PAD Day 27: Happy Birthday to Me

Oh joy. Today I am now officially old enough to collect Social Security.  My prompts for today are (1) Write a "mechanical" poem, and (2) follow along with me now - take the first three words of a popular phrase or "old saying", plug it into a search engine, and use the first three pages or so of results, picking out interesting words or phrases you can use in a poem.  Maybe I'm using the wrong "old sayings", but this exercise just didn't quite work for me.  The first poem I produced came out dark and disturbing, and though it was an entirely fictitious narrative poem, it might have shown up on some homeland-security radar, especially in these sensitive post-Boston bombing times, so I chose not to share it.  I did plug in the beginning of an appropriate old saying for today, and I was reminded of a tired old analogy, which inspired this short and pithy piece:

You're Only as Old as You Feel

"A little age can be a wonderful thing.

Take a fine bottle of scotch for example...."

Okay.

That's it.  And here's my "mechanical" poem:

Birthday Robot

 I need a robot to absorb all my birthdays,

so he will be the one who needs service

and repair, more often every year.

He'll be the one who everyone will tell,

"You look pretty good for your age,"

and "You're only as old as you feel."

He'll get all the snarky getting-older birthday cards. 

and he'll be the one who will worry

what will happen when his warranty runs out.

And while he's fretting about circuits

that don't connect so quickly any more,

blockages in circulation, dimming light sensors,

joints that creak with every movement,

I'll be lounging on an island somewhere,

no older than last year, sipping a piña colada

and sending him a snarky birthday card.