A Sin is What it Is

Cherry

By Silver Spun Sand

Mon, 28 Dec 2015
  • 774 reads
2 comments
 
Pity I never topped myself when I reached seventy-five.
Never had the courage though, and now it’s too late –
incarcerated in this place.
 
They tell me it’s because I don’t know what day of the week it is...
how many beans make four...or is it five? I wasn’t born yesterday, 
and I know that for a fact; I know what I am, or at least, what I was.  
 
They’d have me think I’d lost my marbles...not safe on my own.
Tell me I have ‘violent episodes’, and I agree, especially
when they try and force them pills on me.
 
Every day before supper, they come round with ‘em.  Tell me
not to hide them under my tongue.  Force open my mouth,
like a ruddy horse – made to take the bit between his teeth.
 
‘For my own good’, they tell me. Who are they trying to kid? 
It’s for their good, all right, so as they can grab some shut-eye
without us lot calling out for a commode, and the like. 
They must think I’m stupid.
 
I’ve tried telling my son, the one who put me in here, but
I can see it in his face he doesn’t believe me. Was a woman
used to come in with him, too; 
 
Elsie, she said she was called. Asked did I remember her 
each blessed time she was here, which I didn’t.  Well...
you can’t remember everyone you meet in this life. 
Anyway she doesn’t come anymore. Shame –
because we two got on.
 
I’ve drawn up a plan of escape though...hid it somewhere, only
I can’t recall where, or what it is, and at nights after one of them pills
my mind goes blank, and I have to start again – all over 
in the morning...and so it goes, except
 
it’s much like a jigsaw some idiot keeps chucking to the floor, 
and so I pick up the pieces, but, each time, more and more of them 
go AWOL...down the back of the settee, cracks in the floorboards, 
places like that.  Pretty soon...they’ll all be lost.
 
A sin is what it is.
Certificate 15
Poem
Silver Spun Sand Poems
Philosophy

Comments

Submitted by celticman on

the sin is we keep cutting and cutting and we expect more and more for less and less. A job in a care home is not a career, it's the lowest paid, menial and manual and the price is paid by those that are 'cared' for. I write about this all the time. 90% of homes are okish. 5% are below ok. And, my guess, is around 2% are where are the horrors occur. But that's thousands of old folk. Shame on us.  

 

Submitted by Silver Spun Sand on

Shame - indeed.