An old man's row of shoes before me

As an old man I'll need a machine near my bed,
buttons, battery-operated, 6 choices,
Nature's Soothing Sounds, the Sea.
The old man will need a pharmacy bedside, opioids,
a row of 7 kinds of shoes, none for business or parties,
only for arch-comfort; white, tan, slippers,
and a clock nearby, in bold- blood pointers
at Time, to see, Large, ticking, even a Voice.

All the unnatural anti-perspirants and deodorants
to Hit the room, what the old man needs,

The old man needs a TV, a radio with smart old tunes, good newspapers still reaching for sense, No
community papers filled with 24 year old hairdressers,
No piles of alien lives laughing under cellular phones.
No, old men do not need to look, stare, gaze, glaze,
glaze-over like owls looking at the hooters of adolescents.
No tough girls, warrior girls, smashing girls wearing
pierced-jewelry in their tongues, kickboxing girls.
Old men do not call on memories of wrestling vampires.

Old men call forth whatever recollections are tender,
warm, liquid, sensual, quiet, comforting;
memories are not hardbody grand-slam one-nighters

but those that become the spirit of the home, the bone
and flesh of the merciful closeness of nights together.

As an old man I'll need to give up everything
and jump inside for any safety, needing
to lose so much weight to fit the size of old men;
skeletons in tan slacks, elfin shoes full of lifts.
Only days away from the aluminum walkers,
till the doctor says: "now you must give up walking!"

As an old man I will need so many pills
between the sad leafy meals.
I will need to smile wide and clown while I cough
so no one knows I am a beggar in the big streets,
turning away and running from the balding ghost
that Nature has reckoned me to become.

As the old man I will need the odd toys near the bed,
the bathroom, the lounger, toys that burrow the hours,
clickers and tissues propping me up
against my becoming a ridiculous spectacle.

It is Deep. unfathomed, bottomless; becoming an old man.

Without some lingering mastery, it is an inferno;
looking out the window at the blue-pie sky, sky and sun
now only for the dancing of hairdressers,
warrior girls, and babies with tattoos; a music

and signs an old man can no long carry.

The old man's life, lived mostly still, in silence,
moving carefully into a room, walking carefully,
regular early hours,head down looking at pictures of youth
as if they were gurgling like water, moving
toward sewers, slipping, with the mild force
of gravity, through the holes in the grating.

With a lingering mastery, even in silence,
it is possible to believe there is such a thing, in ancient life,
as Winning...

stanley j, age 74, january 19, beloved husband of Jean, veteran, dear father of, dearest grandfather of, dear son of, loving companion, and poet

^

Biography

Since appearing in Electric Acorn #9, I find I'm still a first generation American; father born in Dublin, and mother raised in old Leningrad. Since moving from Detroit,Michigan to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1995 I've written and published several books,including New Mexico Haiku, Knife-Edged Urban Millennium Haiku, Loss of Heart : Old White Guys' Millennium Haiku, and a book of essays about the American Southwest (which has nothing to do with haiku), Experiencing New Mexico,all available through Amazon.com or ABEbooks.com. Along with some other projects, I work as an online antiquarian book dealer, and in the evenings under the great New Mexico sky I am sometimes found lingering at the eyepiece of my Meade telescope, in a state of awe and wonder ,pursuing some kind of one-to-one, hands-on relationship with some neighborly galaxy.