Birthday

After 
yet another year 
of cursory presence,
today I’m about to be 
forty-four.
However, being stuck in 
my seventeenth,
living ever since inside this 
single-mind fermenting barrel,
I’m expecting my maturation, still.

Resentful, suddenly impatient,
yet suspicious 
and a bit clumsy, to say,
I feel how 
what seemed to be 
a slow-motion play,
is spinning faster now,
wrapping me tighter,
so I can sometimes hear
muffled crackling from 
inside of me.

With no other choice left,
I become my own joint.

From the threshold of this 
yet another escape room
I wave, take a bow, smile with teeth
- such a show-off glee!

Exhaling:
life sssssmocksssss!