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I used to think age was a state of mind
Working my whole life nose to the grind
Turbulent years have not been kind

Was there a specific moment life rearranged
When I began to notice change
Overtime life dreams became estranged

Began to move a little slower love not as bright
Cancer demands choices joy is out of sight

Illness take its toll
Pain can change the soul
Bulging disc back spasms knees give out
Numb feet neuropathy pain throughout

Forgetful, lost thoughts
The haves, and the have Nots
Memory once Sharp as a tack
Scatterbrain recollection now I lack

I understand why they call
Alzheimer
The long goodbye
Why, did I come into this room?
Frustrated can’t remember gloom looms

  Legs give out falter unexpected falls
Yelling, screaming, crying, deaf ear calls.
On the floor flat on my back
processing where I am at

Not completely aware
How I came to be there
Mental assessment first things first
Instant flood of pain burst

Anything broken bleeding bruised
Knot on the head, lose tooth, blood oozed
I rub emollients to soften and sooth
Aspercreme BenGay, which one to choose

Triage situation urgent versus emergency
Elderly fall risk develop a contingency
Scrapes cuts occasionally a broken wrist
Off kilter slipped twist landed on the fist
Unable to get up nobody around
Floundering helplessly on the ground,

Surgeries total replacement both knees
Unable to put pressure on both of these
Not as simple as it sounds,
To pick yourself up off the ground
I can roll over
Than what?

Scoot crawl wiggle on my backside
Down the hall iPhone the goal my guide
Traverse down a few stairs a slide cried
Instant pain runs down the spine
Pray every moment for strength I’ll be fine

Solution: need a chair to pull up on
Everybody gone for how long?
Quickly learn to fend for myself
Shoot, the iPhone up high on the 3rd shelf

A horrific thought resides
Creeping seeping an emotional tide
After a fall my friend died  
He hit his head on the kitchen granite table
Wounded bleeding Unconscious unstable

He could have lived the police surmise
Elderly incapacitated facts surprise
Investigation what happened evidence resides
Estimated  time on kitchen floor for three days
In and out of consciousness, craze haze

He bleed to death.
On the kitchen floor
His daughters will confess
Never able to talk to him ever more

Nobody came to visit. Not a single call
Loved ones should not die from a fall


A prominent man of well to do means
Living situation wasn’t what it seems
A celebrated man of stature
Tasked in war enemy capture
A battleship under his command
Near his end, he can hardly stand

father of two his children the man they never knew his adoptive family battleship cast and crew
Perhaps each were too busy with their own  
His death they will atone
So many elderly alone

All the lonely people were do they all belong

Inspired song

Eleanor Rigby
(All the lonely people) 1966
By the Beatles bulging disc

BLT Webster’s word of the day challenge
3-7-25 EMOLLIENT
AN EMOLLIENT IS SOMETHING SUCH AS A LOTION THAT SOFTENS AND SOOTHES
I am 64 and my husband is 77. We’re in a new phase of life and it’s not always pretty . My husband is falling all the time, he rolls over and falls out of bed. I had to put up a bed rail. He’s got all his faculties about him, but his numb feet makes him unsteady neuropathy. This is just a brief little picture of some of the elements we’re dealing with, but surely this is  a typical picture of the elderly today. We are now in the phase when our friends are dying I pray. today is a precious gift. sometimes I worry what tomorrow
Will bring. Is today our last normal day??. what will I need to do to survive when he ‘s gone?. Tomorrow is promised to no one live today to the fullest. It could be your last day.. the worry of the unknown I don’t let it take hold, but sometimes it gets the best of me.. death will come for us. All all we can do is smile when he comes to call..
I


Careered  


            Along


                    The


                       Narrow


                               Roads


                                        I

              ­                            Never


                                           Considered

                          What


                                          I’m  


                                   Doing


                                              I

                                                   Just


                                                Considered

                                The


                         ­     Inertia


                               Of


                              The


                        ­      FALL




Inspired song

Free Falling
By Tom Petty 1989
BLT Webster’s Word of the day challenge
3-6– 25 Career
To career is to go at top speed, especially in a headlong manner
Fit    For Survival

                               I’m   Off  Balance    Life.   ASKEW

                 It’s.   Me or You.    Go



Inspired Song;

