Fuck This, Go Rob a Bank

What is this now? Another middle aged gripe? Another feckless moan at the futility of it all. Maybe its the realisation we all get to when you reach that point in life when surely, it all HAS a point right? Of course your work life is not the point OF life, but work life balance should surely swing in your favour as one gets older, I have made sensible decisions, done ok here and there, bereavements are the norm in any family of course and maybe I have had a little more than my fair share of those.

But fuck this, the only people I see doing well are the ruthless and the cleverest that can bend a rule or legally interpret something that allows them to skim the surface of criminality.

My own anarchic soul that's allowed itself to be chained to my sensibilities is screaming through the noise of  societal indoctrinated respectability shouting...

'FUCK THIS, GO AND ROB A BANK'

Fuck this, go rob a bank.

Forty years of graft behind me.

Still have the nothing.

Spent the money on keeping up with the price of life.

Going up faster than I can pay for it.

The odds stacked against most of me.

They need me to be behind.

Creates demand.

Look down, see what you find.

See a dog when it is thrown scraps.

Its head down sniffing out the goodies.

That is I.

Head down sniffing out the goodies.

Conforming is easier.

The man pats you gently.

Gives you a little for it.

The many-armed godhead has its hands in all your pockets.

Fuck this, go rob a bank.

Chance is the new opportunity.

Opportunity for chance everywhere.

Fuck this, go rob a bank.

Have a year off, do as you please.

Out of the gaze of the man

For a while at least.

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.