There are no hearts and flowers
There are no hearts and flowers
Just a stream of mucus,
A slithery thread
Dried onto the rumpled chin
Of an old man
Still smiling at the memory
Of a dream he once had.
Little children skirt his seat
Like an issue, they have no idea
How to approach
So they keep as wide a distance as possible
Without bumping into the old girl
Sipping tea from a saucer in the corner.
Teenagers squabble over trivial things
As if their lives depend upon it
The guy with the flick knife
Believes they do.
Arguments were not to be tolerated
Without reprisal
He learned that from cable news
Never take a defeat lying down
Never give up
Keep fighting until you win.
It’s a political thing
All of the hypocrites do it,
Only fools and horses lose.
Teenagers have a blindspot
When it comes to the old
They are all either invisible or de-humanised
They can be objectified
So very callously
Which makes them both nonhuman and invisible
At one and the same time.
With teenagers
Their indifference to authority,
As well as their existential intolerance of ageing
Depends on the circumstance
And whether or not they can be bothered
To adopt a position
Their parents might construe
As participatory.
Most of their time is spent playing around
With the notion of time and space
Happening in the same place
All at once.
A world of chaos
Future perfect
Past present
Memed as a fait accompli
On social media.
Nobody notices the tears
Of old folks
The rheumy eyes
Struggling to focus on the meaning
Of apocalyptic
Within the context of the end of their own lives.
If the old man could communicate
His inner workings,
Which he thought, were still progressing
At a lively rate,
With another living being,
Somebody with a soul
Who remembered Marvin Gaye
And could sympathise with helplessness,
Then there might be a connection.
Elephants would leave the room
A china teapot would be more than decoration
Humanity could stake a claim
On predestination
The hippocampus would be stimulated
As both memory and learning combine
To create a new experience.
There are no hearts and flowers
There is only dystopia
A world full of trivia
The ephemera of modernity
Wrapped in cardboard
And dumped in a landfill.
The old man with the history
And little future
Feels so close to the edge
It would take only a nudge
From a stranger to wake him up
To the danger of disassociation.
The old woman,
Who dreamed of hearts and flowers
Thought he looked familiar
But as far as she could tell
He had left his past behind
And all he had going for him now
Was the shell
He has grown into.