Lyrics & Arrangement by Terry Trueman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPnb09pOeuA&list=RDGpJbo83Udfw&index=4
Getting old,
older anyway,
Has
Among its benefits,
Joyful bitterness—
A crazy sounding thing to say
Bad as that might sound to those of you
Young, still full of hope,
It’s a simple fact too.
We older ones learn
This hard truth:
Only time
Can carry us through:
Friendships
In their DNA
Have
Paltry limitations,
built-in expiration dates.
Absent any explanation
My ‘best’ friend
For half a century
Is now grotesque to me
Ugly not just as an
Obese, troll
But deep down
In his darkest soul—
It’s not a single thing
That can be described,
It’s a rotting at the core of himself
A deadly stinking tide;
The friendship cannot go on
I won’t allow it.
Life has forced its permanent closure;
There is no alternate fit.
Maybe
Age is not the issue
Maybe it’s more of a
Wisdom thing,
An ancient knowledge,
Always there
for decades
a rip in the tissue
I lift a whiskey to my lips
And stare at the perfect ass
And big boobs
Of a lovely/sexy woman
Who has just walked past.
She doesn’t glance my way
if she did
I’d be invisible to her.
An old man with nothing to say
She may not be
Thinking about her striking
Beauty as she goes by
Or about, just now,
Flicking her head so her shiny hair
Makes all of us sigh
Remembering when we were young and strong
Living out our own sweet lies.
She keeps a view of her face
obstructed for none to see--
she may be
Thinking exactly about
How gorgeous she happens to be
She’s a woman, after all
And songs,
Legends,
Myths,
Lives,
Deaths
Have always been
Written about her
Devoted to her slightest whims—
Is my age the thing that
Shows me this truth?
This terrible accumulation of
Aging wisdom with all its costs;
I’ve seen this woman
Tens of thousands of times.
Through hot summer days
And cold winter frosts
And this morning
As she walks on by,
Maybe tweeting her simple thoughts
sentimental notions
About love,
Her cat(s)
And battles she’s fought
About her favorite drink
The prettiness of rainbows
The unfairness of a friend
Her sad, sad day--
And we men,
Seeing her flick her hair away,
Regardless of our age or status
Our wealth/fame/or out lack thereof
Regardless of any and all else,
Stop whatever we’re doing
And Tweet our regards,
Our sympathies
Our admiration,
Our kind words
Our deepest
Understanding.
We
Re-tweet her vapid
Empty
Notions
As if they matter
We favorite all her tweets
As if they
Matter greatly.
Greatly,
Because
Well,
You never know. . .
Joyful bitterness
Comes from
Finally seeing/hearing,
Listening/noticing
Many things
That have always been
Right in front of us
But that
For whatever
Combination of reasons
We somehow could
Not quite notice.
It has taken time to learn that
Honesty
Always comes with a price,
That directness often
Leads to loss, whether yer wrong or right—
age has little to do with it
Other than the truth
That it takes years to attain
joyful bitterness
a long time past our youth.
Trueman Music | Join me on Suno https://suno.com/@captivatingminimalism0623
Terry Trueman - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@TerryTrueman-w6e
Vincent Triola - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@vincentvtriola