Aqualung Is Still Alive

Text:

© gwailoah
Aqualung is still alive and spitting,
Sat alone and snarling in the park
As once he did in decades so long past.
I wonder at his thoughts and fantasies
His daylong meditation, dawn to dark.

The warming bog and frilly panties gone,
And no more friendly dogs for company,
His eyes and mind are lost to memory.
He rails and flails against his grim misfortune
To friends and neighbours he alone can see.
A shelter for the bus is still his bedroom.
He sleeps wrapped in a blanket damp and skanky
Upon a mattress rescued from the dump.
The police leave him snoring in his slumber;
The cleaning trucks will wake him early morn.
One night like Jesus he will up and die...

Survival is a game he daily plays
Where each day is the same as that before;
The morning beg at the local store for money
His daily beer and bread to drink and eat
At home there in the park on his favourite seat
To while away the day till darkness comes.

I feel the age creep through his cracking bones.
He must have struck a handsome shape in youth
When vim and vigour coursed his lusty veins
And fire and strength of spirit drove him forth
Across the battlefields to storm his wars.
Now through the throat filled phlegm and chesty tears
His struggling spirit cries for some redemption.
"Dear God hast thou forsaken me? For why?
My only sin was drinking large and free
And it became my master instead of thee!
My weakness for the drink will be my epitaph:
A man who let the booze control his life
Until he died. Assuming there's a tombstone
To mark my grave when I do leave this earth."

Forgotten by the world but not by me.
His impact on my soul is sure and sharp.
Poor bastard. Brain not wired like all the rest.
Tormented by his demons all his life
They chased him round this planet like a hellhound.
Can't imagine what he must have gone through.
Friendless at the end, our Aqualung.

Brian Thomas McIntyre  June 2023 to March 2024 all rights reserved