Once you were lush
Form sweet and ripe
Skin satin, elastic
All poreless and tight
Now bones are weak
Cracked, brittle and thin
Womb used and dry
No more collegan
Dismissed and discarded
As if aging a sin
Punished for wrinkles
That show where you've been
Old coins yield no currency
They're weathered and bare
You're transparent, invisible
Like you're not even there
But I know I have value
My wisdom has worth
I'm still viable, tangible
I still walk this earth
A new day is dawning
So let me join in
I still count, I matter
With less collegan
Categories:
ageism, age, angst, beauty, conflict,
Form: Rhyme
Treated so cold
Sought job, told no
Too old, she's deemed
Date written: 01/25/2021
Categories:
ageism, age, discrimination, jobs, woman,
Form: Than-Bauk
The heart of the matter, is age.
More specifically, my age.
I'm too old to assign blame,
there's no longer any point.
The 'me' there is will have to stay,
growing older, devouring energy,
till the myth of the Mass is complete,
and the first law takes me home.
I have age induced cynicism,
It's fatal to dreams.
Categories:
ageism, age, angst, death,
Form: Free verse
The invitations are already out
for our local community dialogue
without need to shout or pout
about another straight white male monologue.
In fact,
as fiction,
we have taken a nearly unprecedented step
of inviting straight white males
over the maturing age of thirty
to show up in droves
to listen,
and not to speak.
Yes,
you have heard this invitation clearly
discriminating not against Business As Usual
but for Busyness as Listening.
Once we have our multicultural plan in place
for this local health racing space,
we may invite our silent witnesses
to share with us what they
and we, perhaps,
have learned
about wisdom voices of non-elites
fully empowered
while elite over-voiced macro/microphones
remain reverently on mute.
Categories:
ageism, community, conflict, culture, destiny,
Form: Political Verse
Red squirrels, fluffy tails, clamoring up a tree.
Chattering with their cousins, in a group of sixty-three.
Gray squirrels, brown glittering eyes, to almost black.
Staying to themselves, in four hollow tree stumps in the back.
Making fun, laughing at, poking fun at each other.
Just because they are a different color?
One albino squirrel, seen easily at night.
Hiding her peach fur, staying completely out of sight.
Mother owl watches them run around willy nilly.
Thinking how crazy they are for acting oh so silly.
All the same species, she thinks, they should be all together.
They stay up in the tree, chattering loudly, no matter what the weather.
In groups of red or gray or brown, standing haughtily away from other colors.
Is it not a shame they do not treat their entire species like sisters and brothers?
Categories:
ageism, 10th grade, 11th grade,
Form: Free verse
A baby was born with carotene skin and left
on a Senator’s doorstep in Washington.
This neonate’s pigment was reddish orange,
bright too, unusually garish.
How will we label it? The lawmakers fretted
when the Senator took it to the Capitol Building
to try and find it a home.
It is not black, not white, not caramel, not pink, not yellow.
It is not an albino, it is carrot-colored.
How will it pay taxes? A Senator married to an I.R.S.
agent wondered. “It will not be able to fill out a W-2 properly.”
What will we label it? The senators all worried, crowding around for a look.
“How about you label her baby?” a visiting four-year-old child suggested.
Categories:
ageism, 10th grade, 11th grade,
Form: Free verse
Absurd situations amuse me; they get written into poems.
Foolish generalizations about groups of people infuriate me;
they also get written into poems.
All Irish, all whites, all English, all red-heads, there is no all.
It makes not a whit of sense.
But the one thing that has gotten my goat faster than any other thing?
“All women over forty are dried up.” Yes, I know. It is crazy, but I heard it.
When I was forty-four, twenty-two years ago, and it still irritates me.
When I think of it, which is not often, I relish in the thought that the man who used it is incarcerated now, using all kinds of other silly sayings,
that probably get him whooped daily.
He loved to generalize groups of people. “All men in their twenties,
all Swedes, all people who wear overalls, all women who wear gloves…”
I soak myself in friendly waters, not worrying about this stuff usually.
Tonight I slathered my worn-out self in a luxurious lavender bath when I thought of it again.
It is weird how the most random stupid things will pop into your head, irritating you at odd times.
Categories:
ageism, age, bullying, conflict, hello,
Form: Light Verse
Angel?
Demon?
Faerie?
Witch?
Random labels
None apply.
We are all changelings
Pure and simple
Or complicated and unpure
Depending upon the mood, the moment, and our momentous events.
Divorce, death, cancer, car wrecks, they all take a toll on us.
Changing us completely in one second.
Giving us a perspective we never had before.
Showing us that our opinions are not the same now.
Sometimes switching to the opposite side in one second.
When we become the needy, we stop bad-mouthing the freeloaders.
When we realize how close we are to homeless, we maybe develop a little more empathy for them.
There are life-changing events happening every day.
We may go into some of them kicking and screaming,
But we still
Go into them
Changelings that we are.
Angel? Demon? Faerie? Crone? We’d best leave labels well and good alone.
Categories:
ageism, people, perspective, philosophy,
Form: Free verse
a pervasive bareness
walks like an honest lie
on the road to truth the bone white marble
god oversees the planet green’s woes
a climate change of heart its manipulations
its intrigues
something remains unsaid when i look back
i think again before i disappear between
bread and god whosover is stronger
than me i remained unchained distrusting
the rules laid down by hoaxes now i
am not me
i am not a god i am not a thought only
innocence of an unopened bud.
Satish Verma
Categories:
ageism, artgod, god, planet,
Form: I do not know?
a pervasive bareness
walks like an honest lie
on the road to truth the bone white marble
god oversees the planet green’s woes
a climate change of heart its manipulations
its intrigues
something remains unsaid when i look back
i think again before i disappear between
bread and god whosover is stronger
than me i remained unchained distrusting
the rules laid down by hoaxes now i
am not me
i am not a god i am not a thought only
innocence of an unopened bud.
Satish Verma
Categories:
ageism, adventure, allegory, angst, animals,
Form: I do not know?