Remembering Who I Am Before I Forget Poem by Paul Brookes

The worst thing is the greyness,
a fog that shifts perception

are memories real or false idols embedded deep,
reorganised and edited? the truth needs winkling out.

there are no words to add
thousands I knew or know, well that's the point.

cells die, at a deadly rate of acceleration,
the mind once intact seems, at times, to flee, skitter fragments,
like molecules on cold winds leaving only the husk.

this shell once was but now is not,
the mind has left for a distant shore waiting for the body to catch up.

old age settles in, the marrow grows cold
and all the fires of hell can't warm the soul.

I write down all I can remember before I can't remember,
so that you can remember who I was, how I was.
before the fire dies and all that's left are ashes
of what was and has been is be swept up,
discarded in the rubbish bin of history.

the worst thing is the greyness and most of all the rotting soul.