Colin

 

It was all such an unlikely tale,

A made up, wishful confabulation,

You were just another elderly male,

Sad, lost, making the kind of conversation

Men of your age and social station,

Are wont to make, feeble banter, bound to fail,

We did not trust the words that were spoken

By your sort, 

And your chatter made everything fraught.

Friday tea time suggested fish and chips

And you’d overheard a recommendation,

A new place in town, 

Or was it merely imagination?

You saw yourself running down,

In your flimsy, open-backed hospital gown,

And placing your Friday night order,

For inmates whose hearts and minds and hips

Were broken.

A generous, fatty, battered round,

For though demented your soul was sound,

And then you remembered your former life,

And thought of your clothes and your car,

And you spoke about your wife,

Lovely, kind and giving,

And none of us believed her living,

Though you used the present, ‘is’ and ‘are’.

We felt sad and looked at the floor,

Thought of the man you had been before,

But knew by your vacant eyes,

Your words were self comforting lies,

Felt something like despair,

Then Brenda walked in at the door!

And Brenda was realer than real,

Though certainly a creation,

Brenda was just what was needed,

Brenda it seemed had succeeded,

In being all the things any man would adore,

Cheerful, jolly, with sex appeal,

Warm of heart and mind and large of bust,

Dressed in red, with bleach blonde hair,

Still married and without disgust.