Prelude to Fifty

Not sure who reads this anymore, and also whether it is wise to post unpublished poetry here. However, this piece is more pensive than publishable, so I'll just leave it here.

PRELUDE TO FIFTY

The pen feels odd in the hand.
A decade crumbles like bark
stripped from the tree.
It's not another birthday poem,
it's the anticipation of one.

Fifty seems more final.
More than half of a life,
unless you plan on becoming
a centenarian.

These could be my final words.
A glass bites my lips,
the lager limps
into my mouth.
I remember being proud at 18:
No beer for me, just
One Five One rum -
real man's drink.
Foolish me.
How to imagine
a parallel life
constructed
of other choices?

Even my handwriting has grown old.
Once crisp and legible, age has
made it lazy (my hand) and I just
let the ball point it's way across
the page.

Volumes of thoughts
Pages of poems,
shipped across the continent
and scanned into the cloud.
Like taking a scalpel
and cutting out a pound of flesh
and sealing it away.
Amazing -
the blocks of paper that
captured a decade and a half
and all that people
will care to find
memorialize my Facebook page.

It is a testament
to waste.
No one will learn
Just go on living
Scrawling indecipherable lines
to be forgotten.

~ ~ ~

Brooklyn, June 26, 2017