On the day before my ninth birthday
and a weary-long birthday it was
I still wanted to be an oinkpig,
a flatfoot, a copper, so I could
stop a traffic line,
punch asinine citizens
instead of clocking-in cards, shout,
point, ignore criticisms and crack
witticisms like “Knock Knock, who’s there, Irish stew,
Irish stew in the name of the law”,
but then a stylish crew of shipmates
with billowing mullets you could misplace
an armadillo in, with disgraceful irresponsibility
on that day deflecting away
from the Isle of Wight’s spectral sands
on a nippy little vessel, were letting me
wrestle with the steering wheel,
I felt like Cecil Rhodes in a desolate clearing
armed only with a banana,
it was their idea of a birthday present
so there were waves of cheering
and cries of “Speech! Speech!”
from kids and teachers in the stern,
though I’d never even learnt how to ride a bike
let alone heave-ho the helm
of an Isle-of-Wight-departed haddock-frightener
without stabilisers or anything,
without cherubim or seraphim or David Icke’s Nephilim
to guide me crawling like an escargot over the Solent
with my cargo of forty-odd children,
in an Ayrton Senna moment
I was a lucky sod not to kill them
when that boat swung waaaaayyyy port starboard port starboard,
all over gargled screams lost marbles
and yo-yos rolling round about underhoof,
my chocolate-smudged face empty as a polling booth,
“what’s going on?” in the seesaw cockpit
as wheel-grabbing sliding mainbrace-splicers
rocketed forwards to ease the speedo,
and it was a shame those salty waves
that whacked us like a black-belt in aikido
didn’t kill off Headmaster,
a bathtime-administering
bottom-smacking
paedo.
The next day, with hastily-munched
clumps of sponge still lunging
through my digestive system,
a plaintive television set
that hadn’t heard of surround-sound
told me the police had murdered
ninety-six people
in a northern football ground.
