Cognitive Decline
(to the tune of “Oh My Darlin’ Clementine”)
In a fog within my noggin, it’s an inauspicious sign;
Lived for fourscore, now I’m done for, I’ve got cognitive decline.
CHORUS:
Oh my mem’ry, oh my mem’ry, I’ve got cognitive decline;
Nouns are lost and gone forever, dreadful cognitive decline.
Bright I was and literary, my IQ one-thirty-nine,
Now I’ve lost it, brain’s exhausted by tech terms I can’t define.
CHORUS:
Once I bucked up, lined my ducks up, did three hours of work by nine;
Now I spend my days in pjs, in a lounger I recline.
CHORUS:
Drooling lips slurp from my soup bowl, sip Ensure instead of wine;
My last venue’s meager menu, foul the fare on which I dine.
CHORUS:
Cogitation’s termination, leaving bits of wit behind,
As I wander, growing fonder of my dwindling piece of mind.
CHORUS:
I Decline
It’s all the rage to dive with Great White Sharks,
Descend calderas ‘til you’re singed by sparks,
Spelunk ice caves, base jump from urban towers,
Leap off the ledge of limits to your powers!
My theory, though, is that, if frankly queried,
Those folks whose bodies, starving, broken, wearied,
Upon the brink of death on expeditions
To demonstrate courageous dispositions,
Would, just before that mortal moment, say
That they’d prefer to live another day,
That posturing before the Reaper, Grim
To feel a rush from risking life and limb
Is not so thrilling halfway down the cliff,
When you can’t climb back up and say, “What if
I stay at home and read a book instead?
I’d feel more indolent, but much less dead.”
Resolved, with such scenarios in mind,
To shun adventures of the risky kind,
I bite my nails awash in shipwreck tales
Of galleons in gales capsized by whales,
Or watch some whack-a-doodle ropeless climber
Who, unlike me, won’t earn the term “old-timer,”
But jolts some juice from my adrenal gland
As I grip my remote with steady hand,
Face danger on the screen across the room,
Recliner tilted from the edge of doom.