The world’s a chore when you’re sixty four
No sign of respite
The clocks go backwards every night
Telling you you’re eighty five

Then suddenly
The charcoal smog that has absorbed you slowly
And blackened your kaleidoscope
Has ****** you some place shy of midnight

Breakfast was a trench at best
When only bed makes sense
A world dragging me to war with myself

Time, having deprived you, will make you into a grinch
Make you selfish and resentful

My sight was failing me
But I remember him clearly
Stood on the balcony
Dangling his car keys at me across the moat
Swinging from the chandelier
As I gasped for a hearse in despair  

The moat was old
Every paddle a javelin
The two minute journeys that turn your legs to waste
Summer on a respirator
Winter on a drip

Heavy going being sixty four
When your scarcely twenty four
And the clocks are moving forward

I’ll remember you
When the time eventually comes
How I locked you up
Kept you an embryo

End