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