20 YEARS IN HELL(?)

There was a time starting in ‘68
A time I still remember well,
When through no real fault of my own
I spent twenty years in a living Hell.

A monster we named Muggsly
Had somehow trapped us in his lair,
Like a spider with its sticky web
He kept us tightly in his snare.

We worked from, ‘Can’t see in the morning,’
Until, ‘Can’t see at night,’
Slaves to this evil crawling fiend
Held there by our own fright.

We knew no way to escape him
Our future seemed forlorn,
Until one day in 1976
When our hopes became reborn.

With the help of John and Jock
We loaded up all of our stuff,
And fled for fear of being caught
While Muggsly was sotting in the pub.

Then with our hopes renewed
Denise, Mum, and I settled in Yarraville,
Ecstatic to at last be free
Merely being alive had become a thrill.

Then in the 1990s, I was shocked
When I took time to calculate,
And found that the time we lived in hell
Wasn’t 20 years ... just eight!

THE END
© Copyright 2021, Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia