Nothing ventured
no one indentured
Dickens has had the last word
and how quite absurd
to lock someone to time
to make that person yours or that person mine
for years and years
until they have grown and whatever they knew they've outknown
and become a clone
a facsimile
a copy to copy to carbon that papers over the cracks in your life and however hard he tries to get on
Time is the wife and she moves on him slow
as if time couldn't go any faster
It's a see saw knock on the door
and get beaten up by the master
not a nursery rhyme
this time it's real.
A Dickens of a deal
dealt in coal yards and hard knocks
and old curiosity shops
it never stops 'til
the war is over.