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RJP May 2019
Hospitable welcome exploited.
There's a colonial scent in the hotel
And they say Islamists are peadophiles

The mirror on the borderline dictates fate:
Err we’re not letting them in!
Meanwhile

Our guys are innocent its fake news.
Meanwhile
Faces harden into hurting for a life

Time wastes away any life they might’ve met,
The shining bill that got them into bed
Perpetually puts it all to bed.

The Naked Emperor
Switches the lightswitch:
Dark abyss dark abyss  

Float into the sky
Submerge in a cloud
Watch Judith merrily

Chat to Aristotle
About the beauty of flies
That ripened your summer street air.

Ignore the clog of your throat.
Struggle struggle struggle for breath
Breathless sound whispers
That word:
A seventies child
Born in Wales, one of the four
Countries of The UK.

I remember brown as the colour
of the day.
Fabric embossed wallpaper
all the neighbours names, who married who,
who was carrying on, the alcoholic, the beaten wives,
Even, get this the peadophiles (or kiddy fiddlers as was known)
Dai the milk, Mair the bread, the shop of infinite items.

Rugby practice for dad, baking for mam
(Cake and babies) gossip over the garden hedge
Fish on a Friday a Sunday roast, hot sweet tea.
Bubble and squeak, post delivered before you
left for school. Mist on the mountain, dew on the grass.

Welsh valley life, sounds idyllic
but scratch the surface and a darker colour
than brown emerges. Petty squablings leading to
familial feuds, the Williamses don't get on with
the Joneses, and as for the Pritchards, less said the better.

School, local, no not for me. I was sent to a Welsh
School, taught and learnt the language denied to my
Parents by English politics. Cat amongst the pigeons there.
Did I think I was special? Ideas above her station. That's what
the neighbours say.

Well, you all had the option.
Dr Forbes FRCS
Delivered babies buried men and women
Loved by all, especially his lollipop sweets.

I wasn't a child to get *****, or rip wrapping paper
off of gifts, I liked to go under the stairs (like Harry Potter)
and read. I left the dirt for my sister born 4 years later.
Then in 1982 came my brother, tidy my mother describes it.
'74,'78,'82 poor dad to have to wait I say!

More pubs than chapels, more walking than driving
more rain than sun, more music than ever was sung.
The '80's came, and we had strikes, no electric, candles
toast made with a toasting fork over the fire.
No mines, no steel, no jobs.

Picket lines, dole queues, women in work
latchkey kids, Thatcherism, ******* times.
Falklands war, IRA bombs, Royal weddings
Tory rule

But, the fire in the dragon never went out
and Tom Jones still sings his heart out.
Cymru cysglyd gwlad y gân, deffrwch
nawr, dyma'ch tro.
© JLB
Cymru cysglyd gwlad y gân, deffrwch
nawr, dyma'ch tro
Translation: tired Wales land of song, wake now, it's your time.

— The End —