Every night
I say sweet dreams, I check
the room for spiders
and walking beasts that might scare
you, I wipe gently
the crusts from your eye
and tickle your nose
and it is that holds me
together, for a while
but then I see the papers,
and I know I fight my own
losing battle each night,
a small war, a territory
lost in the middle of screams,
silent and rubble
built back over night
to show a smile to the world;
The category is now changed,
the box to tick is shuffled around
like a deck of cards in the hands
of a teenager drunk
on sideboard cider, cheap
and trashy, a sly grin of arrogant pissed up
humour, which now says I have found Middle-Age
and I scratch my head in confusion,
is it Middle-Age or is it just a shorter time
available in which to get things done.
Perhaps not the right way,
perhaps the way to see it
is that I have earned the right