If I had my life to live over again

If I had to live my life over again

I don’t think I could manage going through

It all again

  If I had my wife to fight all over again

If I had to fight my wife all over again

I’m sure I could not manage it anymore

  She wears the braces and I’m in the traces

The children ex-middens of piled diapers

The mortgage, the nursery fees; those calling pipers

  The imbecile government papers being the pauper’s lot

The regiment codes and numbers; one’s official slot

The cormorant over-shoulder-looks, looking for weakness spots

  Oh praise for the loss of vigour forcing quittance of paid work

And age, alleluia, thank you for retirement

No more subjugation eking out democracy

As practised in the mean pecuniary workplace

  Nor no-one excepting family to answer to

When a left foot does not fit a proffered left foot shoe

A time when anytime is time to bear a perjured blame

  Then the riot act roars red; and blood’s accountable

And the bills keep growing frills, keep mounting, being less

And less fencible

  Rising in accordance with the RPI - plus tat tops on the side

The avuncular clawed utilities whose maws must be supplied

Who spoil not for pounds of flesh; flesh is not satisfied

With flesh; address hard cash,; you’re bacon flayed alive

  Whiles one’s pension stands to attention on a further shore

Price swings are sending upwards; as cash roundabouts withdraw

Bombing waywardly and downwards

  One loses touch with friends; the snappy social pantomimes,

The treadmills for advancement, masquerade like

Russian clowns

  Abrupt, becomes the norm, four forms of hypermania

Excrescences of speech, opinion, inter alia

Inveigle to the fore to hold their glorious intifada

  A time of mind beforehand seems only sweet yesterday

Since sense and sentience carpeted abroad on holiday

Conveying caution haywire through a line of traffic cones

  Each wretch, the labour of an age in piled stones

Denotes what hopes s/he gropes for, in among

Like milliards

Cursed be your equal opportunities, your prized diverse canards,

  Their salad-shaker colanders; the universities

Select, infect, the fresh hearts of the lettuce

Withholding stumpy radishes, and cast and compost beets

  The dank remainders plump them down the lavatory

Thirst amongst equals lingers, as per normal contrary;

Straw sacred social goals, to fall to Harry Kane

  Inflamed supporters, and to quantities of ragged clothes

Whose happy lives Odysseus-like derive from Lethe’s dooms

Madness of mute dominion extends extreme expansive room

  Spreads a slop of surplus surface sheen

Windjammers take full sail on it, manoeuvre through unseeing

Archaics rust in chambers, anchor chains restraining

  In logic this blest tryst's over; clover feeds no expectations

Excepting in fetching youth intoxicating fashions

The best way forwards - out – a blast; avast!; feet first

  Nature has featured midwife; has been a wise wet-nurse

Timely there calls a solemn knell; in hauls a pall-draped hearse