A loving man with a touching smile

A loving man with a touching smile.
A drenching job so the lights don’t go off.
Umpteen cigarettes a day to allay the stress.
Slowly passing days, long and meaningless.
A marriage for children’s sake: a king dethroned.
A house, roof over the head, not a home.

His life has avoided the street and taken the alley.
The cap doesn’t fit but it’s the only hat around
Every road is either a mountain or a valley.
Ageing is a process of progress, a life bound
By tedious re-visitations cyclically to unbearable places,
By continuous shuffling on mediocre paths with ordinary faces.

The same song in the same keys by the same voices.
A life of having to choose when there are no choices.
How many cigars have been burnt on his lips?
How many roads has he walked on into dips?
So he thinks of taking his own life to end it all,
Only now his life is no longer his, he can’t make the call.

He is among the living dead, the be-dimmed, the hopeless hoppers.
Outside he passes for an eagle, in reality he’s a grasshopper.
A loving man with a touching smile, an empty smile;
A loving man who has forgotten how to love himself.
The thought of suicide hovers over his now idle head while
He superbly paints a masterpiece that says all is well.

So one day he finally takes his own life
The life that was no longer his: his wife
Is appalled, neighbours rumour it on street corners.
It indeed tastes like the bitterest of bile.
Perplexity reigns, unrequited questions among the mourners.
They mourn the loving man with a touching smile.