Of an ornery heart,
Be nothing short
Of cantankerous art,
In gained techniques
Tetchy years provide,
With every landing
Of well placed darts…
Now covetable level
Of querulous repute,
Will strike with agility
Of marksman astute,
And substantial ability…
Tho tolerated surplus,
He’s sure to attain
Enviable peer status,
As he lashes at will
Irascible gems,
Of sluttish repartee
To biting opprobrious,
Bestowed more than less
Upon unwary victims,
A cantankerous redress!
Remember when
Memory was friend,
Not long ago
In child’s hood,
When he’d no need
Of adult understood,
The while did find
Be rid of time
For aberrant ways,
Tho soon to reach
Stage memory fails,
Said so to fashion
Less worthy tales,
Those tests of time
When memory ails!
Age has you feel
The consequence
Of life’s brush
Upon your person,
And so instils
To lay shades vital
Of wisdom’s colour,
Upon the canvas
Of your soul,
And equally so
Holds give repair
To shadowy greys
Of life’s excesses,
That shape in part
The art of aging,
To alas include
Less than artful lines,
Carved thus by time,
Tho rather worthy
Said so unkind,
While age emerges
The living tableaux,
Meant to reflect
Man’s eschatology!
If I have failed,
That you not hear,
My less than lucid
Words unclear,
Think me not stupid,
Lacking thus
Articulation
Once robust,
As time now holds
I am to suffer
Tastes of failure…
Thus I ought tell
As I so venture
In this nadir,
What I want share
That you need hear
Now more often
Strangles there,
Between my mind
And memory’s lair,
Silenced sadly
In senescent hell!
I see the face,
A crowded place
That tells of life,
Would indicate
A past so filled,
Yet but depicts
A slightest trace
Of puerile days,
To hoary layers
Of crinkly grace,
Time so risks take
What’s left to hold
That offers hope
For man so bold,
To skirt a while
His resting place,
And he not find
The face he’d known
Now buried neath
A senescent waste!
On the run
From place
To place,
I search ahead
For space
Might be akin,
To the images
That populate
My spent head,
With a life spin
Of purpose clear,
For I’ve but left
A meagre stay,
And far too near
Be Reaper Grim
To dog my way,
Hence I hold run
To find a stead
Of lesser haste,
Afore fate ends
This journey’s race!
Time played us so
Like carefree pueriles,
As though forever
Made live the while
In dreamy rainbows,
When of a sudden
It cast adrift
Our childhood days
To find our way
Far from our sandbox…
Now adult visions
Edge to fashion
Unknown choices,
That once found
Too soon wore thin,
And held best toss
As remote whims
Of wearisome sins…
Yet a period plagues
With insipid wishes
And oneirism’s ease,
Of undying rainbows
In sandbox dwellings!
I feel a book
Less than a tome,
Where I abide
Held be my home,
There on a shelf
I am to dwell,
Alphabetized
In a near hell,
Tucked in a space
For easy trace,
If one’s to find
My aging face,
That I myself
Find hard to place,
As time has stolen
Most recall,
I must rely
On passers-by
To so point out,
‘Tis I so perched
Now on the shelf,
Held thus too soon
Suffer a place of rest!
