alive and kicking

1
Isn’t anywhere the bus stops
a bus stop? Here’s the thing about youth,
distilled in neon dew drops
& elementary children, a buzzing
electric, with the businessmen
commuting dead-suit to work:
it will set you free. it will set you,
free. There is a baritone murmuring from
the back pew, an objection raised
then put out to black, some victim
of a bishop hat snuff. Here’s
the thing about youth,
it’s all liberal and lively
until tax time.

2
And another,
it’s not as if this arthritis occurred
magically, some marauding Merlin of
calcium deficiency. Last words
kids: drink your milk,
crack those chestnut knuckles loud,
& get your lazy ass out
of that seat on the bus
because my postwar pelvis
is the bedrock of America
and it hurts like hell.