Unfinished poem

 

A six hundred and fifty word snapshot from a very long poem.

BUBBLY AS CHAMPAGNE

The day drags on, drinking pint for pint with Peter the pissed up painter

Artistic as Cézanne, sober as a hanging judge, nowhere to run

When nightfall comes we stagger to another bar for cocktails at eight

Outside and up there somewhere planets collide, new worlds are formed by thought

You know what thought did don’t you? I think he just thought he did what he did

Satellites are falling from the skies back down to earth like lead balloons

But the cranes are still going up to build more towers to scrape the skies

Bent as a plastic fiver, crooked as the Chesterfield church spire

More backhanders than a tennis bat, one racket after another

Everything’s computerised, what will people do when the power fails?

The Millennials and the generation before them have no clue

The three day working week, no electricity, and candles for light

It gets addictive; starving yourself for more than three days is not cool

The self congratulatory society annual big ball

And guess who turns up? All the grabbers, all of the tramps, and all the thieves

The old Jersey lighthouse looks magnificent, standing there in the rain

The Grand National at Aintree will never be quite the same again

Runners and riders jockey for pole position at the Tartan Bar

We watch the international at the Corbiere Pavilion

It’s Scotland v England and they beat us 2-1 we buy all their beer

Only the year before we thrashed the Scots at Wembley five goals to one

I used to drink in the Trafalgar and the Tenby at St Aubins

All the pubs were open from nine am until eleven pm

Some hotel bars were open all night and the beer was as cheap as chips

I worked at the Royal Yacht Hotel in Saint Helier for a while

And later at the Parade Bar where I met some crazy Jersey Beans

The head waiter at one place was a window cleaner from Wythenshawe

Deluded, waiting for the frost to thaw on a sunny summers day

Funny as a rocking horse rider on steroids, racing round the house

Bubbly as Champagne, fizzy as Cava, mad for it down in Dijon

Keen as mustard, fit as a butchers bitch on heat, fired up for the fight

Tooled up to the elbows, dressed up to the nines, if only looks could kill

Is commercialisation an imitation of reality?

The newscaster announces the capture of another terrorist

He says he is acting alone, but the devastation is so vast

A dozen organisations or so claim he was working with them

The flags remain at half mast as the president makes an announcement

‘The ceasefire is well and truly over, we will resume bombing soon’

The pilots scramble, and the ground crews kick start the jet engines over

The rebels, the terrorists, and the government troops blame each other

The superpowers can’t resist throwing in the Wellington for fun

Manipulating life, death, and eternity to win brownie points

Obnoxious as Baden Powell, with his Wolf Cubs, and the Boy Scout movement

I was the last Tawny Sixer and the First Red Sixer at Eleventh Sale Saint Joseph’s

Frightening as the Hitler Youth was, we would have beat them at football

Me and my street could have played for England, we trained outside every night

Five-a-side, seven-a-side, in the hockey nets at the tennis club

In nineteen sixty-six we beat North Korea at Worthington park

At Saint Aidan’s school we played football every day with a tennis ball

Two of the names I recall are, Antonio Bibby, and Chris Cain

I was a milk monitor, handing out the little bottles with straws

Mrs Harrison was the only shopkeeper open on Sundays

We would always stop to buy cream cheese, pickled gherkins, and kiełbasa

But the thing I liked the best was the cold milk machine outside the shop

UNFINISHED...