Ten Snapshots Before Going Under For The Third Time

Five years old, 'stop your blasted jigging!'
didn't they know I was Gene or Fred?
Talent snuffed by a grumpy teacher in assembly.

Hay fevered nostrils and teary eyes:
we sprawled behind the mobile classroom,
thighs pressed close together and intertwined .

Neither out of costume, Alice kisses
the Caterpillar and her perfume gets
me higher than any hookah pipe.

'If you're gonna do something, do it!'
I did but I wasn't very good at it though.
Thank goodness she let me practise.

Red sweating face, microns away from mine:
I wonder if he really thought I was
a horrible little man, or if he was acting too?

Step off the plane, divided city, air force blue
uniforms greet me: in the bar in half-an-hour,
ten years gone in the drink of a barfly.

Another red and sweating face: this time
I know he is no method actor, this
one really does hate me, for what he isn't.

Cyprus, Cypress, deserts, medals - a rush of nothing
to do but listen for nothing at all:
gin and bullshit, but only after we got home.

The land of the light's coming, hills and goats
and hispanic accents at many decibels and
no-one gives a flying fuck, least of all me.

And one day -on the beach, or on the cliff top -
one figure removes an expensive watch
and throws it, finally, far into the past.