stevedorequinlan

Urmston’s elderly no longer die
They just malaise in a haze of dementia-ridden daze
Live their final phase in a child like old age of indecipherable nights and days

They don’t die
They’re just frozen in time
Their decline is akin to a drawer of old watches
Doomed to progress through diminishing sized boxes

Our neighbour watches constantly
She thinks we cannot see
Counts crimes with twitching curtains
Both the real and the perceived

I want to say I’m sorry she hates us
Say its fine to question our marital status
I would love to say we recall better times
Where our crimes were not expressed through bleeds to the brain
That she knew our name
That we knew hers
Before its written in flowers on the side of a hearse
I wish we’d moved here when she might’ve been polite
And not the metaphorical minute to midnight

She does not sleep
Bangs oblique circadian rhythms against our wall
Atypically in 7/4 time
Her radio plays a mournful whine of Bach (and forth)
At funereal vibration we await our cremation through the partial rigor mortis of sleep deprivation
The disembodied degradation is lucid and sane in its venomous damnation of bile and blame

Her house is like a darwin-esque dream
Kept pristine since the inter-war years
Her fears are real but remain unrealised
And whilst there’s no natural predators the walls have eyes

She has no chip pan
She doesn’t smoke
Yet she’s slowly dying with each little stroke

And this is Urmston
So her inevitable progression
Will lead a procession of couples to bay-fronted suburban succession
To a property last sold in the depression
To move our nation further out of recession

The Dispassionate couples will be casually chortling how it’s cheaper than Chorlton with its period chintz and convenient train links

They will think it a killing
But she’s not dead
She’s twitching the curtains from inside her head
It’s just her face is now frozen like stroke-riddled watches
Just watching the world from diminishing sized boxes