Day: June 29, 2023

remainderedremaindered

we babies of the boom, now middle-aged, overweight, out of what were once our so-alluring shapes, now with spouses gone we wrinkle and sag. we sometimes flock together in the evenings, laughing over dinner and dry red wine. once we would have paired and been naked by midnight—three a.m. at the latest—now we take our leavings at ten, returning alone to our separate homes where we will later be illuminated by television’s flickering glow, watching a fantasy world in which we no longer see reflections of ourselves. we awaken early in the dark of our narrow beds, get up, it’s time to feed the animals, put out the trash.

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

the aging of male desirethe aging of male desire

what was once done with so little
thought given other than to the doing of it

now done (whenever possible)
fraught with consideration

with a strong desire to hold down by the wrists

to bite and to stab
to scream in rage against death

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

“It is a vast achievement, the surest ideal, perhaps, to render the condition of men a little less servile, a little less painful; but let the mind detach itself for an instant from material results, and the difference between the man who marches in the van of progress and the other who is blindly dragged at its tail ceases to be very considerable.” – Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee