You are dismissive of the green shoot
as if a bud beneath your bellicose boot,
thinking the Spring sapling so unwise
while extolling your own embittered lies.
What good is your “vast experience”
of living a life so foolishly,
decades of having no keen sense
except in behaving mulishly?
Your skull is a closed, stagnant pool
as you preach to the world, from upon your stool
isolated in a dusty, cobwebbed corner
of the world, and now, having seen so little
in your long life, you belittle others, as a scorner
of young minds you wish to whittle
until their hearts are as haggard and hollow
as your heart, hoping they will follow
your bitter byways of disappointment,
thinking they will chafe at their own optimism
until the road rash cannot be cooled by ointment,
leaving that terrible scar of self-righteous solipsism.
A fool remains a fool, always and forever,
if he blames the world for his geriatric frown,
for he never reflects on himself, his foibles, nor ever
the “truths” that chime as bells on his motley crown.
The young are creeks growing unto rivers
flowing headlong, happily, into what is not known,
whereas you are a stagnant pond that shivers
without going anywhere, alone and overgrown
with the algae of age, complacency, self-contained conceit—
duckweed-thick with your own congealed notions,
or else a bog of decaying adages overripe unto peat,
full of yourself and your own acidic emotions.
You are, in short, a bog man, mummified in your mind,
dug up from top-down turf, withered and bitter and blind.
Top-Down Ageism
Published
Tangleroot And Tressknot 