Ode to the Men of Erectile Dysfunction Commercials Revisited

A poetic adventure

The clawfoot in question. Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Hail to you, gray-haired gentleman / on that summer porch. Let us put down / our fishing magazines and nod / sternly to your valor

You have met her eyes, there on the wicker davenport / with a curtain of lush hemlock and hard / ash behind you; Trickling / between your eyes is the elicit promising of imminent love-making

You have stepped up behind her and, broadly / but not desperately, / filled the saucepan of your square jaw / with the curving bratwurst of a smile

Now we understand

Under cover of night, you supervised / the hired crews and / their specialized equipment, a Terex 95-foot / boom crane, in order to / place the two clawfoot tubs just so / overlooking the canyon

Order the scribes to begin penning record / of your deeds

No other valley will be blocked to you. No glandular / failure will be your undoing /Conquerer! you’ll sing in the shower, / as she, draped in the camisole you bought her, spreads / jam on toast for two

Vamanos, friend

Ten-inch water-treated planks. Your / sumptuous essence. Especially your / shoulders silhouetted against the setting sun / just above the mesa

Two arms drape, connecting tubs / like the twin cable of a suspension bridge, / the engineering principals of which / do not escape your grasp

Sweet repugnant virility

Many men died from Caisson’s Disease during / the building of the Brooklyn Bridge / Never would you arise from / a trench only to die

Your love is like the scrolling / asterisk’ed fine print appearing / now at the bottom of the screen. And your happiness / is an image, a fine gleaming logo around / which silver pin-pricks of light / race after, or toward, each other, tracing / the perimeters of the first stalwart letters, like mad dogs around /

a track