That Mean Old Shadow

Written
2010

 He follows me everywhere

              spreading his meanness

              all over the place.

       He has a name, which I learned

              as his meanness

              got steadily worse.

       He picks words

              from my ears and eyelashes.

       He robs me of faces.

       He robs me of names.

       He robs me of names

              which go with familiar faces.

      Thankfully when people note

              my age and vacant eyes,

              they tell me who they are.

       “I am Linda Sauce.

        We had a torrid affair

              after I left my

              second husband.”

       “You were on my

              dissertation committee.”

       It is even meaner and crueler

              that as a lifetime gardener

              I have lost the names

              of plants and flowers.

       So if you see me on “A’ as

              I am walking alone,

              I am trying

              the alphabet system 

              to pull up the name.

       Hopefully, I will recall Zinnia

              when I get to “Z.”

       If not, a session with Western Gardens

              may bring it up.

       Then like the sinful 4th grader

              I need to write it on

              the board of my brain

              100 times.

       I keep careful score

              127 plants and 100 blanks.

       What irony.

       The young have nothing

              to remember and have

              a clear memory chip.

       While us old guys have       

              such richness of the past

              stored wherever

              Sadistic Joker Senility hid them.

       Maybe evolution

              will finally beat

              Sadistic Joker Senility.

       After all, this smart

               old MAC can find

              anything that was ever entered

              into its memory bank.

       So here is to cyber genetic implanting.

 

Doug Minnis 9/11/2010

             

      

 

 

Notes
I guess he best line is that I forget why I wrote this. Truth is that I do not like a future with more forgetting and senility haunts us all. It was fun to write and there was so much more I could have included.