Battle-ready blues

Armed and ready we face one another
and hope the chinks go unnoticed.
Ticking forward into equipment lists,
backed with canteens of pre-made phrase soup,
adamant that the other should cede first.

And somewhere a grenade pin drops
out of the bottom of a sweet memory
gone cold.

For My Grandmother

She was a jiving powerhouse of smiles
and deep laughter, her hugs furnaces,
enveloping grandchildren in pure adoration,
spilling attitude over the brim of bejeweled glasses.

How little time makes of everything she was.
It chips and chafes and rubs her edge away.
She moves now with no more spring in her gait,
her smiles uncertain, her eyes searching for recognition,
and what was once a shoulder to lean on
has become one of defeated acceptance
and we struggle to hold on to as much of her as we can,
before that, too, fades away.

We love her still, and she loves us still,
and somewhere in between the fumbled memories
she grins at us still, these ever-diminishing footholds
to the future, and when she leaps it is us who will need
to catch our balance, catch our breath,
and go on loving her, living for her,
remembering her for who she was.

Idiocies of Youth

I am young with many places to go,
people to know and meet,
mistakes to make and identities to fake.
And thus I am not concerned if
any of these young others
find much in me; if they don't,
then it is likely I will not find much
in them, either.

There is no time of life more perfect
to be a blind fool as your late teens and early twenties,
forgiven the oversights of adulthood
because you're a rookie and
not pinned with the dismissal of adolescence,
you become the most ignorant important people
in the world. It's true.

I've seen that look and attitude before;
that insecurity that comes with thinking
that life needs to be mapped out early
and then carried into fruition like some
high school school project that's graded;
or that careless wear-and-tear-free mug
that comes with believing that youth keeps
everything else, including danger, at bay,
and that stupidity is a condition
that must be crashed into head-on
like bumper cars driven by irresponsible drunks,
driving the real wheel of life as carelessly as
they would the fake car in the arena.

If I ever get called on being a novice,
I can spout that nonsense about having
a very reasonable excuse for being less-than:
"I am young, what do I know? Let me off the hook
so that one day my rash pigheadedness
will somehow mature into a calm wisdom
full of grace and understanding."

We forget, sometimes, that youth
does not mean idiocy,
that inexperience does not excuse
incompetence for being decent.