Some people are sclerotic

Some people are sclerotic

They sit as still as the dummies

In shop windows

For hours

All wrapped up and

Overdressed if you ask me

The heat rises off them.

Mouldy pants vapourise

As they sit

Gazing out into a world

That once was theirs.

Some have sclerosis,

From before,

When they partied for England

Or any damn place they pleased

Come to think.

In the residential home,

The carers put a candle in a muffin

Sing Happy Birthday

Tunelessly

And then leave.

The sclerotics just keep staring

Out into the blue

Waiting.

Bill worries that he is becoming

More sclerotic by the day

He is jaundiced

And the liquor refuses to stay down

But at least he moves around.

From time to time

He finds himself outside

On the grass

Nursing a sore head

With Nancy,

A floosie is what his mother would have said

But she has a good heart

He has seen it

Pinned to her sleeve.

She dabs at tears with the corner

Of a white lace hanky

And together they smooch on the bed

Share a quart of whisky

Get high on fumes.

He will not go easy

As the old poem goes

Not that he has much time for

Complex drinking,

It is all he can do

To get his head around

Waking up in the morning.

He often asks himself

How old he had been

When he first realised

That he was never going to be famous.

Perhaps it was when

He began to take a lunchbox

In to work

And ate cheese and pickle sandwiches

At his desk

Writing poetry on a napkin

Stuffing it in a drawer.

Nancy said he could still show

The kids a thing or two

About performing.

Bill thinks she was being rude

But liked to fool himself

She was considering his prospects

As a dog-eared laureate,

Once he found a way

To eulogise old age

With world-weary charm

And get through a day

Without

Climbing all the way

Into the bottle

He kept

Hidden in a brown paper bag.