For the Man with the Erection Lasting More than Four Hours

For the Man with the Erection Lasting More than Four Hours

  by John Hodgen

He's supposed to call his doctor, but for now he's the May King with his own Maypole.

He's hallelujah. He's glory hole. The world has more women than he can shake a stick

at. The world is his brickbat, no conscience to prick at, all of us Germans he can ich

lieber dich at. He's Dick and Jane. He's Citizen Kane. He's Bob Dole.

He's Peter the Great. He's a czar. He's a clown car with an extra car.

Funiculi, Funicula. He's an organ donor. He works pro boner. He's folderol.

He's fiddlesticks. He's the light left on at Motel 6. He's free-for-alls.

He's Viagra Falls. He's bangers and mash. He's balderdash. He's a wanker.

He's got his own anchor. He's whack-a-doodle. King Canoodle. He's a pirate, Long John

Silver, walking his own plank. He has science to thank. He's in like Flynn. He's Gunga Din,

holding his breath, cock of the walk through the valley of the shadow of death. He's Icarus,

hickory dickorous, the mouse run up the clock. He's shock and awe. He's Arkansas.

He's the package, the deal, the Good Housekeeping Seal. He's Johnson and Johnson.

He's a god now, the talk of the town. He's got no place to go but down.

John Hodgen lives in Shrewbury, MA, holds a Master's Degree in English from Assumption College, and teaches at Mount Wachusett Community College and the Worcester Art Museum.  He is the author of In My Father's House (winner of the 1993 Bluestem Award from Emporia State University in Kansas) and Bread Without Sorrow.

     He has won the Grolier Prize for Poetry, an Arvon Foundation Award, the Yankee Magazine Award for Poetry, first prize in the Red Brick Review poetry competition, and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Finalist Award in Poetry in 2000.  Several of his poems have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, and he was one of five finalists in the Massachusetts Artists Foundation Fellowship Program.  He was a finalist in Houghton Mifflin's New Poetry Series, Cleveland State University's Poetry Center Prize, Carnegie Mellon University's Poetry Series, and Northeastern University's Samuel French Morse Poetry Award. 

     John's work has been included in the anthologies Witness and Wait: Thirteen Poets From New England and Something Understood; We Teach Them All: Teachers Writing About Diversity; and Bone Cages. 

I had hope to publish the Auburn University Fight Song as my poem today to celebrate their BCS Championship; however, Auburn lost in a nail biter to FSU.  Even so, I had stumbled across the poem above and just loved it.  It has a certain Cole Porter song feel to it (think of "You're the Top").  I hope you enjoy it too.