John Margolies, The Spur Bar Sign, Billings, Montana, 1980
Color transparency, 35 mm (slide format)
Digital image courtesy of the Library of Congress
De men are in dementia, don’t cha see,
and should you anagram it further you’ll find
a dime for a matinee with a maiden
who isn’t a meanie. All sound better
than Alzheimer’s. Al’s Heimer. What’s
a heimer, anyway? Urban dictionary says,
a girl who plays a guy without having
any real interest in him. Poor Al. What about
jingleheimer, those annoying tunes you can’t
get out of your head? Or, dingleheimer,
a dingbat with a crusty dingleberry mustache,
like Hitler. And there’s dingledodie, Kerouac’s
word to describe those with a madness born
of passion: But then they danced down the street
like dingledodies. . .
better than dinglefoot,
that’s when you step in dog shit with bare
feet and get a case of the dinglefoot
which is what I’m doing now, stepping in it.
Because dementia is no laughing matter,
even though I’m trying to find a way for it to be.
Have you heard the one about the guy who sees
a doctor for a checkup? “I have bad news, you
have cancer and dementia.” The man
replies, “Well, at least I don’t have cancer.”