Age Old Age

Old age.
I am a young man,
was a young man
filled with brim and stone,
not troubled by the hoardes of death
or chained by unfriendly arthitus.
My new veins greying in wicker chapters
as the pages turn less
and fade from cherry view.

An age old bag of bones
seeping from the lather of youth,
watching new chicks grow
as I wilt and ferment froth
nearing my extiction.
I, who was once in bloom,
replaced by fresher breeds of rabid babes.
content in withered nettles

Chief no more!
Of a venerable vintage,
bless my old testament saddled with its crooked time.
See the girls, how soft they glow
see the boys,
And I, a mean whiskered gentleman riding on
with his antique bag of skin...

©Stteven Francis poems 2014

The Death of One Who Never Was

He or sometimes She
would never feel the salt but still we mourn
as if She or sometimes He
had lived a thousand lives.

All pains lie with Him
or Her,
the bullets and heartache,
ills and poisoned luck.

So here's to you
as tongueless hoardes come mute
to sail heavy, sometimes awkward glances
over thy dark frame in sandy, morphine jaws.
Eyes closed yet alive to clocks
and inches,
rolling to tea and shop fronts
where memoirs dragged by chariots of ages
come to fall under sleepy overtures
and choirs of death.

You,
the friend to skulls
lover of gin gallows and looking to the blind,
you come to a hundred deaths.

@Steven Francis poems 2014