Outdated. The Poem

I wrote this kind of quick tonight, for fun.

Outdated

I’m rusty on the edges
Starting to swell
I don’t remember the exact date I fell behind
Maybe it was one step at first
I lagged
Distracted
Probably by something small, relatively
When I glanced up again
I could be on another planet.

I think it was the 80’s I quit running
No, the early 90’s it was.
Oh, who cares?

I lost the ambition.
My hair, oh boy, I just whack it off, bits one night, bits the next,
At least sometimes I’m in front of a mirror, if I bother a glance into it.
My hair’s behind. Way behind. I don’t look like I belong on the sidewalks of today.

I don’t have a cell phone. It’s a money thing with me.
Costs! and my pockets are empty.
I pretend I know the buzz, the newest, the latest, the shiniest.
I had one once for emergencies at least. But it’s dead in a drawer now, too.

I have a couple CD’s I play in the car. I sing wildly, like I can sing, but I can’t.
My two working CD’s, copies somebody sent me of something they like they thought I should like too, they skip now from age, and I skip with ‘em. Have to. Don’t mind, really.

I so rarely primp before a mirror, I bet I couldn’t pick myself out of a lineup.
I think that’s funny. My brothers don’t.

My T-shirts are vintage late 80’s garage sale, with all the holes built in since.
My couch is Goodwill worn thin on the edges.
Don’t sit in that chair there, It belongs to the cats, and is missing things crucial to bear human weight. So don’t sit there, or you’ll be on your butt on the floor, cursing that chair and me, too.

I have sadly failed to update my personal surroundings.

My mattress sits on a warped old board that sits on some grungy cinder blocks.


OK, I have a DVD player. And I know how to use it. Some of the buttons, at least. “Play” and “Eject”. They’re useful buttons. The rest, who cares?

I don’t have time to care about the rest of the buttons. If “Play” works and “Eject” does, too, life is good.

I think software companies think we’re all geeks,
With lots of time on our hands, and good eyes, and an obsessive eagerness to read every fricking detail of the finely printed complicated forty page how to manual for the latest upgrade of some program we never used to begin with, or if we did, just expected it to run once installed, and stumbled into the useful parts and ignored the rest.

Hey Bill Gates, take that, man, if you can take the truth.

I’m not young. I’m crinkled and eccentric and people look away like I’m yesterday’s version 2.0, incompatible.

Thank god. Outdation is a big relief.

I could go on to make the case, but why should I? The case is made.

I can relax while the busy world buzzes on.

One more thing: I once threw a six dollar phone out my fourth floor window. It was an anger thing, over something. Later, I needed to make a call. I went down, collected the bits and pieces, stuck what I could back together, plugged it in and that $6 phone, in several pieces, made the connection.

Cheap, outdated phone survives four story fall--subsequent smash onto pavement, still works. Like me.