I Know Tired by Guinotte Wise

I know tired. I feel like a good old chevy truck
with about 750,000 miles on it, all the corners
rounded off, running good some days, a little
off on others. I walk ten thousand steps a day

to keep my fitbit fed, and it does seem to help
keep my chassis rolling, scooping muck from
barn gutters, cutting trees that press against it
rubbing red paint from barn sides, one has to

keep this stuff at bay, old age be damned and
frailty too, the golden years those retirement
buzzards call it, have you planned and saved
enough? Free app, click here, we have your

best years at heart, for a percentage of what's
left, see the pictures of the lake and the happy
couple holding hands and gazing at the shore
opposite, which might be death, who knows

Will your money last until you die, is another
tactic, I guess aimed at millennials who may
not have any, living as they do in the parents'
basement famously or infamously but life its

own self is a scary proposition, shitfire I had
no idea at thirty I'd live another half century
and I might make a hundred before that long
and very restful dirt nap, done some dying

with my living, know what it's like to look at
scythe and hoodie over my shoulder chasing
me through the trees and vines, but dropping
back with mirthless laughter, biding the time

When he gets me I'll go green, no enbalming
fluids for me, just a shroud three feet down
so as to mix microbially, blend in quickly, no
stone with wings, no lead-lined coffin to slow

the process, what am I, going to lay in state
behind some glass, hands folded, doesn't he
look natural? Well he's kakked, there's life
and then there's kakked, both as natural as

you can get. Birth. Life. Death. Nabisco. Is
that how it goes? No, something Latin at the
end. No priest to wave hands in a lazy cross
Couple biker friends, I outlived the others..

Guinotte Wise writes and welds steel sculpture on a farm in Resume Speed, Kansas. His short story collection (Night Train, Cold Beer) won publication by a university press and enough money to fix the soffits. Five more books since. A 5- time Pushcart nominee, his fiction and poetry have been published in numerous literary journals including Atticus, The MacGuffin, Southern Humanities Review,  Rattle and The American Journal of Poetry. His wife has an honest job in the city and drives 100 miles a day to keep it. Some work is at http://www.wisesculpture.com