Getting On and Other Poems

By Anthony Ward

Getting On

As we grow older,
We become firmer.
Rigid with responsibility-
Making us brittle.

When you’re young,
You’re soft and ductile.
You don’t feel hurt
The way we do.

Where we were once quite agile,
We’re now quite fragile,
Much stronger in mind,
Than when we believed we were.

A Fine Wine

These finely aged novels,
Stored like bottles in a cellar,
Become all the more portent with maturity.

You want to drink their contents,
Be intoxicated by their words,
Until they have you speaking so fluently
The language pours from your mouth.

While those staid sober
Will stress you’re slurring incoherently,
That they’re far too precious to be drunk

Solipsism

If I’m the only person that exists,
Then why don’t I agree with everything?

If everything that happens is about me,
Then why don’t I like it?

If this is all a test
Then why am I being tested?
And who is testing me if not myself?

If I’m the only person that exists,
Then why can’t I control my own destiny?
Why aren’t I master of my own mind?

Do I really exist?
Or am I merely a figment of my imagination?
Why do I constantly doubt myself?

If I’m the only person that exists,
Is this world meant for me?

Machine-nations

Where do I begin?
Where do I end?
Do I take a calculated guess?
Am I a machine following routine
Programmed for purpose?
Am I cause and effect?
An automation?
A machination
Parasitically infected
Thus affected
To be me?

Grin and Bear It

If you show a fear of life
It will snarl and growl

Bite you
And claw you to pieces

You need to bear your teeth
Smile like you mean it.