My demon

My doctor once said
words I most dread
“You are not aging gracefully.”
I thought at the time
he just meant my spine,
realizing now with loathing
he saw behind this Queen’s clothing,
that deep within this ol’ head,
memories too soon will be dead.
My world, my life, my heart and soul,
replaced by some old hag
who will most certainly drag
you down roads you won’t want to go.

I’m right now betwix’t and between
two worlds, one mine,
one obscene.
While I lose my ME, the shell you’ll see
with agony
as that
someone who once was
ME

I dance now a little bit faster
I want you to be the last to know,
I have so much to do,
to leave behind
oh how unkind!
Cruel brain of mine,
robbing my dear ones of my love,
my mind.

It’s in the small silences that chime
after I’ve mistakenly said a line
from someone else’s script.
You look away, quite upset
because I tripped
over my shadow’s thought.
Exposed, standing caught
in the headlights of this stranger’s onrushing
train of thought.

Now you can see,
what I’ve forgot.
Neither you nor I
have got a lot
of time.

Anything,
ANYTHING would be better
than leaving you this way.
this way will just push you away.
You’ll hate me a bit more each day,
hate yourself for thinking that way
because I know you, and I know me.
I KNOW I’d drown in guilt before I’d say
the truth:

That woman sitting there moaning isn’t really she,
Isn’t worth the effort to keep going.
As she drifts from life,
my mom, my wife.

I want you to keep it light,
maybe uncouth
but truly right.
Just set me out on the iceflow
some night…
so to speak,
let me die soon
after my peak.

Right now I need all my nerve
to keep on driving
’round this curve.

I need you to know, after I go,
that I KNOW
how you love me,
for I love you even more.

I’ve loved you forever,
and will love you both
forevermore.

If I try to say it in prose,
its’ too mushy – you’d doze.
But the rhyme keeps it slow,
keeps my thinker
stretching for that flow.
I can’t let it go,
not yet.

The tangles that mangle
The memories, they dangle,
I don’t need your pity right now.
I do need your help in getting me through quick.
Nothing is worse than being a curse
on those whose worst fear is
cleaning up after one’s loved one
who is sick.

But never recovering – ever recovering –
ever returning from this oldfangled
world of demons,
aptly named – because it’ll getcha
my demon, dementia.

And it got me,
right between the eyes,
as my brain slowly dies,
you hear its cries
when I tell you lies
about my late arriving demise.
My Mad Hatter
couldn’t be gladder
to get to that date
more than a little late.
God, all this I hate.

Written 5/5/2004 around 4-5 am.
Last revised 8/3/2006