So Simple


I don't want simple. Not yet,
not while I'm still in my first half of life:
or what amount of time contemporaries
allot themselves with each undeserved first breath.
I know children with gray hairs,
and I hold no contempt for finding happiness in sadness,
only contempt for dusted thoughts that wait to settle once again
through learned regimen and due process.
A simple pleasure is a reduction of a complex one
before it dies in its own arms that can no longer support it.
Simplicity is both liberating and confining,
depending on which door you enter from.
The old relish the simple
as it is all hey can salvage
from an aging life being conditioned
to accept what is unacceptable
to the young.