Badly painted lamp-posts
punctuate sparse verges of dried dirt
and stones between
gas lines and hydrants where
crisp bags and bottles from
recent decades
tell lazy tales
Some mucky, raggy girl
pisses in the scanty privet
and stares cos you’re
wearing socks and a jumper
and bonfire smoke drifts
like a cloud of depression
leaving you kind of love-sick
somewhere, a radio plays sickly music
that doesn’t help
The sound of kid’s unhappy playing
smudges the air
snatching, breaking, falling
on the aggressive concrete
in the rust dusted “rec”
Swung chains swing
independent and minus seat
and iron stumps archeologise about
where the rocking horse and
roundabout once laughed and squealed
It’s an urban prostration
unable to change
Theresa’s off mothering
somebody else
and I have a tanner
Should I save some for the “Black Babies?”
It’s gone before I leave the shop
Liquorice, Love Hearts and coughed-up sherbert...
...gave two bob at school anyway
and they gave me a picture of a saint
It's in my prayer book
No-one tends a garden
when the dole rent sixteen hour shift
umpteen brat hang-over from cholera
depression routine's in full swing
Not to mention Gallipoli or Krakow
Rain-wept gutters and pipes
and cheap wallpaper
saw mum always ironing,
boiling veg -
vitamin C hung like a damp sweaty fart
you bet we’re playing out
…and there’s me, Lord Muck
oil for my new bike
left in the shed -
I rode my no-brakes wreck
I was no sissy
when it came to bikes
Fleggy down the street crashed it
but I just rode the madness…
…the skull ’n cross-bone transfers,
cross-barred
cow-horned, leather seated
field-bike nakedness
until the rickety bars came loose
then I crashed like Donald Campbell
bleeding profusely on mum’s n dad’s
Silver Anniversary
but they were happy times
***