It might seem like a big thing to most of the people in the world
But I have never really enjoyed dancing
The Quick Step or a Tango across a clean cut lawn and through the rose bed.
Don’t get me wrong, as in my head I am cool as Fred Astaire
Or even as good as Ginger Rogers but obviously not in high heels.
You see I wanted to dance as it always looked so much fun,
However,
When I first tried it having found a willing and wonderful dancer,
You stare at my garden and state the sodding obvious that it is full of weeds
Uncontrolled, uninhabited plants that clamber through and undermine the foundation.
I tried cutting them back for you but I instead threw more enthusiastic seeds
In amongst the cobwebs that covers damaged stone and masonry complication.
These webs are personal; they cover the cracks in the paving stone path that leads
From my door to yours, and whilst you keep your side so
Faultless and dazzling, trimmed, ordered and full of flowering beads,
Is it just merely a light that once dazzled now that fades
Or is the beauty that once was depicted in original portraits
That resides in your house of empty rooms, now vacant of ever feeling
The subtle despair of a memory that parades
Throughout your unblemished and unfulfilled and uptight straight
Mind. No I don’t mind! You carry on stealing
And hammering in those nails of self-doubt and interest bearing,
Ever increasing moments of self-loathing.
You can’t hate me anymore than I do
And yet even in the darkness I know it’s true and I find myself caring
The woman looked at me and with scorn in her voice said out loud
“You say you are a writer, yet you say you were bought up in Birmingham,
Ha…it’s brought not bought you fool.” She sounded angry and proud
And I just smiled with a glint in my eyes as I tried to explain I was found next to a dram
…Well a bottle really of finest malt and a packet of 20 Silk Cut fags
Which lay on the shelf of the local Co-op on aisle three.
The people who bought me had had their own shopping bags
He stands smiling infront of the eager audience
That had actually paid to see him perform
His mimicry, his jokes and the classic risqué songs.
He could have sold out for weeks as his talent at the time was unsurpassed
Holding them spellbound as each well-worked line was cast.
His battered bowler hat, tipped towards the ladies on purpose
And slightly covering the blood shot eye (but not the saucy grin)
That had appeared after a drunken night
In which he had forgotten the punch line
Two English men abroad, eccentric country, drunk and elegiac
Appear and feel out of place as they sit drinking whisky
In a hotel bar with little ambience and a little hostility, with their hosts drinking nothing
More than copious amounts of coffee and curious looking tea.
The two written off poets watch with a grin as the waiters and bar tenders
All dressed in company suits and corresponding company smiles
As they reposition back and forth and taking orders to the timing of low piano keys
Like Liberace, so loud in an elegant casual style.
Jennifer missed her old life so much, that she decided
To go back home just once more.
She felt the twin emotions of clamour of excitement and regret flutter up
Like a trapped butterfly released from a keeper’s net
To enjoy the remains of a beautiful summer’s day.
She had stayed away, too frightened and too ashamed
Of her mistake, so small yet so blown up
Out of proportion that she was made to feel
Disgraced and bitter for a system that
Had let her be run out of town.
For me it’s a middle-aged death
Not become a bore, sore
At my own time and choosing death
At my books and music, gathering weird looks
At the end of the chapter, death
When I get into my mid-sixties
And before the winter of life starts
Keep me from vengeful doctors
Plotting to keep me alive and expecting thanks
In way of tax
For the their benefit
Save me from the worry of children
Leaving children leaving children
At my ever frail thoughts
A few words remain not mentioned about you and I.
In a life far from unblemished and certainly not focused
We let it slip beyond the boundaries, wither and die.
As with a famine caused by confusion and crafty locusts
That tore at the flesh of our tarnished pride
To leave nothing but shells of who we were
Screaming injustice and asking supporters to take a side
Between the myopic misery and a memory sour and blur.
This bitterness breaks us both
And sees the life left over now in living decay and dust
The tubes feed me familiar words as they feed you life.
I have never met you, I had no awareness of your existence
Until recently and I have seen little of your suffering and strife.
I don’t possess the wit or the talent to write what your life meant in one sentence.
I can measure only in minute amounts your memories by fleeting photograph
On a delicate digital screen, that cumbersome and dishonest
Perverted distorter of your life, which doesn’t show all you have loved and how you laugh,