Age 10 slough. Age twenty slough.
Age thirty slough.
Age forty and fifty slough
and so on.
Age sixty was a mighty shedding,
the polished scales
rattling in the very teeth of death.
Wriggling skins, some actual skins,
much metaphorical molt,
ephemeral epithelial layers of self.
Shadow buzzards;
those gormandizing birds
that exfoliate entropy,
they that aid the slip-sliding away
of all pivotal and transitional days,
they now sing my late peeling songs.
Enough. Basta!
This year my skin is stuck to word-bones
and only a starving raptor
could peck away this pelt and sheathing,
and not yet
not while I still have skin in the game.
Surefooted, sure fisted,razor tough
If I should fight that war again
I would want one for the going rough
Like yourself,
Fair and fractured
When the friendship slough
No claim to be a paragon of anything
Just an average man in your own eyes
While I hoisted you like a kite
Above naseberry trees and bush
Above the gormandizing sea
Above the Compound's red mud
Carrying the archeological memory
Of man's life like a sud
A mere consequence of a theory's lie
It was your mating urge that first
Lured you into the systems net
Thereafter your life became troubled
Wandering around the wilderness of regret
Framed like a pirate's ghost
Stereotyped and labeled
I still do not think you guilty of their crime
Your demonization came before your destruction
And when you died
I cried and cried at such a useless end
My fearless friend would never be at my back again
But tears will water pain, and still brings nothing back.
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