I’m obsessed with a guy.
He’d pay for a chance to sing the blues.
Just a taste of that weary hard-bitten life.
Just a taste of the pain and heartbreak and grief.
Just a taste mind you.

Nothing more.

I’m obsessed with the martyrs
that strut to and fro fearing only death,
and taxes,
and those ****…
What do you call them?
Vagrants,
that’s it
that strut to and fro fearing only death.


I’m obsessed with the vagrants.
Going into the world with so much honesty.
With mad religions screeching, seeing Doom and Death and Capital.
With mad songs of ****** and Sunlight, Rain and Drink and ******.
And mad poems, pages long, that howl into the darkness.
I heard them sing electric carols at the railway station,
and concrete O’ Fortunas on the bridge.
I heard them play on their leaf-spring guitars the mocking rhythm
of the groaning streets
that echoes in the mind for all of its humour.
For all of its tragedy.

And I’m obsessed with the poets that dreamt
and dared to stop dreaming.
And laid themselves down into spiral notebooks
and were cast in stone above their alma maters
silent forevermore.