how old my skeleton?
new tricks from old translated
(last will and testament)
from root of youth to aged vegetable
red cabbage eyes on the armoured Juliette
winking hard soft comfort
a southern man in a Dorset tone
chords cut and dried to the singing bone
pancake flat through gills of flatulence;
old man thin in the fat side of the mouth
blue-brown-to-grey
(three times a day)
come strangers dressed in green of camouflage.
two Caesars crawl like armpits
through the stomach of a fly
to sit beside my rocking chair
to dance three fingers through my hair
sewer grey; neatly cut and dried;
how old this new years day?
remember once as boys and girls
we went outside to play
plucked feathers from the Bramley\'s teeth
and sang our loud Hooray!
how old the memory?
now flushed, well fed, and warm.
now voiceless as each mornings\' drop of rain;
to share each touch my troubled mind;
though I cannot share my pain;