My ***** human lips touch their wine bottle
and they shudder like old women
whose propriety has been offended.

I think they must have been like me, once,
when they were young inside, however
many lifetimes ago that was for them.

They began their journey as I did,
full of sacred fire
and holy dreams.
I wish I had been who I am now,
in those lost times.

Discussing Plato and justice with fellow idealists
upon an Abuela's porch;
I would have been at home with them.

But there is no time for truth now,
no time for holy writ,
now that they have a mortgage, and investments, and me.
Ideas and the will that accompanies them
fall away
with the accumulation of wealth and age.

So now we are at odds, we new torch-bearers
and the old truth-seekers
because life has got the better of them, or they it.