all the way

  
 
Women don’t move me so much these days    
and I think they feel the same way    
about me  
   
grey hair lines on a face    
in your forties yeah ok rugged man    
but 52 and the slope of the graph isn’t right    
for romance    
   
the good about it    
is I’m not up all night chasing the latest    
just can’t find a song I haven’t already heard    
   
the last joke on a bachelor    
if you taste all the flavours    
one day
all vanilla    
   
it’s hormones sure    
the colour of my blood    
doesn’t quite mix    
with moonlight trouble    
to make the magic    
like an old werewolf    
yeah I can still shake some fur out and howl a bit    
but isn’t there a book to read or bone to chew  
or something on the boat that needs attention    
   
never liked people much anyway    
so now the fire’s gone low    
and see them clearer    
turns out women    
are people too  
who knew  
   
not complaining    
cos I'm safer now  
never was a car I crashed or chance I took    
any story ended in a jump over a back fence    
that wasn’t related somehow    
to where good legs lead    
   
seems like I had my run    
or at least I can see the end of it    
see younger men still running their plays    
sure I was as easy to read    
   
I’m kinder too  
no more women sold a story    
left standing  
I’m not the lesson about long-time-single men    
Red-car red-flag
run honey run    
   
wonder if there was an end except this one    
the final end of the bachelor    
memories cold and probably only lies dreams imagined victory  
“the older I get the better she was”  
while I slip in to the anonymous state of ‘passed it’    
camera pan to silhouette  
wondering if I got it wrong    
probably did    
was always going to    
roll my mind all the way back    
remember being 5    
and the cold hard hands    
of the one who should have been warmest    
maybe that’s where it started ended    
learned to stay out of her reach  
will never know    
but it seems like that    
   
15 years and I’ll be An Old Man    
who fries every meal    
and grows nose hairs kids love to be grossed out by    
ears as big as dinner plates  
died one night from a kitchen fire    
that old guy down the street    
lived alone    
smelled like damp carpet    
wore his pants tits-high  
used to swear at clouds    
someone said he had a yacht    
   
but we never saw it