Man

 Man

 

I read ancient verse which someone

once wrote:

what’s more, my son you’ll be a man

his claim composed in rhyming couplets,

conditionals, and one long sentence

like incarceration, 

a prison, where bars and fences

are punctuation –

but maybe if you eat, shoot and leave

there’s no hope of being reprieved.

Anyway, that morning,

I’d already been lightly toasted,

boss-tossed and rolled in sesame seeds,

pineapple pushed,

coffee ground and roasted -

I thought it’s time he took his turn,

I’d deploy a didactic tone,

matter of fact, firm,

didn’t want a boy’s ears to burn,

after all, so, I brought him into my office

to check his offensive data.

This happened on your watch, I said,

some veteran naval metaphor or other,

because I’d done my time,

thought Kipling would approve the line,

but who am I kidding?

His face slowly turns shades of lobster

newly chucked into boiling pan,

and I am witness

to the boy that cooks inside the man,

suited, booted

and as needled as the tiepin,

that’s holding him altogether.

How easy is it to ruffle feathers?

Just ask this old man, who’s seen it all,

watch a pigeon’s breast swell

in just cause, in righteous indignation –

and if there’s any more self-inflation,

he will cuss unforgivably, burst,

shoot, leave and abandon station.

But, for all that, the solution’s divined,

takes a little patience and time

rather than the twitching hazel rod,

and I give old Kipling a nod.

Later he returns triumphant, victorious,

his solid state of man glorious,

I take him out, share a beer.

And, sitting back,

I recalled that man who wrote verse,

poured all his wisdom

into an old leather purse,

laced it up for his boy like a corset -

and now they say maybe

he’s sexist for all of that,

there’s hidden tragedy when kids look back

entrenched and tear into it

with their teeth in braces,

get A. I. to kick over the traces,

claim he’s obsolete, should be cancelled,

nothing worthy to dismantle

or deconstruct - he never visited

their dark places of the inside,

ancient guile should no longer guide

or speak on modern condition,

know nothing of clinical depression;

ask if he's still fit for English lessons.