Winter smoke

Swirling dejavou: the smoke of salad youth,

from constalations and galaxies and hubris.

I haven’t smelled it in decades.

Crystaline light and conquering chance

I think I smell it again.

Big Bad Bitterman

I was a child spoiled rotten,

Now a man by ill gains gotten.

Down paths less trodden,

I traipse frowning and sodden.

Friends once cheerful and rowdy,

Now remote and cloudy.

“Gotta go” vowed he.

“Never mind” cried she.

A silent spring now lies ahead.

After bad dreams and soiled bed,

The future portends we’ll be fed,

Thin gruel and constant dread.

Remember mother gray with cheer?

By then she’d lost her inner ear,

And father gloried in the austere,

Dispensing judgements cavalier.

Devotion to the great vocation?

“Leave your mark!”, a consolation?

Soon the wonder of creation

is so much bloviation.

All around the wheels are spinning.

Youth’s clever bondage is grinning.

High five and drunken singing

songs of mating and love clinging.

I recall my thick brown hair

and eating sweet lard in my laire.

Swimming in the moonlight bare

Posing here, posing there.

Affirmations we had to shout

and ape the apes clowning about.

Now meek wisdom and tender doubt

are cold comfort for this lout.

Memories of joy, are there some?

let me think before I succumb

to inner pals that call me bum

“You’re too dumb, just stay glum”.