve got to keep focused
on what really matters.

Don’t waste your time
with boring friends.
Sing and dance
until your eyes bug out.

Be bold like never before.
Stop saving, start spending.
Chuckle and guffaw
till it rains tears of laughter.

Paint a picture, write a poem,
massage your mate down to the bone.
Keep desire alive, thrive under the smile
of a crescent moon.

Nap when tired, eat when hungry.
Every morning and every night
pickle your body in erotic brine.
Stay delicious till the end of time.

Greet each morning with a kiss to the morning star.
Do an hour of Tai Chi for vitality and equanimity,
then curl up with a book
and a Burmese cat on your lap.

On Saturday nights at the movies,
watch “The Maltese Falcon,” “Casablanca,”
and all the films ever made by Fellini,
Goddard and Werner Herzog

Remain tangled in the treetops
like mating Blue Herons.
Touch each other as if the body’s skin
was made of eyelids.

Keep kissing, lip to lip in an angelic embrace.

Take pleasure in how your spine shudders
in the enveloping bond,
bound to go on and on and on.