Colonoscopy

overaged men sit in waiting rooms

swapping stories about what

youth felt like.

cars with big engines and girls

with big hair become hood

ornaments, eye candy,

the woman in the corner says

her son was in a bad place

the day, at sixteen, when he pulled

an empty weapon on his father

and how the other son is a drug

addict but is working on it.

when we were young,

30 was old and we laughed

at people with bad backs and

swollen prostates dribbling their

way to the next doctor's appointment,

only to be told that things will fail

inevitably. the scope of middle age

crawls up your ass to take pictures

of everything

and you wonder if it will spy where your youth has gone, as you sit

in a hospital gown, gaped open

at the front.