30 Hits Poem by Adam Hoagland

Oh, when you’re young,
when your body is young,
and there’s no rigor you can’t abide;
you’re fit and you’re active
and fairly attractive
and the doors to your future hang wide.

You eat what you want,
and as much as you want,
for no matter how much junk you glut,
the carbs that you swallow
are burnt, and don’t wallow
in tire-shaped rolls ‘round your gut.

And you’re peppered with choices,
so many good choices,
what to be, where to go, and who with;
And you’re soaring, it seems,
down the highway of dreams,
but so fast that you don’t see the cliff.

Then 30 hits,
so sedately it hits,
so lightly that at first you feel fine.
It unwinds its will
while you thought you were still
getting comfortable with twenty-nine.

But now there’s that 3;
the first digit ‘s a 3,
not a 2 or 1 ever again,
and you glimpse the vile truth,
that our cult worships youth,
and “young” is fresh out of your ken.

Yet you know you’re not old,
Folks laugh; why, you’re not old;
To your elders you’re virile and lean!
Yet your mind proffers forth
that you’ve just metamorphed
into something else more in-between.

For it was just ago,
so scarcely ago,
men would balk at the hours you’d keep
with nary a hint,
the least scintellant glint
of so lusty a luxury as sleep.

Then 30 hits,
like the tithingman hits,
and you find, if you crimp on your slumber,
you’re grumpy and slow,
and a-yawning you go
through your entire day so encumbered.

So you take little naps,
yes, you steal secret naps,
where you snore, but you don’t quite succumb,
and if caught, you premise
you were resting your eyes,
and were sonically cleansing your tongue.

And you turn to the brew,
you turn slave to the brew,
that you chug as a means to an end;
for you swear by the bean,
and its store of caffeine,
your foul-breathed, hand-shaking new friend.

You remember a time,
a satiate time,
when you’d burn fat before you’d install it;
‘cause your furnace would render
whatever provender
fell in when you opened your gullet.

Then 30 hits,
like a prize-fighter hits,
like a Tyson or like an Evander,
And the food that you eat
ends up back in your seat,
like a parcel marked “Return to Sender.”

Or it goes to your gut,
your protuberant gut,
that displays like a membership belt
for some ancient elect
of men who neglect
to dine with restraint and be svelte.

So you’re forced to work out,
though you hate to work out,
stretched and pulled in unflattering positions
by a devious device
that looks like it’d suffice
for a witch trial or inquisition.

You once had a life,
an impulsive, wild life,
with no duties that couldn’t be canned
for some babes and some suds,
And an army of buds
with their nights just as flexibly planned.

Then 30 hits,
like a cannonade hits,
like a blow from a howitzer round,
and at party and pub,
or at concert and club,
no cronies your age can be found.

For your friends all have wives,
They had kids with their wives,
and their after-hours lives now consist
of feedings and bathings,
and mortgage and savings,
and keeping the Missus unpissed.

So you just stay at home,
all alone, stuck at home,
like a hound dog tied out in the cold,
wondering how, with such ease,
others age like fine cheese,
while you’re more like cheese starting to mold.

Now I realize they say,
eyes a-twinkle, they say,
that you’re only as old as you feel;
and that fifty is nifty
and life starts at sixty,
and thirty ‘s not such an ordeal.

But then 30 hits,
and you’re forced to admit
that, though you’re not old, you are older;
and your best years are passed,
for your youth has been cast
like spilled salt that’s tossed over the shoulder.

Yes, when 30 hits,
like an H-bomb it hits,
like a doomsday clock starting to chime,
Happy Birthday, I fear
it’s all downhill from here,
caught by age and neck-shackled by time.

(- ARH, finished 10/21/10)