154. The Reclusive Years

Daylight becomes the enemy
the room becomes a womb

silence is the reward for a
decade’s toil in combat.

Koons and Rothko on the wall
magnums of Dom on immortal ice

the lighting tempered just so
the weft of the carpet just right.

Yet riches and trinkets mean nothing
to the man who wanted everything;

that silence craved is only found
between the hours of 4 and 5am

and even then the sirens fill the sky
sounds to remind of riots gone by

curtains tacked to the walls to
kill the encroaching light that

fights its way through gaps and cracks
turning corners; enemy of the night.

They laughed at Jacko, wept for The King
now hermetically-sealed he idly wonders

what the future might bring. Death
or glory – or maybe the madhouse

trussed up, whacked-out and terminally
neutered, babbling riddles of gold discs

so beautiful and the women – the women! –
oh man, you should have seen them

but I guess you had to be there.
Is this what my destiny holds?

A padded cell and a nurse looming large:
“It’s time for your medication, Mr Rose.”