I have written a poem

ODE TO MY FAVORITE JEANS (AFTER HORACE)

Non ille, quamquam Socraticis madet
sermonibus, te negleget horridus....

What should I call you, you who called out to me from the clearance rack at the Gap so many years ago?
You second skin,
You battle flag,
You means,
You end,
You whose scars would cost a premium if hanging on a rack, but who was plain and blue when I first saw you,
You whose back right pocket turned into a shredded mess, then into a duct-tape patch, then was professionally removed altogether,
You who rides low on my hips without sagging around the ass or entirely veiling the crotch, as if to say "boys, I want it, but not too much,"
You who appears to me, a vision, in my mirror below the eight tee shirts I just put on, one after another, each one not quite right,
Or whom I struggle into as I stumble out of bed to talk to whomever it is who's ringing the doorbell at this ungodly early hour,
Oh, MY FAVORITE JEANS, come down from your hangerly abode
Or (more likely) rise up from that indistinct, liquid mass on my floor,
Or his floor,
Or that other guy's floor,
For convention demands that I cover my legs, and the other means at my disposal have come to seem like a pale imitation of you.

Can we imagine a time before jeans?
The fashionable know, they tell us, that when we are in doubt, we are to wear jeans.
They tell us never to wash them, or, if we must, that the best way in the shower, while wearing them.
The poet tells us that we should dress to be noticed, or to be invisible, but never both.
The sociologist tells us that men's clothes became invisible, at a certain moment, for certain reasons.
Men's clothes began to trumpet the fact that they weren't trumpeting anything.
Jeans hover uniquely, precariously between theses antipodes.

And now? Are these pillars labeled "ostentatious" and "unnoticed" in the process of melting into air themselves?
Can we imagine a time after jeans?
Could we go back to britches and a waistcoat?
Could we wear skirts everyday? (which men, rationally, should have been wearing all along, right? I mean, honestly, think about it for a minute.)
How many more times can I pay to have the crotch of these old things patched?
The pockets are disintegrating again; I just felt a few pennies slide down my leg and hit the sidewalk.
There is a strange rip on the thigh that I can't explain.
The cuffs at the ankle are slowly wearing away.

But it's only Saturday.
Tonight, let's get out of here, you and I.
With a little luck, and just the right tee shirt, we will stumble into a cab together, headed for some distant, unknown suburb, just as the sun comes up.