ageing

a cast iron gate
leads to a square
between the fried chicken place
and Nails n’Hair

in the shadow of the city
crouched like a mouse
a ruined but pretty
old flint house

agnes in the kitchen
eyes like beads
on a wary pigeon
as we talk about needs

she mentions Clark
asleep upstairs
but gives a start
he’s been dead ten years

my sister, too
she says, bereft
what do you do
when it’s you that’s left

she shows me their history
Clark proposing
outside the registry
pouting, posing

black and white streets
fading witnesses
apartments in Greece
work-dos, Christmases

but that’s all stopped
she’s lost in the space
between a Nails n’Hair shop
and a fried chicken place

I’m a grandpa rapper / a crap rapscallion / safety cap and medic alert medallion / when sorrows come, they come not in single rhymes, but battalions / digging so deep I beat the Grand Canyon

I’m a secondhand man, a used methuselah / trying not to lose what time’s busy bruising / pleasantly confused but somehow cruising / altitudes of attitude in between snoozing

I’m a hand model for cannulas / decades older than Dracula / rhyming my time in dodgy vernacular / less Cardi B more cardiovascular / a tottering, tea-time travelling ambassador / for the dusty but lusty, rap-battling amateur / bending his endings in dodgy parameters

I’m old father rhyme / emptying the floor in four-four time / ready to go when he’s only just arrived / boney n’broken / outspoken in a cloak / a try-hard, blowhard, droney old bloke / specialising in hip hop embarrassment / rhymes so bad it’s tantamount to harassment / ancient and arrogant / blatant, irrelevant / an exiled, senile, X Files experiment

I’m a slow-crime, lunch time, delusional dreamer / drivin’ my four wheeled walker like a beemer / lithe as a lemur with a fractured neck of femur

I’m a one-time rhymer whose tunes aren’t wack / braces not belts cos my pants are slack / tenacity I lack / not hitting the clubs, hitting the sack / snacks my crack / fifteen Murder She Wrotes back to back

I’ve got bandanas on the shopping list / vitamin pills, Bloods n’Crips / zimmer frames my game and sticks ma’ whips / easy-on gats with velcro grips / my rhymes don’t shine but they sure don’t slip / when I bust a move I bust a hip