Lucky For Me

Not long after my parents fucked me up
making me choose between a career in machine tools
     and some other journalistic pie-in-the-sky
(which all happened way, way back in 1976
     sometime between Harold Wilson’s resignation
and The Sex Pistols signing for EMI)
I received a letter from a friend who’d made the big break
     and left home for London
where the action was. With an unlimited supply of booze,
     dope, and multi-coloured tabs
he was living the life of Riley, playing bass guitar
     seven nights a week
in a band called The Sceptic Crabs.

 
”Paradise can be yours too”, he said. ”It lies at the end
     of the M4, barely an hour away,
in a two-bedroomed squat near the Hammersmith roundabout.”
But his paradise left me cold. To have it all so soon
cheated life, so I hung on to the day-job and told him
     I’d chickened out.
Eventually I made the big break – not with a band
     but with a girl
and we found paradise in a damp tent in the
     spring of 83.
As for my friend, he grew tired of life at nineteen and made
his final exit soon after, which was a few years too early
     and kind of lucky
                               for me.