At the top of a rickety staircase
The grand old writer takes his usual place
At the keyboard in his lonely garret.

He rubs the hip
That gives him jip
Every day now.

Old age does not arrive alone, he thinks.
Now he has a theme,
And types it on the screen:

Old age does not arrive alone
It leads a bloodied battalion
Of aches and pains
Failures, strains
Forgetfulness, exasperations
Tablets, operations
Dietary guidelines to follow
Bitter daily pills to swallow

I do not fear the reaper’s scythe, he writes
My lust for life will soon be dead
Every morning it ebbs away
A little more than yesterday
I am more tired, for no good reason
At the turn of every washed-out season

Time speeds up, swaps weddings for funerals
Christmas creeps up every month
Birthdays bumble by like London buses
I seem to clean my teeth each ten minutes I’m alive
and need a piss every five.

But worse than these wearisome warriors
are the forces of remorse.
I despair of my younger self
That youthful timidity
the trepidation, naivety
My half-baked plans to change the world
The vague ambitions that swirled
In my head
As I tried to steer my rudderless ship
downriver past the banks which slipped
sideways,
where my rivals built
dry and solid lives
Safe behind the levees.

Invisible threads across the years
are stretched to breaking point
I read my old diaries
but do not recognise
The impetuous, arrogant youth
Who penned those cliched diatribes
Simplified world views, ignorant cant
I remember with embarrassment
How I would rave and rant
With forgotten friends, into the small hours

Wasting those golden summers of ours
In pubs, on drugs
Abusing my body
Frittering hard-earned money
On fripperies and tat
Unfaithful, profligate,
My disrespect, my arrogance.
Leading kin and lovers
such a merry dance
I snarled at hands that fed
Spurned opportunities
that might have led
Me to a better destination;
In bouts of self-destruction
I rejected introductions
Gifts the world had tendered
I returned to sender

Now hindsight is my teacher
I wish I could go back
And put myself on track
But there’s no second chance
No steward’s enquiries
I burned the books and diaries
But the memories cling tight
and ambush me repeatedly
in the semi-conscious night

And anyway, in ten years’ time
I’ll hate the way
I am today
And think these ramblings dire;
I’ll throw them on the fire
Then sit before some other desk
pick up a different pen
and start all over again.
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