Got the job zombie, corporal us seniors are the new forever we shuffle through the operating rooms, parliaments our breathmints snipple in the hungry dawn our eating, the fibre, those mellow sauces dance dangerously close to the chilli snuggle down on the salts. We “mature” folk seek holes in the blighted gloom curtain-planners have their one stiff gin then march on back to bed dead tired, engorged or both.

She loves him, the young certainty of a train wreck deep inside his need isn’t fair but is trying like that sun hanging onto an indifferent escarpment mid winter gut his eyes are warm. Will you stay? Marry me?

Under all that grey know the secret garden has rats. Something more free an incontinence of desire still burgles in the grate. The forest is open. Her eyes are not. We all get killed by the ride.

The globe is crowded by those up ahead. This gangrenous queue. We have machines but lack the touch. That dangerous emission from our uncalloused hands. We commute in cannibal majesty to the wall-less, floor-less offices. Parents ate all the furniture ten years ago then headed to the country where supermarkets are polite & they can drive home drunk.

Health scares create jobs that children won’t touch with a barge pole. We wait for robots & “foreigners” to build a future while they fix our bottoms. Still trade, bargain – wouldn’t swap all this for the world even though it is the world it somehow fits these calm old hands.

She’d ring but the phone is estranged. His mortgage comes by for coffee then steals the pot. Jobs are a lie, no more long service leave after 3 weeks retire at 30 sacks of nothing & everything. Weren’t warned as we fretted texting in the womb. But straight as stringent. It somehow gets better. No use complaining, just keeps on raining. We are cut on a rug sign our names in blood. That human curiosity killing a lifetime. Familiar faces. Worn friends like slippers. Truly placed as we discover… this. Another Happy Birthday. Hello teacher, I’m me. Then travel to be you.