The prelude to my midlife crisis
The day will come
when I reach for cheap liquor as breakfast
and spill into grimy sheets
with my grimy skin
stretched at the seams of my torso
and the bedsores of my apathy will rust the wires of my grimy heart-
I fear the day my love slips through my pores-
a perspiration of rejection and weighty silences
and confidences irrelevant on the rotting wood of my futon
Hope atrophied and all my faith in the Father reduced
to so many broken promises which I finger like a rosary-
the beads are so well worn
And to youths on faded Friday nights sure to be forgotten
Remember them.
For one day your soul-like mine- will be faded
like well worn jeans I have tried to stuff resilience into to take out and brand as a shield-
but the pockets all have holes
so on dew-grey mornings like these I clasp at tattered fabric wondering
where all the tokens of my strength
fell like pennies on cracked concrete-
I wonder if they have been haphazardly shoved into parking meters.
It is much more likely they have been forsaken as worthless nothings-
turned sooty like the wasteland of my lungs-
fumbled over in take-a-penny-leave-a-penny jars
keep the change
I have no use for it here
Where I rest still in my
cheap linen shroud