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the old man was ornery.
looking, longing, lurching,
bent out into irony and mental
ductile like spoon fed children.
asking, pleading, for a social security check
from the community offices, hoping to weasel
one more minor gesture from the sewing bee queen down the road.
her smile sounded like wind cooling,
and catching the off-hour buffet,
she could make him laugh in ways
only very few had managed to.
but the check is gone.
or maybe never came.
perhaps the system
has deemed him dead,
or the mail was slow
and this old man, bereft of the touch he once had,
angry moles arm like nuclear warheads on the
brink of clouding, red and dustied with grey
hairs.
the fire like.
he had all his life wishing for,
and here she was waiting for a buffet date,
and he in typical proud style tried to cancel (she already gone),
grabbed his old hunting rifle out of the closet,
and robbed the convenience store on the way to the off-hours buffet.
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