“But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I'm gettin' older, too”
lyric from “Landslide” by Stevie Nicks

<>
climbing stairs, balancing two breakfasts,
two fill-to-brim-rims warning sloshing,
earbuds in place, always,
lest the news
interrupts and plunges me first thing into
moody murderous disheartened failure,
and Miz Minx Nicks lays me low

this lyric knocks me to rock,
there and then,
consequences be ******, the unstoppable
lyric rocks grinding me to an
immovable halt,
all spills,
don’t care, for the need to scream-
bleed-finally
write to understand why these
a l w a y s words arrest my soul

children
the most costly thing anyone can
create,
the lost, the found
the ones in the grave way too early,
and the ones who were born
knowing better,

children
whose inviolable sense of
totally righteousness
makes forgiveness
disabled, disallowed
for the poor clueless fools
them who naively know~nothings
who chose to raise them

here I am not getting,
no, unsteadily unreadily
too late
am older,
up-to the shaking-head age
so unexpected,
almost ridiculous
untimely unthinkable
‘cept for:

it’s an impossiblity ~
and just
don’t understand this injustice
perpetrated upon this
unsuspecting and in denial,
sorrowful old man

so I weep
on the steps so steep,
Woman comes to see if I'm
fallen,
my wailing at the realization of
my losses all
totally tallied
is heavy much more than
my now empty hands,
but busy them,
attempting to staunch the
flowing
overwhelming regrets that
gush from every pore,
and that no one can
ever be cleansed,
and the permance of
stains

for I am only
getting older too
killing me
way too slowly