Twenty Third Doldrum Poem by Luke J. Holt

the new man is a turbulent child
as he sheds the gone molts of clumsy boyhood.
for what man may hide in a model train?
what father confides in a plush lamb?
but now dont i seem a tad bit the indignant raincoat boy?
wearing a wreath of calenders
((think flag footballer))
stomping an unused, manly boot at the bones of a dying world

laughing at Scooby-Doo, the news, the blues. i hate my newspaper shoes, i am twenty-three, just wait to see me lose.

i get people stoned so they ll laugh at my jokes
i traded all my bolo ties for humor
i wrote prescriptions for hysterical poisons and remedies on jokebook leaves.
girls think im edgy till they see me stub my toe on a crematorium
i was the last to be asked to play/dance/run/go/have/visit/join/make,

beards are bulldozed and reoccur
twenty-three is too old for a girl who speaks like a squeaky chime, a china face, lips like the ginger blossoms in my sushi tray
((to blanch the ashy taste and lonely crud from my tongue))
im still of age to achieve, to attain, to posture and to assimilate.
but i have frittered the years of secret kisses and Abe Lincoln allowances, of passing the rites that sit in brain/gully/chasm/heart squawking gargoyles evoking those pivots vastly behind.
my teenage death was revoked upon my adult birth
and late to this game and lame though i am
but only because a shiny page says
no dogma or leaflet will tell you the virtue of my facets,
i have long hair
((you could say it takes a sliver of vanity at least to do it right))
i am the wolf turd Christmas gift bound for the girl in every woman with 1990s princess dreams
i am the worst version of us so far
me and the rest of us
I am twenty three