Anxieties about Aging

While Paul treats us to a collection of funny poems which focused on physical aspects of growing old, Max's poems are concerned with the mental turmoil that accompanies the descent into decrepitude. If you think this rather overstates the case, revel in his reaction to discovering his first grey pubic hair or his anxieties about erectile dysfunction and speculate what state he'll be in when the whole edifice really starts crumbling. Or accept that poetry and real life rarely intersect.

Low Rise

Each day I get older and all my joints ache,
And I need to stop eating sweet pastry and cake,
But there's one old-age-ailment that I fear and I dread,
It’s the veritable killer that makes you wish you were dead,
So throw me lumbago and hair loss and gout,
Thick glasses, ear trumpets, I'll hear if you shout,
But please will you kill me, and don't tell me I'm silly,
If I wake up one morning with a non-functioning willy.
So promise, oh promise, if I get to that junction,
That I'm sent to my maker with erectile dysfunction.

Oh, erectile dysfunction, erectile dysfunction,
Oh say there's a pill or a cream or an unction,
That'll save me from terrible erectile dysfunction.

And things as they are, well, even with petting,
I ask, have I come, or am I just sweating?
But at least though it's slow and the liquid quite sparse,
Everything works and it's not tit over arse.
But I dread that cruel day when there's a buxom young wench,
But my old undercarriage refuses to wrench,
And though I call out home start, alas it won't be,
My poor little willy will have packed-up on me.

Oh, erectile dysfunction, erectile dysfunction,
Oh say there's a pill or a cream or an unction,
That'll save me from terrible erectile dysfunction.

So thank your libido, don't offer correction,
Of how you perform when blessed with erection,
Just thank the good lord in a song or a riff,
For the sacred ability of getting quite stiff,
And spare just a thought and a little compunction,
For those poor old sad fuckers with erectile dysfunction.

Bad Hair Day

I'm having a bad day and my spirits, they are low,
My humour's at rock bottom, and I just don't want to know,
And the thing that is responsible for this mood of bleak despair,
Is that I did discover, my first grey pubic hair.

And It shouldn't surprise me or upset my cool,
It's not like I dally or go out on the pull,
But it's an extra embarrassment, just too much to bear,
That tiresome, irksome, grey pubic hair.

So I asked at the chemist's for pubic hair dye,
But the girl on the counter, she gave me a sigh,
She said, be gone with you, oldie, I really don't care,
About you or your troublesome, grey pubic hair.

So I looked at the tweezers, but I shook my old head,
I'm not pinching or pulling, I'll suffer instead,
So it's lying there to mock me, oh, life isn't fair,
When I'm cursed with the presence of a grey pubic hair

In My Head I'm Still Nineteen Years Old, So Why Am I Stuck in This Old Man's Body

Help!  In my head I'm still nineteen years old, so why am I stuck in this old man's body?

I can't stretch, I can't bend, oh where will it end?  I'm still nineteen years old, so why am I stuck in this old man's body?

My pace I revoke, my reflexes a joke.  I'm still nineteen years old, so why am I stuck in this old man's body?

And my feet they both hurt, my balance desert.  I'm still nineteen years old, so why am I stuck in this old man's body?

And I'd still like to chase women, but eyes they are dimming.  I'm still nineteen years old, so why am I stuck in this old man's body?

And my muscles I tear, what's happened to my hair?  I'm still nineteen years old, so why am I stuck in this old man's body?

And I shake and I shiver, my wrists all a quiver and who's that old fuck that I can see in the mirror?  I'm still nineteen years old, so why am I stuck in this old man's body?

Copyright © Max Scratchmann