Age (Free Verse)

By Alex Newman

Chattering, chortling children

chiming that they cannot wait to be old

scattering sheltered exclamations

with words like “awesome”

blending gray hair with false hopes of respect

and jocularity

and “doing whatever you want”

as though age were, in fact

a second childhood

a period of freedom to be relived

where tactless sentences go unchided

rather than what it really is –

the place where your outrageous pops

are cries for attent

when the young consider you so “far gone”

they no longer bother to correct you

and you wish they would

My gut pinches, assaulted by a bristle of paperclips

at the welpish bravado of my peers

their impatience to reach

something they do not understand

“I want to be old”? You are a fool,

for the old wish to be young

and destiny’s clock is ticking out

to when, all too soon, you will meet it anyway

I am young, but have seen the face of age

My flesh is full and flawless,

but I have felt the thinning silk on knobby fingers

that can no longer grip a wine glass

or their grand baby’s hand

There is a humbling rumble of acid in my sides

at the bent spines and milky eyes

the shuffling steps

but the crackling vibrancy of soul remains

a juxtaposing radiance of wit

despite the shell

of a failing frame falling apart around it

the brain that thunders along the train tracks

the tongue a trailing carriage that cannot match its speed

and the young do not bother to slow

enough to hear their stories

or feel their aches

or know the gathering of dust

as people throw you aside

like a used and out-grown plaything

your cord pulled until it pools slack at your feet

your clockwork turned until the springs snap

your music slowed and slurred

but still playing

wishing for the young to see and understand

to pick you up and hold you

and ask you and really listen

to what it really means

to have lived

and to die.