I’m two capsules removed
from those toxic sunbeams
shoving
down
on my
shoulders
choking my heart
with poisonous gray dust
these New Agey herbal supplements
keep me as hard & as ignorant
as any expensively groomed putz
making six-figures worth
of contributions
to the great multinational
people-eating machine.
a good thing because
when I pass my son’s room
I see the friendly faces
of the trains, his talking
teddy-bear
& suffer that
terrible knowledge
everyone else ignores
(what can you
do?) that the
six-year-old
boy with the
big gap in his teeth
is dying one day
at a time
& the smiling
faces of the trains
his talking teddy bear
will soon entertain rats
in a rain-soaked landfill
unless they
manage to find
another home
where
other children are
decaying into dull-witted
teenagers
at best too hassled
to realize they’ve been
dead for as many years
as they’ve been interested
in grinding hips with
other corpses
like themselves
I have no problem
with growing older as
I’m long since resigned that
the sweet young
things I so adored are
old brittle miseries showing
their true faces at last
I don’t have to look at them
if I don’t want to
& I don’t but
I have to watch my
son
I have to watch all
interest & curiosity
& pure joy flake
away into a series
of surly poses
which may or may not
amuse the people to whom
he sells himself
into slavery as a
(we hope)
Responsible Adult.
 |
| I took my children’s passage into tweenhood hard. It tore me apart seeing that innocence and joy of play go. Fortunately, they grew up to be great adults, so there was a happy ending to this. Still, you miss those children. You only have them for such a short while. |
From the forthcoming collection Nymphomagic Electroshock and Other Middle-Aged Complaints.
Copyright © 2003, 2019 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.
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