Off Balance
By Victor Ray YouTube 2023


Modern Haiku
17 syllables
arranged in 3 lines
Containing 5-7-5 syllables
BLT webster’s word of the day challenge
3-5-25 ASKEW
ESKEW  means not straight or at an angle and can be used  
both as as both an adjective and an adverb
Bonus Word
WONKY
Wonky British English: is used as a synonym  of ASKEW
Both unsteady  shaky, awry wrong
Treacherously torrid torrential tempestuous
The warrior on the mountain confessed to us
Sordid sully suborn salacious
Only the worst will ever keep pace with us
In extremis extremity exigence exodus
Is the answer clear to all of us
Intuitional intrepid impetus intrigue
Spontaneity's tortoise trauma fatigue
Heuristic horizon hornswoggle huckster
Or just another cauldron muck stir
Mystical magical manumission mandate
That only the good would ever relate date
Fornicating fecund finite's fate
I can only hope it will be I rate
Tirade treatise's transpicuous treachery
Adjunct juxtaposition may get the best of me
Estranged ensemble's ethereal expletive
Won't be contained, like water in a sieve
Wanton wayward warrantee wrangled
And all of that surreal newfangled
Omnipresent omnificent omniscient omnipotence
How I wish I could float its boat sense
She writes in whispers, in echoes that stay,
Carving lost names in the wind’s soft sway.
Her ink is sorrow, her verses bleed,
A requiem sung for the hearts that need.

"When someone who loves us fades away,"
She mourns the words we failed to say.
Regret clings tight in the hush of night,
Where silence weeps in the absence of light.

Yet love, in her hands, is vast and free,
A grand heist stolen from sky and sea.
"The sunset’s glow, so bold, so bright,"
She claims the stars, the waves, the light.
For love is not caged—it is wild, untamed,
A river that flows, never to be named.

She speaks of love beyond mere touch,
Of time-defying, endless trust.
"Love reshapes, rebuilds, redefines,"
She whispers of love that never confines.
A fire that burns yet does not consume,
A madness that dances beneath the moon.

And when she writes of power’s weight,
Of hands that build and hands that break,
She lays before us the choice of fate—
"Will you rule & hold position of power?
OR will you love, and set love free?"

Oh, poet of grief, of love, of fire,
Your words take flight, they never tire.
They carve their names on hearts unseen,
A melody woven in gold between.

If ever ink could outlive time,
It would be yours—sublime, divine.
They are watching you

A dilapidated billboard sign
From a time, unable to rewind
Large blue eyes behind a pair of glasses
Overlooking the valley of ashes
( F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.)

They are watching you

The haunting waste of the past nothing lasts
Which linger through its irreversible varnish
The eyes, dimmed vacant, eternally blind tarnished
Forgotten , too many days under the scorching sun
A solemn dumping ground can be found for no one

They are watching you

What’s left of the world is unrecognizable
A waste land, It’s a small world after all
Wake up Rise up Here God’s call
Echoes of the past voiced by the small

They are watching you

A Draconian government grew
All communist too
People didn’t realize what’s in store
Reminiscent of the Book 1984
(George Orwell‘s dystopian novel 1948)

They are watching you

Limited words concept control
Government’s grip won’t let go
People stifled language remove
No praise stand above or to prove

They are watching you

No freedom to think or speak
A slave No better life to seek
Obey don’t ask don’t say
If you try, they’ll take you away

They are watching you

The Past rewritten History gone
A citizen’s job all day long
Dumb society down
Shopping malls in town
Closed burned to the ground

They are watching you

Issued items from the government store
Refused a new razor blade on the knees implore
Yet expected to be clean shaven evermore
The week seek Black market contraband
If caught you lose your hand

They are watching you

Reeducation they proclaim
They know your name
A cog in the wheel, food you sought to steal
The government knows what’s best they maintain
Stay docile. This is not a game.
Driven MAD your mind breaks plan insane

They are watching you

Food scarce people emaciated
Every race creed color Martyrs created
The rich people are getting fat
They retort nothing wrong that

They are watching you


Death of the poor that’s what’s in store
For the good the betterment of mankind?
The best of humanity can no longer find
Too many mouths to feed if they have worth
they are spared beyond that no one cared

They are always watching you



Inspired songs
1) what the world needs now is love
By Jackie DeShabnon

2) Song of the old communist(Russia)
by Karen Kerr

Footnotes
While attending university a minor in literature two books that stayed with me throughout my life are the great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald, and George Orwell‘s 1984. Gatsby, the billboard always watching and the symbolism throughout the book that permanently in my mind that billboard and its significance. George Orwell‘s 1984 was laughed at for so many years , there’s no way it could be a possibility. But today many things in that book are coming to pass. It’s as if “they” use that book for a roadmap to where we are today. Yet people live in a bubble they don’t think an out anything outside their bubble, they stay out of trouble while man’s freedoms are slipping away.
BLT Webster’s Word of the day challenge
3-3-25 draconian
Draconian describes something often a law, policy, restriction that is very severe or cruel.
We don't live
to give
away ourselves
to life
rather
it should
give way
to our uniqueness
individuality
our expression
and freedom
as long as
we still see
the light
of every day-

it shall not
silence our voice
nor stay
in our way

we're the larger
on this score-
life has no say!
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