Now comes the day your Newsverse bard

Grizzled by maturity

Gets his half-price Metrocard

And Social Insecurity.

   

See him step by step descend

Life’s staircase wreathed in gloom

At the bottom, journey’s end,

He reaches the men’s room.

   

His day’s work is to contemplate

Creeping in its petty pace

The daily progress of the date

Marking where Earth is in space.

   

And if he finds the nights are glum

They’re not as bad as mornings.

Too bad that the days don’t come

Tagged with trigger warnings. 

   

So check things off your bucket list

Skydive, surf and scuba! 

See the Taj Mahal in mist

Learn to play the tuba.

   

And you can climb on Machu Picchu

Have yourself a good long look.

All that life can show or teach you

He’ll read about it in a book.

   

Twisted, shriveled, gnarled and wizened

Gloomier than Jean-Paul Sartre

His life is bounded and horizoned

By his broken heart.