Free Verse
Inconsequent
Calamity
Men in suits
carrying cardboard boxes out of a bankrupt
finance house, it isn’t money they carry out but private
belongings, picture of wife and kids and executive toys,
so what do I care? In the basement where there are no
gleaming windows and walls are cement grey, damp and
unadorned, the janitor sits, he lives from one pay check to
the next, won’t be paid this week though;
maybe he should join the navy and see the world, but at
sixty five it isn’t a wise thing to do. But he has, unlike
the suits upstairs, been unemployed before, he can, if he
must, sweep the streets of New York. The TV’s glare and
sympathy is not on him, the world of middle class men
worries about their own future not the janitor’s or his son
who is on his third tour of duty in Iraq
Senryu
Now that I’m old
No one seeks or wants my love
Except my dog
The girl at the till
Doesn’t see me as a person
I’m just an old face
Graveyards are
places
Where old men recall their past
And remember mum
The fear of oldness
Can only be assuaged
By senility
