Selling Out

All you want from me
is the traditional big noise
and words that echo our social agreements.

All I want from you
is to have you listen to me,
even if I’m being quiet.

I don’t walk the bar,
I don’t windmill or throw scissor kicks.
It’s been years since I needed to pull those tricks.

You call this “selling out.”
I call this learning
that slogans sell coffee and condoms

but rarely knowledge,
at least of anything deeper
than what’s obvious

and black and white, and now
that I’m gray I’m relentless
in being gray, living gray.

Gray is the sound of a voice
that’s talked too much
for one life but can’t stop,

and I don’t need it but
I’d love it if you’d lend an ear.
Leave the kids their acrobatic life, their easy chants

and simple slang.  I think I’ve got something
to say to the gray out there,
and I’m not going to shout

about how necessary I am,
or how important this is.
I think it’s good, but I leave that to you

to figure out.

Tags: poems, poetry, meditations, age