Many Little Ways to Slay

Help comes in small denominations

When you are old;

Fives and tens and twenties too

Passed on like legacies

Usable and forever mindful

Of a fair exchange between

Effort and age.

~

My left elbow is cyborg but not bionic.

Guess they forgot to hook it up

When they put the steel joint in.

My knees are unreliable

And the distance to my mailbox

Is a killing field.

She comes to fetch my mail from the faraway box,

To traverse the battlements of concrete and stucco

Through the Twilight Zone tangle of identical hallways

That conquer me like dust.

I’m a caricature of old age in an oversized

“I read banned books” t-shirt, knee socks and sandals

Half hiding behind the door

She is young, pretty and Latino

With a darling little boy in tow.

~

If you have to bring your kid to work,

I know where you live.

I sold myself to that same country years ago

When I too couldn’t pay the bills.

We all do what we must do.

~

I remember minimum wage

Like an empty bowl for an empty stomach

Never filled, hollow and hopeless.

Her little boy is quiet beside her and I wonder:

Will he get his fill today?

~

Senators who live on yachts say no

But I will not be their comfort bitch.

I offer above the minimum for her time, and fairly.

Never doing my enemy’s work

Or giving succor to their laws.

~

If those senators had one neck, I would cleave it with a single blow.

There are many ways to slay the beast,

Little and large, death of a thousand cuts or one chop.

A vote, a living wage, a revolution –

We all do what we must do.