Neurotics

No one gives you a thought, as day by day 
You drag your feet, clay-thick with misery.
None think how stalemate in you grinds away, 
Holding your spinning wheels an inch too high 
To bite on earth. The mind, it's said, is free
But not your minds. They, rusted stiff, admit 
Only what will accuse or horrify,
Like slot-machines only bent pennies fit.

So year by year your tense unfinished faces 
Sink further from the light. No one pretends 
To want to help you now For interest passes 
Always towards the young and more insistent,
And skirts locked rooms where a hired darkness ends 
Your long defence against the non-existent.