When I Am Old / Grady Thrasher

When I am old, I will not be told

what to do,

nor will I do as I am told.

I will find pleasure in contumacy,

thereby enhancing my golden years

with a stubborn disregard

for authority.

It will give me motivation to live

far beyond my life expectancy

and make the encumbrance of old age

worth the trouble.

Oh, I shall be no threat

to the security of the state

or of civilization for that matter,

but I can count on me

not to be polite, prudent or politic

in response to

the boorish, the bumptious,

pretentious or prejudiced.

Nor will I suffer gladly any politician

or any pious person

of any stripe,

knowing that the former is

above all, a politician,

and the latter is afflicted with

the conceit of claiming knowledge

of the unknowable.

Instead, I shall seek to embrace

comrades in contumacy,

the brazenly optimistic,

the irrationally idealistic

and the hopelessly cheerful.

Considering my present age,

perhaps I should begin now,

so I won’t have to be told

when I am old.