Manifesto

 

Manifesto

 

The cover art wasn’t up to much,

showroom dummies, dressed up

to resemble the living. Luke warm reviews

for the East Side; West Side too,

from Sounds, Record Mirror, NME,

some remarks damned unfriendly,

but it spawned more than a couple of hits:

Dobson has always liked it,

still plays it some fifty years later,

even if it said nothing to most, didn’t cater

for your popular palette - well, their loss,

there’s hidden edge beneath Bryan’s gloss,

he’d have it over Flesh and Blood.

Never popular, this is the sort of stuff

he collected, never really cared enough,

so, was often alone in a crowd

and that was if he was even allowed

to sit amongst the good and the great,

where he supposed he was just makeweight.

So, he kept himself at arm’s length,

or is held there, which makes good sense,

be it at home, mess decks, common room,

flouts that piper calling the tune,

looks instead towards gates of dawn

and any lugubrious look, or cracked forlorn,

is only the way they shaped his face.

Which is why you’d find Dobson unphazed,

holding the smile, holding the gaze,

of his diminutive and noisy lover,

while she, in turn, asks and gives cover,

at the centre of their cross, yet isolate,

inhabit the world only they create.

What they discuss, you can never know,

just ask Bryan to sing you Manifesto.