An old man sat
and flipped through his
photo album.
He saw his loves
his glories
momentous occassions
squirreled away from
dust.
His eyes swelled with pride
his heart with nostalgia.
He turned to the last page,
a picture of his most
recent birthday.
His face carved by age,
red branches in his eyes
reaching towards his pupils.
and said,
"You had a good life old man".
To his surprise,
the picture answered back,
"Meh, it could have been better".
2 comments:
I kind of wanted to steal a page from Crane, but I don't know.
To be honest with you, it seems like your channeling Bukowski here more than Crane. I think that's because Bukowski was a bitter old man and that's the subject of your poem. This poem very much plays with the idea of regret. People say, including myself, that they have no regrets. I like to believe that life is trial and error (as my poem attests), but some people can't escape the mistakes they had made and wish they could do it over. What I really like here is that the old man you create here seems painfully real and when the poem comes to an end we're hit with the last line which puts the whole poem into a different perspective as a good last line should.
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