Hungry

that’s me there   face to face   with the back of the crowd   fetching awkward angles between my toes    it’s always seemed that symmetry eluded me and I was dissolving fractions in a decimal world   a feline soul in a canine cosmos    I told a big stripey lie that painted me a permanent crimson and soaked my banner with piss ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

that was thirty years or so ago    and there’s been plenty of action under the bridge since then    it sometimes feels really late    but that’ll be the times    I developed humour as a mechanism to lubricate those rapidly diminishing hours   burdens borne with a smile sometimes feel like blessings in disguise……….…………………………………..

those hooks and punch lines are mine to own    but they aren’t all jokes   half of them are true   I hawk them anyway because there is little else to say    people expect lies in these days of photo-shopped selfies and fictitious biographies    so I get away with the odd deprecating truth    as long as I sugar coat them     no one accepts the sour any more     their palettes are acclimatised to saccharine and the soft candy floss of mediocrity……………..…………………………………………..

I stood in a long queue to receive short shrift and a parcel of unwelcome platitudes    I’m not complaining mind you    I got to where I am by the circuitous route    but I got here just the same    I’m quite comfy in my hollow    and if things are now slower than they once were    it’s only because I was speeding in the first place    it was always post-haste and frantic stratagems with me    I was hungry the way only poor boys are hungry    I’m still hungry    but it's an old man's hunger