Flickering movie reel afternoon train.
Few jars, no one got to wash.
They let me cheat, playing cards.
Rings, empty hands, cans slide shiny across their hungover faces.
A green grainy outside fast life missed, flies.
Reflects phantoms on the plastic table. Ours, a while.
Elbow spaces. Took me a quarter of a century to get to this.
Horseplay, the kitchen‘s sink gallows humour we make everywhere.
This is the most perfect slavery.
Changing room bravery makes strangers shy.
When my lads are all together. Makes the conductor pass. Ask
What you’ve got, ask for another can,
Ask what was she like.
Ask, are you alright? So,
One of them rubs my face.
You need a shave man.
Are you alright? Never better,
Inside this scene between the worlds,
I’m better than you’ll ever know.
You see, I sued for peace, I thought I’d lost.
Laughed till I felt the piss, the pride of our in-jokes.
Without turning, I feel the envy of those other blokes.
Nuclear families are blind to this. My very own Sacred Band of Thebes.
Do you know they actually cried when I told them
Why I used to tremble when they were hugging me?
(Cried. Sure it’s only you man. Only we’re your brothers man,
You’re still a prick though ha)
And I’m blind, to how I deserve all this. Ours.
Of a morning, when I can’t fight any more, I use those names.
Back in that night. When I walked the canal and my legs itched for water.
And I really thought, yeah I might. Easily.
But then I thought of them.
Those stoic careless sessions. Those rough hugs, back slap, handshake stags.
The all-nighters, coming down confessions.
Keep my future falling in its place. A mile of track a time.
I don’t need to be perfect, wise or immortal.
No need to run from truth. There was no crime.
I just need what everyone else does.
To hold on to myself and pretend that I am you.