You
were a barrel
of myths rolling
down Glastonbury Tor
jangling up Fata Morgana
and Jagger. Lime leaves flickered
quick as grass snakes slipping through
the dawn Mendips where the sun yolked
the sky like a great fried breakfast. Pickled
Merlins haunted every pub, tawny pints as wise
as owls perched in their grip. Here you bundled in
munching Golden Wonders, mastering the slow tock
of darts and billiard tick, protégé of their chalk subtracted
lunchtimes until you pitched up kissing the vicar’s niece who
bewildered you with her gusseted etiquettes and the eternal
disco truths of Donna Summer, moaning through the cider in
tongues of Moroder, trapped between straw bales with martyred
arses hastening each cautious impregnation. And now you’re squeezed
between a mortgage and an overdraft as fear marches on the backs of ants
through every crack into your home. You’re ticket number 109 on banking death row yet what terrifies you is not the cliff’s edge but having nowhere left to fall.
Highly Commended in the 2015 Backroom Poets Competition
Mark Fiddes 