if we were old men

If we were old men

We could spend rocking-chair afternoons

In a sediment of dust

Stroking immense beards of loam

The architecture of our bones defiled

By hideous skin

That never fit the shape of our dreams

The very old and the very young

Do not usually say much to each other

And everyone else is much too busy

So we could sit, gloaming in the shade

Quietly typing in our quiet old-man way

Horrible toes made monstrous with hornlike nails

Coiled talons of sciatica

Quietly, painfully typing

In our quiet old-man blogs

We could float in congealed dust and stale sunshine

Bog bodies in the anaesthetizing mud

Of soon to be forgotten

Pop-cultural references and punchlines

To jokes written to advertise obsolete products

We would be entirely free

To select the fibres we wished to drape ourselves in

And no one would notice when we slipped between the

Timbers of our rockers into

Peals of inexplicable laughter.