The Overhead Light Songs (A parody of "The Eddystone Light", an old folk song)

My father was the keeper of the overhead light,
He patted my head and said goodnight,
Proving all my life I could have had more fun,
Not to mention glory if I'd been a son.
I didn't marry wisely but I gave him three
With never a delusion of pomposity.
Oh, for a life on a roll for me.

Tell me, what has become of your sons, all three,
My father in old age asked of me;
One is living on the land but is not free,
One is preaching on a corner actually,
One has joined the Navy and has gone to sea
And carried a contusion of the heart to me.
Oh, this will never never do, said he.

The lightning flashed and the sky was bare,
I looked again, my father wasn't there,
And the night sounds echoing in my head
Relieved me of necessity to fall down dead.
Acting on my own opinion, now I'm free,
Not carried to profusion of conformity.
Oh, for a life on a roll for me.

Would I be the keeper of the overhead light,
Subject to brainstorms in the night?
Or would I be more properly kept in tune
Assaulted by ideas that appear at noon?
And buried in confusion till I cannot see -
Oh, for a life on a roll for me.

Should I be the taker of the summer heat
Dropping its gallstones at my feet,
Or yet the gloomy denizen of winter cold,
Looking for the sun before I get too old?
And married to illusion of my sanity -
Oh, this will never, never do, I see.

Once there was a woman in the Garden fair.
She heard two tales and she did compare.
Intellect and comfort warring on her face,
Acting on her own opinion brought disgrace.
We've tarried in collusion of our destiny -
Oh, for a life on a roll for me.

Poor Old Ladies

In a year or so
With your chest around your waist
And your hands full of liver spots and warts,
You'll be glad to know
That a body dry and chaste
Is entitled to be cross and out of sorts.
In a few more years
When your hair has turned to straw
And your toenails are harder than your teeth,
You can drop your fears
Like the skin deserts the jaw
When it isn't on your face but underneath.

In the years to come
When you've grown a lot in grace
And you have to sidle sideways through a door,
Or you're thinner some
And the lines across your face
Represent a map of Europe in the War,
You can state with pride
That you've got no use for men,
If you did it wouldn't get you very far,
For I have not lied
When a Senior Citizen
Is no more a phrase you hate, but what you are.

I can see it now
As you're pushing forty-nine
And you figure middle age is sixty six,
How you'll knit your brow
When you step across the line
And it's not a maladjustment you can fix.
You can stand and swear
When the Elderly came by
You invited it to visit, not to stay,
But it sits right there
And it looks you in the eye,
And you know it isn't going to go away.

When the young complain
That they're running out of time,
Wouldn't know it if they had it anyhow,
You can wave your cane
And declare it is sublime
To attain the age you dread attaining now.
Don't you realize
That the freedom comes at last
To behave the way you wanted all along?
Let the young surmise
That our best days must have passed.
If you keep the secret, they won't know they're wrong.