a little rice and
onion skin
stick to the bottom
of my feet
as i carry out empty
bottles bulging
in a garbage bag
clinking their uselessness
like leftover notes
of dizzy gillespie
or mozart or some
thing muscling mulch
under a house
he handed over those things
associated with old age,
he gave them to me in a shoe box
said here these are yours
i opened it up and first saw baldness,
it was small and felt like a raisin;
next i picked out wisdom and fear,
held them jingling in my hand
like loose change;
there was knotted wool of crankiness,
skeletal shrinkage, a new hip,
and then more baldness!
what is this?
he said it's not just any old age,
it's your old age:
there's a dank room in amongst all that
smelling of boiling cabbages and talk-back radio;
there's a load of teeth, forty park benches,
and like rice a bagful of horse races;
on loneliness i had inscribed
"forever yours, truly" –
i threw the box back at him!
screamed i don't want it!
it fell and out across the floor
flopped three canaries of yearning,
each quickly on to feet and chirping,
and of course there was no hammer in the box,
three songs all at once a yearning for youth
and a yearning for death and even a song
for the perfect drug
walking away
i told him i'd rather your recipe
for potato salad,
or that brown coat you never wear,
but in my hands i had the box,
i didn't want it, but there you have it,
the way i carried it
people must have thought
i held a bomb