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It's not insults or slurs,
not the easy-to-spot kind of disregard.
No, it’s the sideways looks,
the half-smirks at meetings
when I talk about something
I’ve spent years
learning, sweating over—
my brain wrapped tight around it,
like a secret
I had to earn.

They nod like bobbleheads,
and then
some young spark, fresh out of training,
tosses out the same idea,
but shinier,
like it came out of a new box,
and they eat it up
like they just discovered fire.

Middle-aged guy—
yeah, I get it.
I’m not the underdog
in the story anymore,
not the fresh face,
not the one who’s got something to prove.
Just another cog
they’d swap out
if it weren’t for the decades
I’ve spent spinning.

And maybe they’re right.
Maybe I’m not new enough,
not loud enough,
not hip enough
to be worth
anything more than a guffaw.

What they don’t know—
what they’ll never see—
is how many times
I’ve kept my mouth shut
when they’ve been wrong,
how many times
I’ve swallowed the bitter pill
and smiled through it
because I thought
that’s what grown men do.

Bukowski would’ve told them to shove it,
probably.
But I’ve got a mortgage
and bad knees,
and I’m not trying to be a hero.
Just trying to keep the lights on
to get through the day
without screaming
in the parking lot.

They say the system’s broken; 
maybe it is.
Sometimes, I wonder
if I’ve just been
standing in the wrong line
this whole time.
Too tired to move,
too old to care.