when i am seventy

When I am seventy,
I will kill myself.
It doesn't seem to matter if
we're subject to poverty or wealth
we all return to that
slack-jawed, yellow-eyed simplicity.
It doesn't seem to matter as
to our innocence or complicity.
I have seen it.
The blank stares, the aimless shuffle,
skin crumpling like parchment
an eternal mental scuffle.
I do not want
to live forever and then wait,
following hollow dreams until
I live only in that dreamlike state.