Old men in open shirts and give-away caps

sit royally on the staircase of the community parlour.

Their teeth grind like their knees in the picong,

empty quarrels about cricket and young boys

on the port smuggling drugs in the fold of brand name clothes.
These elders are not wise;

they do not grow fine with time.

They spread across the shade’s deformity,

talking the talk, turning concrete into slippery parts of

whiskey nostalgia and smoky eyes of lost fires. 
Days spent tumbling, stirred cubes of ice,

shriveled fingers dancing in a plastic cup;

full embrace of tropical island slowness

and shit economy with no jobs

or the regard for the dignity of things that age.
As a child, I abandoned the thought

that I would spend my last days on the step of a shop,

leaning in the afternoon air, barely able

to live what’s left of my life in the present tense,

arguing about the golden era of the West Indies, long gone.