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Mike Essig Mar 2016
Pull down thy vanity.*

Woe be unto you. Sighing children. Left behind.
Make the best of it. Stand by your Brand. Freelance.
Start-ups of futility. Write content for six blogs.
Wake up and smell the copy. Serve drinks.
In three bars. Kludge together the rent. Part-time.
Hustle. Hurry. Make of virtue of activity. Be productive.
Convince yourself busyness is productive. Deliver.
Productivity as Divine. Ten steps to improve.
Seven ways to better. Fifteen hacks to boost.
Means of production stolen long before you.
You are cormorants with rings tight on your necks.
The truth shall make you work. Harder and longer.
Believe you are on your way. You are. To getting old.
Old and broke and lonely. To wondering what went wrong.
Your children will disdain you and the world you made.
Same story told with tattoos and piercings. Good luck.
Mike Essig Mar 2016
Lover, please find me.
I'm over sixty!

   ~mce
Thank you, Lenny, but it was time for an update.
Mike Essig Mar 2016
An aged man is but a paltry thing,*

Bones awake groaning. Sing the body decrepit. Don't moan, Agonize!
Neurons snap, crackle, plop. Locate head. Try to find shoes.
Dreams dismissed. Day bleeds into sameness. Relentless boredom.
Tread the doomed bog of Old with attentions. ***** traps.
Each step the future. Abandon all dope. Mortality worm gnaws.
Denentiasand *****. Tumorgators lurk. Snappers break hips.
EDacondas slither. Limply. Lungconstrictors hide in tar. Gasp.
Peer through blurry eyes. Portage cataracts. Slow streams drip.
Lust peters out. Prostate yourself. Up becomes down. Flexile.
Shelf life gets shorter. Discard after. Only expiration Dates.
So what if life is ebbing. Reality is an unhappy meal. Ignore.
     Be a clueless American. Slap on a big grin. No fears!
     Pretend to enjoy the swamp of these Golden Years.
Mike Essig Feb 2016
One demagogue, two ayatollahs,
a socialist fossil, a withered feminist.

The best of 360 million people?

Thanks so much, Amerika, for the
right to vote for such imposing choices.

I know I won't show up.

Anarchists know the lesser of two evils
is still and only ever can be… evil.

Enjoy the farce.
   ~mce
Mike Essig Feb 2016
The wind is part of the process/The rain is part of the process.

Gesamtwerk.* Parts making whole from parts.
Language. Alphabet, words, phrases, sentences
create a total work based firmly upon... alphabet.
Throw in grammar, punctuation, syntax. Anything possible.
To be. Verb not noun. Moves beyond syntax. To real.
Poet as tinker. No matter. Poems as language. Do.
Right language, correct path, shining mountain.
Seeker sits. Solitude. Transcends journey. World announced.
End as beginning. Form. Gestalt. The beginning of Awe.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Feb 2016
wake up and forgive your wrinkles...*

Women. Drink cultural Kool-Aid. Believing it.
Grey is old is ugly is useless. So very wrong.
Not fruit for one picking. Fecund. Many harvests.
Fifty is not over. Nor 60. Simply is. Immortal desire.
Time makes changes in everyone. In X and in Y.
Every human age has its own allure. Wake up.
Each woman, any moment, beautiful in her own way.
     Lovely laughter, soul, thoughts, feelings, touch.
     Forgive the lines around your eyes and such.
     Worthy of desire. Desirable. Desired. Much.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Feb 2016
Seeing a future that does not exist.
Dead child. Lost mother. Empty cradle.
Loveless heart. Soul minus zero. No companion.
Friends far away. Leaden morning stillness.
Noun without verb. Lonely adjective. Period.
Days upon days upon days of endless same.
Dysfunctional GPS. Maps that lead nowhere.
Rooms of the void. House of many sorrows.
Untold story without ending. Unwritten poems.
Homeless veterans. All soldiers at night. Fear.
Imaginary kisses. Touches of air. Lost caresses.
Knowing that everything that comes next is nothing;
     knowing that you really know that.

  ~mce
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