Lust of limb nor lust of food, mar the lovely solitude; yet there stirreth in my clay, memory of an older day.

His white lips move, whispering, My time is short,
I would be gone.
O Lord, Lord! now let thy servant depart!
I am left alone
an old man with thin hands and a dry heart
sitting in the sun.

I am grown sadder than the gust that shakes
dead leaves in May,
lonelier than the sea that breaks
her heart in spray;
now, O Lord, ere another morrow wakes,
I would away.

For the spring returning moves not as before
this dolorous clay,
love is forgotten, a bright cloak I wore
and cast away;
the stars are dumb, the heavens resound no more
in this dark day;
I am old, I am old: thine ancient peace restore,
O Lord, I pray!

The Old Man by A. R. D. Fairburn

Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum

My name is Fatso and I am eight.
I think I would be better if I lost weight.
The kids at school hate me,
And often make me cry.
I try to tell the teachers
But they say I just lie.

My name is Stupid and I am ten,
I sometimes feel angry and stab my arm with a pen.
I want to be loved
But I want him to go away.
I don’t understand the things he does
And the words I hear him say.

My name is Waste-Of-Space and I am thirteen.
The teachers say I’m naughty, disruptive and mean.
Each day at school I dread
Each night at home I fear
Praying for an exit,
I need way out of here.

My name is Anorexic and I am fifteen.
Their rules and threats, they are obscene.
I’m not ill; I just need to rid of a bit more fat,
Then I promise I’ll leave it at that.
I want to be small, fragile and pure
And food is certainly not the cure.

My name is Attention Seeker and I am eighteen
But my self Injury is not about being seen.
It’s my way of surviving in a world which I fear
It’s a way of crying without my eye shedding a tear
The punishment I deserve and need,
You can’t stop me. I must bleed.

My name is Rachael and I am twenty one.

My Name by Innocent Voices

My name is Rachael and I am twenty one.

he was 65, his wife was 66, had
Alzheimer's disease.

he had cancer of the
mouth.
there were
operations, radiation
treatments
which decayed the bones in his
jaw
which then had to be
wired.

daily he put his wife in
rubber diapers
like a
baby.

unable to drive in his
condition
he had to take a taxi to
the medical
center,
had difficulty speaking,
had to
write the directions
down.

on his last visit
they informed him
there would be another
operation: a bit more
left
cheek and a bit more
tounge.

when he returned
he changed his wife's
diapers
put on the tv
dinners, watched the
evening news
then went to the bedroom, got the
gun, put it to her
temple, fired.

she fell to the
left, he sat upon the
couch
put the gun into his
mouth, pulled the
trigger.

the shots didn't arouse
the neighbors.

later
the burning tv dinners
did.

somebody arrived, pushed
the door open, saw
it.

soon
the police arrived and
went through their
routine, found
some items:

a closed savings
account and
a checkbook with a
balance of
$1.14
suicide, they
deduced.

in three weeks
there were two
new tenants:
a computer engineer
named
Ross
and his wife
Anatana
who studied
ballet.

they looked like another
upwardly mobile
pair.

hell is a lonely place by Charles Bukowski

Always with me, always with you by Joe Satriani

With artillery, you greet your only lasting memory. Am I the monster?

I dreamed that you had ceased to love me—
not that you had come from other beds
back to mine, or gone from mine to others,
just that something in your heart had stopped.

I willed myself awake to find you still
beside me. It was just a dream, I thought,
yet when I turned to kiss you, in your eyes
I saw that you had ceased to love me.

I willed myself awake a second time
to find myself alone, as I have been
these many months, but did not know if it
was terror or relief I felt, and whether

dreams unfold the past or make the future
plain. I dreamed that you had ceased to love me,
and know when I see nothing in your eyes
I can't dream myself awake a third time.

The Dream by David Solway