A sign.
Typical of a time, now snatching at its last,
An ebbing breath.
Branded bright with offset colours
Telling of better days,
Sweetshop-styled, screaming all is fine
With the unshaken dignity
Of older ways.

A great wall of slate.
Too tall, too wide -
To climb, to strafe:

A firm divide.

Fear, has worn thin:
And misinformation, therein.

In the middle of the minutes
Between nine and ten,
An unknown walked in,
Grasping a pen.
He scribbled a face on the whiteboard wall,

It was a face from the internet:

So we’re brothers after all.

I am twenty years old today.
I know nothing.
I am thirty years old today.  
I know a bit, but not what I’m doing.

I am forty years old today.
What little I thought I knew… turns out it was wrong.
I am fifty years old today.
I know more than you sonny.

I am sixty years old today.
I’m tired of knowing.
I am seventy years old today.
I never appreciated people.

An envisioned time.
In which thought itself -
Perceived a crime.

A time where rights remain for few,
Where the masses praise
Those our fathers slew.

In murky pleasure, fingers rest.
Cradling a cigarette – hand rolled,
Wrinkled raw.
Smouldering.
Pressed between lip, and the grimace of youth
As gentle licks of grey
Obscure his vision’s corner,
Flickering.

As new born temporary pleasure,
Living short its life
To the car horn muse.
Soon finds itself in a sunken pit
Face down,
Ground in between battlements.

On nicotine fueled days
Where dull, heavy musk hangs malignant.
He sits.

And - raising a cup of crude
To toast the capital ******* passing
Peering over near pressed vessel,
Straining through a blur of steam.