Zero Sum Game

"Men often die at thirty but are not buried until they’re eighty" - Ben Franklin

Five American bucks a night buys him a room in the third world
where he can lay there at sixty-three, staring vertically
hands folded on his belly, as if in repose
His mind meanders
possessing little more than the memories
that agitate his foreboding cauldron of emotions

The years of calculated luck and stupid-ass timing
steam up his closed sight, relationships not withstanding
In good faith she trusted him with her years
Her trust transcends
his transient sense of a world built by engineers
mortgaged dreams and left-brain decisions

He, in good faith, accepted the supple strength of her trust
They were bound by what money did not consummate
but money is his only barometer, his only choice
He thinks it thus
For his life is minted with the essence of his voice
and he's expended his last myopic orb on her behalf

Other men have their sterile garages and postcard marriages
He nurses a name that validates his existence, but not hers
The game has been lost to his years and her tears
He weighs his worth
on the balance sheet of his regrets and her fears
and oddly, finds closure in its zero sum

Do not bury this player just yet