I sing the body electric

 

I sing the body electric,

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, 

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves? 

And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead 

And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? 

And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

--Walt Whitman 

I'm not sure about the whole engirthing thing. I don't even like to be hugged, so engirthing sounds pretty annoying. But I like the line, "I sing the body electric." and I like the line, "And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?"

Other than that, the poem is too damned long. Most of Whitman's poems were too damned long. And I don't like poetry. I know I've said that before, but it bears repeating (which is pretty much what getting old is all about).

I when off on this digression because of the above photograph which is a random Snapchat filter. It kind of reflects how I feel right now after several days of feeling like half of my face has checked out without a forwarding address. 

I feel like I should be wearing one of those hoods like the Elephant Man with my good eye peering out. I could mumble, "I'm a man, not an animal" to the store clerks. But they still would avoid looking at me and probably not understand me or get the reference if they do. 

It's times like this that I'm grateful for the cloak of invisibility being old wraps around me.