Lentum Mortis
How suddenly strange to be seventy.
The alarm punches
a hole in the darkness.
Stunned. Another day
hits him by surprise.
Coffee and cigarettes.
The slow return
of consciousness.
Waking into the
sameness of the same.
Nothing unusual
will happen today.
Only an old man
retracing his steps
in a world devoid
of wonder, shambles
of a life that was.
Friends and lovers
lost and gone; not
another further on.
Once there was a war.
Once there was a wife.
Fading memories
of a living life,
reduced now to
footsteps of futility.
Nowhere to go.
Nothing to see.
Breath after breath,
patiently waiting
around for death.
The sun comes up on
the nothing new world.
Walk out to meet it.
Twenty four more
hours to kill.
Another day of
vacío to fill.
Life is a drug that
slowly stops working.
But he remains hooked.
A pathetic junkie.
Every day another dose.
No rehab for mortality.
