So... as promised...

I promised the inestimable StevepoetSteve that I'd write one of his "twenties" if he wrote one of my "veintets." I'm who I am, so I'm not promising not to change the rules (or, knowing me, more likely to add new ones than break his). Here's to tryin':

TWENTIES

Now is, roughly, the late September of our discontent.
Is it still so early? Our tongues have grown rough with poetry;
It wore our teeth smooth as o's with consonance, rode us like dogs,
wore us like sports-jackets until even the glue factories wouldn't want
us, patches on our sleeves or no. But still, this ragged voice
pitches its keen above the static of our atoms evaporating.
It sounds as much like our everyday speech as the viola
sounds like the cat whose gut's drawn taut over its bow. And now,
like howls torn from their throats, if we no longer speak at least we'll
howl. Now is the early winter of our slow descent!
Now all is November! Now we bore ourselves as we remember
all the stunts we pulled in college, and we are perplexed to look at
the time, and find it is still so early. Surely, we think, by this
time our skin should have cured to vinyl on our bones, the joints in
our limbs cracked like fortune cookies. Can it be so early?
Limb after limb refused to leave the tree, and even the leaves,
after what seems like a skyful of winters, are still (or almost) green.
What do we do? Let's hurl ourselves astride these rusty skateboards,
due to break down any minute, down the stairs:
to grind and grind: the drawn-out, lingering, best days of our lives

Cross-posted poem by guest host, Steve!

My friend Matt-Steve, whose poems you should go check out because they will make you weep sweet tears of coffee and/or blood, finally decided to take me up on my offer to "swap" styles. Here's him taking a crack at one of my "vientets."

DRUNK ON MY OWN POWER
Plucky young adventurers sneak into my lair
I keep my TV on when I leave
They find my keychain which boldly says STEVE
They snoop on the floor and find most of my hair
When I get back they’re stoned
On my couch and the red-headed girl says hello
Out the window I hear a strange animal bellow
The gladitorial combat I sense they have honed
For several years is as useless as their dropped swords
I slip under my sheets
Folding the blanket carefully so my feets
don’t touch and I question the vandal hordes
and how they had traveled here and where
were they from and how today on the eve
of my birthday they cleave
each other apart and the survivor just stares
at me and hands me the blade like I loaned
it to him and I can’t take it because I’m yellow
and the blood has given me the frights of hell O
how I feel like a bird that’s been boned!