Tales from the Gym (I love the smell of nostalgia in the morning)

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And your gravity fails and negativity don’t pull you through….Bob Dylan

Know your gym……Slim Volume

Gravity, Don’t Fail Me Now

two geezers
pink and steaming
towelling down
after a shower
discussing gravity
how it is not fixed
how it decreases
with distance from the earth’s core
how, if one was to climb to the top of Everest,
since weight is the product of mass and gravity
one would weigh less at the top of Everest
and Slim’s thinking
this is one fucking erudite conversation
and he wants a piece of it
so he points out that
one would regain that weight
on returning to sea level
and one of the geezers replies
yeah but you’d probably burn 10,000 calories
climbing up and down the fucking mountain
and a nearby jock encased in breathable fabric
says shit, I’d burn that in 40 minutes on the rowing machine
and Slim fires back wryly
keep telling yourself that
and the locker room erupts in laughter
and in that moment
basking in the unbearable lightness of banter
Slim defies gravity and levitates
above the bacterial swamp
that is the locker room floor.

“A man who is tired of the gym, is a man who has been to the gym”. Slim Volume

Two Bros

Two bros on a mat
one on his back
hands clasped behind his head
legs bicycling like a capsized fly;
the other,
the one with the green hair
and the tattoos of a religious nature
is grunting weights .
Fly bro, it appears,
is having girlfriend problems
and is experiencing
some kind of vague existential crisis,
green hair bro listens carefully to his tale of woe
and after some reflection says:
It’s life, man,
stop trying to understand it,
no one can

and then, as if startled by his own profundity,
he repeats: no one can.
Out of the mouths of bros….

in the background a bearded jock
in a tight black T shirt
his muscles packed with powdered whey
his eyes a steroid yellow
is down on his hunkers
knees akimbo
moving sideways
across the  floor
like a slow motion crab
across packed sand at evening.

4 thoughts on “Tales from the Gym (I love the smell of nostalgia in the morning)

  1. phillip woodruff

    “A man who is tired of the gym, is a man who has been to the gym”

    and i am that man, and why i have my own equipment at home, good quote. enjoyed both of these poems jim. i really like your style of writing, very conversational, down to earth

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  2. hedgewitch

    These had me smiling, yet they are also, dare I say so without sounding pompous, deeply profound. The wry tone employed is perfect for pointing out our human softness of the brain, but also our flexibility and striving which we channel in so many small ways, often futile. Love the Dylan quote–I haven’t been lost in the rain in Juarez in a long time. I need to get out more, but maybe not to the gym.

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