Faded to grey

I do not write.

Not nearly enough.

Too busy, too many things to do.

I have let it go, lost the thing I had that made me write.

Haven’t the disciplines, the determination to push it through.

I have been courted by big publishing houses.

Literary agents rub their chins and email me for more.

I’m popular then not.

Minimum wage forcing my hand, £5.50 per hour for this grown man to protect.

No prospects beyond the next wage packet.

I am paid five days late. Often.

Don’t make the threshold to pay tax to the man.

He has no need of my trifling small pennies.

Late nights that become day.

Remnants of cancer ping with pain.

It wants to join me in my mire.

Year in. year out.

Perhaps too comfortable in my weaned poverty.

Comfort in the decrepit familiarity.

Need the misery of never enough.

Memories of mum begging down the lane.

Need the pain of no gain.

Always work hard, callous your skin hard.

Reward never came. Capitalist fodder for life.

I dragged riches for others from the sludge.

My dotage, damn it, my dotage is near.

One last push, one last big breath in.

Who wins. Literary or my labour?

Cancel the Sun life monthly funeral payments. Five pounds saved.

Greys of a hard knock life.

Thinned grey papery skin and hair.

Faded to grey.