Uncle Sam
Two old men on a park bench share a bottle in the cold.
Tossing rice to birds, they were talking politics
and the recent polls.
“I don’t want to live,” one said, in a quiet moment,
then he shook his head.
“But I don’t want to die,” he continued.
A shiver took hold of his neck by surprise.
“And it seems like Uncle Sam is in the same bind.”
He stared, not seeing, but eyes open wide.
“With a foot in every grave, we’ll all be buried alive.”
He sighed.
The other man watched a bird take flight,
perked up a deep breath, and prepped a staunch reply.
“A country based on greed,” he began,
with a grain of rice still stuck to his hand.
“And a government that’s feeding…”
His broken blue eyes
glanced left and right.
“…lies from sea to bloody sea.”
“Humph,” Mr. Shiver agreed.
“What’s killing you is killing me,” Mr. Broken Eyes seethed.
Then Shiver Neck shifted on the wooden seat slats,
found a new sore spot
to lean on back.
Broken Eyes turned, spoke soft, unnerved.
In a gritty whisper, he again leaked his words:
“What’s killing you is killing me.”
Then the hidden push hit the tops of the trees.
They held still,
quiet,
for a sit and a think,
while the wind kicked apart a cornered pile of brown leaves.
Mr. Shiver finally spoke, as the treetops roared.
“It’s like a war on war
behind… some… makeshift doors.”
Back and forth they went on,
rolling words in momentum.
Bouncing hackneyed clichés,
they proudly spewed them verbatim.
“All smoke and mirrors,” Mr. Broken Eyes said.
“Like a broken pencil —
time to get out the lead.”
Shiver Neck laughed, “The blind leading the blind.”
And he kept the theme going,
“Out of sight, out of mind.”
Now ignoring the cold, the men practically reeled.
“The struggle here,” Broken Eyes shouted.
“…is inbred fear,” Mr. Shiver revealed.
“And when the plane crashed down…”
“Inside my head the pilot drowned…”
“And everyone moved on,” they both said.
In perfect unison, their hands went to their head.
Together they stood,
same shoes, coat, and plight,
same shivering neck,
same broken blue eyes.
Then they both left the bench with their bottle all gone.
“Everyone moved away. Everyone has moved on.”
