the teenagers
are playing football
on a dark night
so that we don't have to.

the young kids in the snow
are throwing the old ball
back and forth
tackling each other on the frozen grass
so that we don't have
to get beaten up anymore.

isn't it nice
the way the teenagers play?
you see it isn't all
just video games and television.

and we can just stand there
and watch them
have a beer and not worry
about how badly time has forgotten us.

look at the teenagers go!
look at that one smacking right
off another kid
spinning in mid air
and hitting the turf

he just laughs it off
and gets right up like the pain
has poured through him.

and he's doing it for us
he's absorbing that shock
dirtying the knees
and getting bloody in the face
so that we don't have to anymore.

can't you see how free we are
to be idle and rot
smelling the rancid flesh
as our bones break like toothpicks
and the score stays
nothing to nothing all the time.

---

John Grochalski writes from Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of a collection of poems, "The Noose Doesn't Get Any Looser After You Punch Out."