Life turned middling riddle
Arms faded & scrawny
flabby our middle
Many years since brawny
now mostly twiddle
Life has turned middling riddle
shows on faces craggy
screeches like mistuned fiddle
in melody draggy
On downward trajectory
our course & cause abstruse
Where’s a clear directory
for those of us obtuse?
Couldn’t endure Life’s steady gaze
The morning dawns blurrily
thoughts lazy & shoddy
darting around squirrelly
Creaky his old body
As couldn’t endure Life’s steady gaze
he indulged dreams Elysian
Now stuck shuffling in regret’s haze
eliciting derision:
of his mind’s intransigence
and his limbs’ recalcitrance
… then scope blows in by verse
On days sloshing way below the brim
am mired in torpid emptiness
Just hobbling along aging’s path dim
cobbled with paltry pettiness
Then scope blows in by writing verse:
Found humor in what had seemed curse!
Finding humor in what I curse.
Since aged wizen
Since he aged wizen:
curbed his cupidity
not felt much frisson
dialed down turgidity
Instead finds daily adventure
popping the prescription pill
avoiding chewing his denture
Foot still tapping sitting still
All while lucidity
fades with rapidity
Depth of soul plumbed, found bereft & numbed
My presence turned sallow
gotten gray & old
Insipid & shallow
shuffling like a troll
Seeking out quietude
and tranquility
scrounging each interlude
for sanguinity
Uneasily did plumb
the depth of my soul:
Found it still callow, numb
though perhaps bit droll?
In my youth I held higher hopes
than retire as one of Life’s dopes
Tired of hearing myself
These days rarely get together
talking (while coffees gets cold)
with erstwhile friends of fair weather
to go over ‘the same old’
But ain’t their fallibility
that owns the culpability:
Palpably tired of listening
to my pontificating psyche
those middlings in discourse piddling
interspersed with vague harangues spiky
So having heard myself for seven decades:
enough already of such tiresome charades!
The mystery of hatching our own misery
Am a wreck in howling storm:
My old knees bit stiff to fold
poor heart runs chilled & warm
wrinkly hands too cold to hold
With ears worn thin and wary eye
I observe Life’s mystery:
Us humans (although we deny)
do hatch our own misery!
In a next life lets apply prudence
as well as ‘uncommon sense’ shrewdness
Long now since finding sleep delicious or dawn propitious
When we were youngster or child
woke up from deep sleep delicious
by morning embraced beguiled
finding early dawn propitious
‘Come to’ now from sleep shallow
tiresome dreams repetitious
imagery scuffed & sallow
perplexing flashbacks pernicious
Since have gotten old
know no mornings bold
May I not crumble bereft!
Trend chasing & smart phone prattle
sound to me like empty rattle
It keeps fading my persistence
feeling drained & depleted
Asking haven’t I gone the distance
or am I just conceited?
May I just be left alone?
Chances of change long blown
feeble, soggy my backbone
Hope, once stout, long since flown
In what small time may still be left
please let me not crumble bereft!
All this dogged insistence
that we’re so deserving
of a prolonged existence
is getting unnerving
In language
so languid
Why languish
so anguished?
Living until fifty
would likely be nifty
While in the seventies
plenty can go wrong
There accrues penalties
for living that long
Even if nursing vain hope
in starry-eyed sanguinity
ain’t the far likelier scope
to end up in ‘penguinity’?
While what time left just rolls on
until earthly life is gone
+)
-‘penguinity’ = (license) the endearing inclination to believe in a swift take-off – even after in perpetuity having frantically been flapping one’s wings and still found oneself stuck on the ground