Pretending Not To Love Growing Old

Its maddening . I am old now

so far past love, yet you spawn love in me again

when I can do nothing. My wings are clipped

I can only hold you in memory, my eyes cemented

shut with sleep, sitting at the computer campfire

dragging my data across  the screen like a carcass.

You made me laugh.

My face nearly broke it has been so long

I ran to meet you on the eightieth floor Trading Office

I was an interloper , a fraud!! And you thought I was

hysterically inept. You thought I was lovable.

No one has thought me lovable for a long time.

People are only lovable when they are young.

That’s a rule.

I was hysterical and lost,

I have no idea how to Trade.

Horses perhaps, stories maybe,

blows with morons on occasion.

But I know nothing about trading commodities

or futures. I didn't even know one could buy futures.

Had I known....

I know nothing about that disgusting world

Thats what happens in dreams.

You end up where

you dont belong in love with

someone you dont understand

in a world that makes no sense

for reasons only time and distance

pretend to  explain.

I am chained in time

yet I met you outside of time.

I laughed there with you

That must mean something.

That must mean something

You are so small and delicate

and lovable beyond

understanding.

The best lost I have known.

The invisible kind

I feel like I just floated out of Aladdin's Lamp

in these ridiculous harem pants.

I rise like smoke

from an ornate silver lamp  to make wishes seem like

they come true.

addendum:

"I am such a frightful mess" , as they say in those

old black and white British movies made before the Great War.

Self deprecation was elegant and there was no such thing

as  overdressing . People played tennis in tuxedos.

They’re all dead now. Even the newborn babies in those

old war films have by now died of old age.

How strange and frightening and saddening and curious.

They wore high buttoned up collars

and ties and rumpled fedoras cocked to the side

sitting in street cafes behind revolutionary newspapers.

There was only one style of eye glasses.

Round like jam jar tops giving them big lizard eyes..

They made war and love and peace and

died  in the millions because someone somewhere

found it entertaining.

When monsters pull strings that make good men believe lies.

Not everything is about dying but almost everything is about growing old.

Derek Earl Houghton

The Pain Of Being This Good Looking

The Pain Of Being This Good-looking.

Refrain from conflating

                                     looking young

                                                           and looking handsome

All young men, without exception

                                                     have been beaten  without mercy

                          with the ugly stick.

Old men, like me, with square jaws,

                                                    deep scars and  steely dark eyes

are much more better than young men.

There are secrets filed away

                                                 in every wrinkle of our leathery skin.

We want you.

                       We are hungry.

                                                  We lick the plate.

You will be

engulfed  by the fragrant cologne

                                                          of our  hard earned wisdom.

wafting between your thighs.

Derek Earl Houghton

Fairy Tale

The  truth is that there may not be one.

It may be that whatever is  passionately declared becomes a truth

in so much as it is made so by the power of belief

such as what might be determined as truth

in a child’s’ fairy tale.

Derek Earl Houghton