Final solution

 

Raised across the parapet of mind,
words frowned in distant gathering,
horizon-huddled holding to the edge
of possibility defined, waiting for

release upon the brooding ledge of
endless misunderstandings, restless
as they honed edges to deadly shine,
ready to cut without mercy; wielded

in a winnowing of mechanical fear,
compressing dry, cracked stalks of
hope into bales, tied for distant, ever
imagined Winters where life could

chew listlessly at  dried remnants
of what had once been lush, ebullient
green salvation, thrust from fallow
earth, reaching always for the distant

anxious sky where sullen blues held
court for scattered sunbeams, tripping
through realities which danced slowly
at the bidding of bestial breeze, and

delicate, whispering winds which
rattled hollow husks, bereft of fertile
grains, abandoned, sterile, grieving
in those fields of futures known,

and unknown, where Occam thoughts
spread like scythes, laying waste,
rendering, reducing potential harvest
in death knells of dusty, dirty dying;

so did the paddocks sigh piteously,
deprived of all which had been
promised, before the war within
demanded one last, final solution.

On getting old

 

What is this getting old? We feel no different

 in ourselves but the world sees us differently

and as skin relaxes into wrinkled submission, 

we begin to write new stories for who we are 

and what life holds. Because it has been told,

that six score years and ten, is an allotted life

even though, many live beyond and have done

always, from the age of seventy, we fall into

the trap of believing in something called 'old,'

when all we ever are, is 'being,' regardless of

age, or years, or softened skin and so much 

experience, that we see the world now in a

different way to how we saw it in youth - 

even though the world itself has not changed

so much, and we feel no different inside, but

life demands we pay attention in new and 

more flexible ways; that we soften and fold

in on ourselves, as our skin does in humble

submission to the reality of time and years.