Written for Monday Poetry Train Revisited CHRISTMAS NIGHT 1993 It was Christmas night about fifteen years ago I didn’t shout help. I didn’t have a phone heating water or electric in that squat. It was flummin’ freezing that night just like it is right now ice and snow. The last candle had died and I had no matches left to make a fire. I pulled the newsprint blanket over my head and tried to get some kip. But there was no sleep to be had that night in that old ramshackle gaff.
The rats and roaches put paid to that and then there was one massive crash. I looked through the crack in the boarded up window, it was just some drunks. They were kicking empty crates on their way home from the rub-a-dub-dub. Smashing them against the steel shuttered shop fronts on the parade outside. They staggered on shouting and swearing and soon they were out of my view.
As I watched another character came by, a Rastafarian. A blanket over his left arm and clutching a brick in his right hand. Without a second glance old Dreadlocks dashed the padlock off the shutter. Rolling the freezing cold steel cover up to reveal a plate glass door.
Like a bull at a gate he charged with the blanket placed over his head. Leaving a Rastafarian shaped hole in what used to be the door. Just a few seconds later, he came skipping out onto the cold street. He was carrying a heavy blanket, full of cigarettes and booze. He had already disappeared out of sight when the alarm went off. MSC301208
