Alan Sincic

Respect the older man. When he was a baby they gathered around him. Respect the older man. He ate his vegetables. There is a turn to his ankle where the polio missed him. The falling safe missed but he helped them count the money, the great war missed but he helped them stack the bodies respect the older man. The mad dog missed him and the trolley car swerving, the invisible contagion on the rim of the drinking glass and the assassin's dinner invitation and the suicide's masterful logic and the mad accidental excitement of the ten year binge. Hundreds are dying as he eats his breakfast. He missed, he was missed, missed the purge and the spoiled tuna salad, the letter bomb and the sucker punch and the iridescent blue of the shark infested waters. He wipes his mouth and a thousand fall. Respect the older man.

He did not land on the silver screen and there are no shots of his smooth young cheeks and respect -- a million times he has wiped his face and still it has not left him.

Respect, respect the -- it is his belief that the woman still remember the look of his thighs, the children still remember where their bodies began. Do not break the legs of the older man. His eyes are his only ornament. The hairs of his head have left of their own accord, he wears the skull of his head with pride, he points but his arms go off in a different direction but do not break the arms of the older man, his arms are the arms of a compass and they point to the places where he's been and they point the way they pointed when he was a baby, and they gathered and they asked him what he wanted and in every direction is the direction that he pointed.

Respect the older man, he is going where his body cannot go, he is an acrobat, he is practicing a trick, he is thinking of a stunt, his body he forgets and he gathers it in pieces when he stands. Respect the older man he is a daring piece of furniture, he folds his bones like a broken umbrella, his legs are the legs of an elegant chair, his arm is a clock, is a clock, and he goes by the blood in his wrist. He calculates the steps to the door, the weight of his head, the size of the earth.

Respect the older man. He stands in his roots, he is no longer green, it is hard to remove him. He cannot be retrieved. He stands in his roots, he is waiting for fire, he cannot be retrieved.

He has memorized the sun in the lines of his face and the moon in the whites of his bones. Respect the older man.

He shrinks in his clothes like a man underwater, a slow motion man in a big diving suit, he lives at the bottom of a thousand feet of water and he cannot be recognized by his high school photo and his record is clean and he cannot be arrested and he moves too slowly to be noticed by the police. Respect the older man.

When he was born he was shot out of a cannon and the crowd rose and cheered like their seats as well were wired with shot and out into the naked air he went a good trick but it took too long and now the crowd has gone home, the tent packed away, a garden planted in the sawdust ring and a vine of tomatoes growing up the face of the net, and still he sails out through the air looking back at the cannon's mouth and wondering how he ever fit, his ass to the stars and the smoke rising up from his neighbors bright homes like warm little factories spreading farther and farther beneath him.

Respect the older man, do not deny the older man, the falling safe missed and he helped them count the money, the great war missed and he helped them stack the bodies, the mad dog missed and the trolley car swerving, the purge and the tuna and the bomb and the punch and the iridescent blue of the shark infested waters and do not deny the older man. He looks at the flesh on your soft pink arm, he wipes his mouth and a thousand fall.

Stand in the tower of your own hard body and wait for the visit of the older man, respect him, respect him, become an invitation, clasp your bones to the bole of your heart and wait for the visit of the older man. Respect the older man, wait for the older man, do not hurry the older man he is a long time traveler, he is a marathon, he is a killer, he keeps you waiting the whole of your life and at last he is here. Respect the older man. Stand in his bones and look out of his eyes. Respect the older man.