“At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.” 
—T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”


He makes his morning coffee 
strong, measures his day by cups
or pots. As the sun bleeds from red to yellow
to white and back to red, he imagines
he’s not the only one (John Lennon 
mouthing lines about living for today),
but he sits alone, coffee gone cold, stale.

He knows firsthand going gray,
the growing paunch, the bald spot.
He strolls the strand, but sand irritates
his sensitive soles. He would roll his pants
but varicose veins make him self-conscious.
He fights the urge to cry.
The cat licks his toes.
                        

Back in the day, it was cool to pretend not to care.
James Dean brooded his way down rain-splashed roads,
hands plunged deep in the pockets of his trench coat,
cigarette dangling from his lips, just daring a drop
to extinguish the flame. Water flows over his shoes.
His sideways glance reveals nothing about his feet.
So what, he seems to embody, so what, so what?

Then it became cool to care about everything,
to protest for or against anything, to stage outrage
in a show of support for causes and concerns
big and little, large and small, and then to protest
for or against the outrage, to stage protests for
and against the protests. So what, he wants 
to know, so what, so what are we to do now?