It's the Days, by John Tustin

It’s not the myriad prisons

The walls that are everywhere
The men of terror
The women of no sympathy

It’s not the calls unreturned
Or the mirror spitting back at you

Even the sparrows falling to their deaths
On fallow ground 
Beaks broken upon the weeds and the dust

How the music becomes nothing
But memories of something
With the decades listening

It’s not the alcohol
It’s not the job
The search for work 
That grinds one down
To paste

It’s not the rituals
Of eating, earning
And losing
With 
The piss dribbling
At 4AM
From a middle aged cock
With a middle aged prostate

It’s not even the vacancy of emotions
Meeting the logjam of words
That coagulate in the river
Tepid with nonchalance
Meaning nothing
As we count shekels
And lose them gambling
On luck
On love 

It’s not even the inevitability
Of the death
Of a star

No

It’s the endless days 
That become nights
Of threadbare sanity
That 
Decimate the soul

Alone
Whether solitary
Or in a crowded room

It’s just
The days 
And how 
They keep
Coming 
Toward us
Alone

As we draw our cards
Waiting for the shreds of love
Among the scrapple
In the slaughter

Waiting for love
Waiting for the end
As failures
And killers of love

Waiting for
The death
Of a star 

Scrambling
For the shreds
In the scrapple