With just my bus pass for company

By Stanley Collymore

I get bored and depressed sometimes, not because

I’m physically ill or there’s anything mentally

wrong with me since I’m fully compos

mentis as any human being can be;

simply that as a widowed person

resident on my own and over the age of sixty there

are those who quite inexcusably assume, either

in their derisive arrogance or a case of rank

stupidity, that with me living on my own

and being the age that I am these two

reasons alone indisputably render

me as someone, who must, of

course, be definitely boring

or otherwise in dire need

of constant supervision

and relevantly, at all

costs, be distinctly

and unreservedly

left on my own.

A situation that is nakedly prevalent nowadays

and quite despondently so that several of us

senior citizens, and regrettably a goodly

number among them that I casually

know, are similarly like me obligatorily and

debasingly subjected to this overbearing

opprobrium and subsequently in such

perturbing circumstances have no

surrogate option, other than to

unenthusiastically succumb.

Naturally prompting the evident question: Why is

it then that other cultures globally and even

some within white Caucasian, western

 societies can succeed in caringly

and ethically looking after their elderly

citizens, something, which when it

comes to the United Kingdom

as well as Northern Ireland

is disgustingly lacking

and totally foreign?

© Stanley V. Collymore

1 November 2019.

Author’s Comments:

It’s not my character, or will it ever be part of my nature, to belabour the disgustingly obvious, since I’m a strong and committed adherent of the worthy and commonsensical principle of not casting pearls before swine.

And with the United Kingdom and its longstanding and likeminded colony of Northern Ireland sumptuously replete with such aforementioned swine, sensibly trying to significantly change such entrenched and worthless attitudes will be as impractical as the Task King Canute set himself of seeking to control the oceanic tides.

So I’ll preferably let my poem eloquently speak for itself!