Ten Years After

 

Ten Years After

 

Ah, yes, my dear old friend:

 

I like it, we dressing as some kind of harlequin,

fruit salad wolves, checked trousers, bow tie,

here’s to us; thanks for dropping by.

 

Well, ok, foxes - anyway, at least we tried,

and as for me, the trial hasn’t stopped, you see?

No, that’s never a tear in my eye,

it’s these damned varifocals,

this constant drip-dripping tap of conjunctivitis,

some such a pink eye or other;

fading white lined aged rose tinted,

just sun shards on iced glass once glinted.

 

Some decades last longer than ten years:

so think on ten years after

the fact these years have passed, lack laughter,

bookended by idiot’s riots and Covid’s fools

and thick fat lipped voters that slept, drooled

over such tat as lofty London’s crown jewels,

shite like England for the English,

they sold us downriver Avon, even you.

 

But I forget. You were there at the start, you knew,

watched them smashing windows, lifting brands,

they said they want a Revolution

while waving sticky hands.

 

Well, hell, you know.

 

Now whisper that we didn’t stand,

shoot fireworks to mark Thatcher’s death,

saluting her demise with your final breath,

chaining daisies and bereft,

but you know, in watching their tumbling light

sparking heaven in gaudy futility

of defying stupidity

and, you know it’s going to be all right.

 

I’m not sure you missed that much:

Brexit’s a word you never knew - such

a blessing, really, pigs voting for abattoirs,

handing over castration's rings to those in power,

rubber signatories of disease gone viral,

recitals of whorls, pulling plugs and spirals

rounding, rounding; too little is surpassed

where each slipped disc is less than its last.

 

Ah, let’s shrug and toast.

 

Here’s to what was had, the most,

a fiddlestick to make you dance,

drawn with just a backwards glance,

to getting out while the going was good to soft,

what you left behind’s in here, not lost,

just a little way over our heads,

clank steel thermos at the horses,

salute a steaming bitches’ brew,

or a scalded tongue on Bovril for halftime. 

You’ll do:

on a bleak midwinter’s hardened pitch

under pale sun’s frosted afternoon,

where those dodgy keepers never saved it,

and it lands amongst the grime and grit,

just slipped straight through his gloved mitts.

Here’s to ten years after the fact slipped fast,

and futures locked in a land that passed.