It's Getting Old

Yeah, I’m old, and I’m writing

about getting old….

get over it.

Thing is, I see people my same age 

around me, and they’re a lot older 

than I am, not in body, no, rather

their minds are…pickled in the same

sour thoughts they gathered over a

lifetime of trial and error, until they 

don’t have a fresh thought anymore.

If you move a piece of furniture in

their house one inch, they go crazy.

They might be tenured professors,

Supreme Court Justices,

billionaires,

propped up by money and power.

Their obsolescence is neither planned

nor noticed, but is inevitable.

Some oldies still twinkle and sing;

My friend, 80, teaching at college….

uh…uh, he’s the only one I can think of,

except maybe the old Mexicans,

the drunk plumber gnome who worked

in the shop in South Carolina, the old

black man who played the spoons on

the sidewalk near my house there…

they were still alive; you could talk 

to them.

Coda:

"Oh, I. got phlebitis, and it's fucking my arthritis,

and my cataracts are watching the show...

and the tintinitis is there to spite us,

and the bowels are starting to blow."