Poem of the Day 01.09.23

old man with a walker blocking my path
out of the grocery store

he’s moving an inch a minute

because i’m stupid
i’m carrying a week’s worth of groceries
and other sundry items

because i told my wife i’d be fine
stay home, i’ll be right back, i said

my arms are burning
i have a mile walk back to the apartment
and i should’ve pissed before i left

this guy’s hardly moving at all
and there’s no way around him

i’m forty-eight
he’s maybe seventy-five

that’s only twenty-seven years between us

i remember twenty-seven years ago
like it was yesterday

1995
i was twenty-one
knew where every quarter-draft night was

and face-planted my weekends
in the parking lots of clubs and bars
all over the pittsburgh area

twenty-seven-years
is a snap of the finger
when you reach a certain age

i look at this guy scrapping along the pavement
and wonder if this is my fate

if the bad food and booze don’t get me first

they say you have a choice
you either grow old or die

somedays i can’t tell the difference
between the two

maybe i should be happy
that i’m forty-eight

can carry a week’s worth of groceries
and can probably hold my piss until i get home

but i think of twenty-one
i think of seventy-five

and how i’m stuck
in between the both of them

like i’m stuck behind this old man

time’s plaything
for as long as existence will have me

and the old man with the walker
blocking my path out of the grocery store

scrapes and waits
and scrapes and waits
and scrapes and waits
for an eternity

time is irrelevant to him now

he has eaten up his time
and spit it back out onto mine

where my arms feel like jelly
the ground meat is turning warm in the sun

and i’m no longer sure
i’m making it home

before my goddamned bladder explodes.