When They Get Older

 

Why do they wear pants that are too small for them?
You see them everywhere almost always middle-aged men,
their bellies hanging prodigiously over their belts.
They must suffer for their vanity with visible welts.

Holding their breath
they battle their breadth
and one leg at a time
they are back in their prime.
 
They wear their pants like a badge from yesteryear
indicating to the world that they still can wear
a thirty-four inch waist size,
a comical and tragic disguise:

They still think they rule
and do not see themselves as caricatures of the middle-aged fool.