The perfect disguise: wearied hanging flab
of someone who has lost and gained
and lost and gained and lost and gained
bulges at half-tucked washed-out shirt,
shedding skin, still attached but drooping,
decayed, reptile-eyed terminal stare,
breathes a lizard’s mating rattle,
weak non-smile that beams debilitation,
jittery hands clinging to a metal walker,
rescue ropes bobbing at water’s surface,
lugubriously, thirty pounds strapped
to each thigh and slithering through deep mud
in concentric circles of power-tied lawyers
and prison guards—camouflage and hunting dogs—
the weakest and most vulnerable of old men,
too frail to force desire on anyone.
.
Copyright 2020 Marc Jampole
