Servility to perpetual youth Has fixed me to the plot I age on The bitter tincture of neglect Plays about my tongue and eases Sighing music, down my throat To blight the sediment A record of my failures Let malnourishment serve as your sustenance Raise flares to the dwellings of equivocation May impermanence temper your suffering Your sibilant manifold questioning And your pointed fear of a textbook senescence Parceling out monotonies bent and arthritic Waning baleful in the attics of decline Shaped by the efforts of coercion Bound helpless by the tethers of duress Gilded with lack to frame your body Dousing the kindling of the coming years Near-forgotten Our histories sprawling out behind us Seconds birthing minutes became decades Dusks new and unfamiliar sprang upon us We hung our heads and pretended There was never expectation There was nothing to corrode A flag in a sea of marble A dream is an empty stomach A flag in a sea of marble A dream is a drowning child