Old Men | Brandon Shane

The old men hang on their porches
as dying crows stare at the world
on rooftops, electrical wire, asking
why they've been allowed to live
while others have been taken;
they have not been healthy, enriched,
or even responsible, but some inexplicable
tune has kept their bones dancing.

They read newspapers in the morning,
coffee hot enough to scorch any beast,
runs down their throat like a misty river,
chased down by a ball of grease,
and the young born in a corroding time
have begun to grow resentful
that they will not enjoy such delights,
and that cancer will take them,
if not war in a foreign land.

They have become still, like frogs
on lily pads, or statues hidden
in forests that only the locals know.
Lawyers are as fictional as novels;
they will not fight litigation or a fist,
nor carry any interest in self-defense.

Some nights, there are dreams of bars,
and lipstick imprinted on their cheeks,
menus of restaurants decades shuttered,
and the café they met their buried lover,
while listening to Ravi Shankar, or Chopin,
the vibrations of walking down a busy dock
hearing and seeing a great four-sided ocean,
the waves, salted gust, engines gurgling petrol,
fear that some creature might breach;
it all returns to a white candle, a solemn night,
staring as the young gloss over their souls.

I used to rage, now fantasize of being smooth,
and avert my eyes from places unexplored.
Looking at the ground for answers of divinity;
I know the many lined koi waiting to die,
pounding to be freed; hoping to experience
something that may not exist.

Brandon Shane is a poet, born in Yokosuka Japan. He is a writing instructor, and part time horticulturist. You can see his work in the Berlin Literary Review, Acropolis Journal, Grim & Gilded, Belfast Review, Marbled Sigh, RIC Journal, Heimat Review, Ink in Thirds, Dark Winter Lit, among many others. He would later graduate from Cal State Long Beach.