Planet of the Aged

From here in the milky dusk

where the fuselage of our lives

rusts and oxidizes, like the jalopies

of the 1940s and even the word

jalopy itself, decrepit and impotent

as an old can of Calumet,

we have become the carbuncles

on the pads of our fingers

and the sides of our toes.

We have become the cataracts

that spin and gristle,

candied on the lenses of our eyes.

Some of us are growing shrouds

to hide the raw sores that gather

and stick to our skin like friends.

We are a mute container of dwarves,

shelves of apple people, evicted from earth’s dearth

of astringent gold chicks who perk and step

and perk and step in heels of glass,

evicted from the celestial zenith of our lives,

rubbed from the instamatic photos

that mirrored the us that we always are,

and always were, now groomed

to wander the hallways like woozy moles,

strapped into chairs and beds

so our feet forget what running in grass feels like.

We still sing, some of us, like mottled warblers,

the rest are a colony of sleepers, sleeper-cars,

attached at the midriff by our injuries

and our memories;

by the knock-knock knocking

of the knock-knock jokes

marbling about in our heads;

knock knock,

who’s there?

Lettuce.

Lettuce who?

Lettuce in, it’s cold outside!

We are still buttercups and daffodils,

we preen, we swim, and when we swim

we are quick as fish.

At night we take each other’s hands

and descend invisible staircases.

We glitter about

in a ballroom beneath you,

jeweled combs in our hair

and orchids in our buttonholes,

brooches pinned to our blouses,

not with slips of paper to remind us

of the names we were given long ago,

or the ones by which you have come

to know us, but the names

we always imagined most as ours—

we spin, we dance,

we fall into each other’s arms,

we fancy ourselves

real as each of you, asleep above us,

tinkling and laughing

all night long, all night long.