Well we jumped on the wing
for a good Irish fling
kicked off the week
with a boiler

The banter was high
as we took to the sky
nothing in sight
was a spoiler

And the red eye at night
was a captain’s delight
we spread on the seat
of the liner

Arrived just in time
for a whale of a time
at the Temple Bar
and Diner

Well the Dublin scene
in the Old College Green
was wired and alive
on the corner

Where me and me' mates
paired in at the gates
there were welcoming arms
to us foreigners

And we sang through the night
and grinned in delight
with banjos, pipes
and lasses

Drinking whiskey and beer
in a boatload of cheer
the rooster got lost
in the masses

The **** in the walk
was out on the stalk
a wee little flute
on display

His shoulders were pinned
with a great big grin
they were such
peculiar ways!

Well we found em next day
(in a sauntering way)
got tossed in
all the commotion

What happened to you?
said he hadn’t a clue
or any
baldy notion!

Hit the road to Howth
little east, little south
the seaside town
was groovin

Found the Cobblestone Pub
for a jar and a scrub
the seabird sounds
were soothin

Then we jumped a train
in the lashing rain
the Belfast craic
was mighty

Hit the Thirsty Goat
with a parching throat
some Tullamore Dew
for a nighty

In the Crumlin jail
the spirits set sail
the IRA
was gaffin

There was Bobby Sands
in celestial lands
alive and proud
and laughin

The Griffin dance
was the final chance
the evening closed
in nigh

And we made our way
through the Chelsea lanes
to say our
final good bye

~ ~ ~ ~

Singing
Ay, oh…let it all go
safe haven in the wasteland!

Singing
Slainte’…take me away
to the old Irish sounds
of the band!

there’s rules for everything.
when I was a kid,
I was taught to say
‘please and thank you’,
say ‘Ji’ instead of ‘what’,
but not to sound like a ****.
I never liked speaking at all
whether it was in English
or in strained Mirpuri.

my lips tripped,
stuck,
tongue stripped
of ability
to make anything but
pathetic mumbling,
a few sounds trapped
in the space
where everyone seemed to
unconsciously congregate.

I remember the first day of primary school,
in an all-white neighbourhood,
hearing boys say ‘what’, so
I told them you had to say ‘Ji’.
I remember the first day of high school,
hearing people speaking their dialect without strain,
but that space didn’t belong to me.

Now I’m up to my second 1st day of sixth form
and still I haven’t met anyone
stuck in the gap between ‘Ji’ and ‘what’.

The outside is off limits and a doorstep becomes a dais,
To show frustration and sympathy,
To light a candle, to mourn
To stand with others when we cannot touch them.

The world is in chaos and the doorstep is a sanctuary,
To appreciate and commemorate,
To clap and laud,
Yet people are not paid in applause.

The doorstep is a safe space, but it is not a powerful one.
Isolated, a single tealight in the night,
No change is affected through a clap in the dark.
The doorstep is where the buck stops.

Another candle makes our streets no safer,
As women and flowers are trampled,
Pinned to the ground by the colleagues of a murderer.

A banging pan pays no person’s food bill,
As you judge your neighbours for their lack of civic pride,
Smug that you do your bit,
While you vote for those who have forced nurses to foodbanks.

A doorstep is as far as you go to remember loved ones,
Whose funerals you could not attend,
Whose deathbed you were absent from.
A doorstep where you miss them and ponder
Who is responsible for their death.
Is your doorstep where the buck stops?

It’s not a lie to bring them inside
and pretend spring

with central heating
drying sad eyes and itching skin
at least they offer a semblance
of a truth balefully missed

though the distant future
still promises such
current hands are hamfisted
in the art of wish fulfilment

In the streets of Delhi advertised on every sign,
Is the British army’s need for you to buy buy buy.
It may cost your turban, your home your family, and the worn clothes.
But it’s for the greater good right? of the empire of them ‘s and those.

When you pass the gender and notice his cracked lips,
And coughing and dying son,
You feel sympathy as you would for anyone.
But you can parch him as your son cant starve too,
And that’s just the law of the untouchable that are below you.

Despite your status being not much better,
You walk a stranger to their leering eyes,
As you were the clean white sashes and ties,
But they don’t realise the shackles you are also in.
As the phrase goes that you see on all the ads.

“You can’t make your own confections,
You can’t save your own possessions,
You can’t even built out of your own wood,
Because for the good of the empire of the greater good,
You will serve to pay the fees that are higher than you can afford to do.”

When you think of that as you walk these deep streets you can’t help walking in a way of shame,
As you know you can’t blame these overlords,
But the submissions and laws of old,
That they stole and now uphold.
Never to be loss of my shackles,
I pass these streets, and go on to Mumbai for the next delivery meet.

I still think in-sync with the ceremonial intro.
Even though its reduced to unclaimed brick,
I visit naughty corridors and assembly halls
decorated in sports equipment.

After showing off my award,
I ***** out candles
and bolt that horse to a new port village
where clubs buried in earth
begin to dent
my naivity.

But tweed remained fashion.
A collage of uniform, green fields and tennis courts
resembled my life in the trench.
Words like 'posh' and 'snob' were the only examples of difference

until I became a witness.
Discovered homelessness
meant vagrants. They
became as common as a boxed sandwich.

Everybody has their own intoxication of choice.
Bargain of choice, newspaper
of choice, where Brookside
is a crossword answer
filled whilst feeding mallards
white bread in the park.

Writing that
makes me the biggest hypocrite of all.
I grew fond of plays. Began to write poetry.
What would they think of me?
A **** football match where the ref cost us the game
still pumps through my veins,

I assure thee.
That left ventricle breathes here too.
War has never been declared
but the battles have existed since
before Shakespeare wrote Hamlet.

It's estate versus estate.
As much as I'm up for a fight,
history won't change overnight -
especially in an election,
selfie posted
or status shared
with a handful of friends
who actually voted.

Living in the middle of Common-
wealth is a lonely place.
But there will be a hotel monopoly of vacancies
built on my mediocre grave
if I acknowledge the better
or lesser sort
themselves. After all,
I ate processed chicken breast
and ignored politics myself.

Perhaps now,
it's time
to act like the squirrel.
Barks become growls, become
quacks, become
the fool
again.

Alfred Edward Housman wrote about this county from London,
we smoke pipes and drink pints to honour the scholar's story,
which can be checked out the library, former learning quarters
of an explorer named Charles Darwin, who sits in grey outside,
despite leaving town in adolescence, returning from Galapagos
to The Mount, where my parents met in mental health sickness,
gave life to an original species that theories would have hated,
like Robert Clive, who earned his knighthood by looting India,
cried in parliament, now we want his stage ousted, his house is
next to the cottage where I sleep restless because myself and
a few other Shropshire lads failed to escape, even after studying
centurion debates, athletic form and getting serenaded by greats,
where are the names of those who rose from minimum wage?