THE GANGSTER
For a majority of his
time,
from early on
he’d known
institutions,
children’s
homes, youth
detention
centres,
prisons,
temporary
hostels but one
time he rented
his own
pad and he kept
it
exquisitely
beautiful,
he also dealt
drugs and
protection; the
paintings
that adorned his
walls
captured me
first
glance: bright,
alive,
moving portraits
of
landscapes and
people: ‘I
painted
them’ he told me;
‘I painted them
in
prison’ he said:
a gangster that
had
smashed several
faces
with a
knuckle-duster,
shattered
knee-caps
and supplying
misery
in cellophane
wraps
and now he sits
motionless in a
chair,
doubly-incontinent,
talking
gibberish and
doesn’t know
what
fucking day it
is,
has no awareness
or
memory of his
childhood,
friends
or lovers,
completely
robbed
of the vicious
images of
the pain and
suffering
he caused for so
many.
THE LONGEST ROUTE
I took the longest,
the hardest and
toughest route
and that’s what
I
write about:
it wasn’t a
deliberated
decision
to take the
bumpy
road, that shit
just happened,
there was no
fate,
dream or plan
with anything
at all: nothing
I
was reaching
for,
I threw myself
into
what was there
in
front of me and
found other
worlds
and places
within
them, most of
them
brutal and
harrowing, self-
explosive and
ignorant and I
came
to love,
to love them all
and that’s what
I
write about.
LISTEN, SPEAK, LISTEN
Learn to listen,
then,
learn to speak,
and then,
learn to listen
again,
most stop
at the 2nd
lesson.
MATTHEW H LARES
I’d hustled my way into a
college trip to
London:
although we
weren’t
lovers,
Stephanie and I
were very close
and
wanted to be
lovers:
we were in
Covent
Garden when I
saw him,
6ft, wearing a
crumpled
black suit and
eye-liner,
holding a sheaf
of stapled
pamphlets of
poetry
titled ‘Beauty
and the
Beast’
‘Poetry for
sale’! he
cried out in a
north
american accent:
I approached and
asked how much:
through a booze
breath
‘Whatever you
can give’
said Matthew H
Lares,
selling his life
on the
streets, hip
beatnik
poetry: I
admired his
presence and
kept his
zeal and
inspiration
and his pamphlet
but
Stephanie has
gone from
my life, another
tale
of
beauty and the
beast.
A POEM STARRING STEVE
McQUEEN
‘Shall we mark this one
down as
a future
success’ I said to my
colleague as we
drove away:
‘Fuck!, he was
like ‘Wolverine’
fingernails and
toenails like
talons, he could
never put on
a pair of gloves
or shoes’ I
said:
he was 6ft,
overweight, late
30’s, long thin
black hair
with strands
dyed pink, blue
and green, a
long thin scraggly
beard, unwashed
for weeks,
kills his time
24/7 watching
t.v. on his
parents sofa: no
motivation or
interest in
life: never
known romance
or friendship, a
virgin
for shit-sure,
never worked,
never drank,
smoked or
swallowed, never
taken
any kind of
responsibility
for life’s
needs, completely
dependent on
mummy
and daddy for
his every
whim:
‘Have you seen
the movie,
‘Papillon’ I
asked my
colleague : ‘No’
she
replied: I
briefly outlined
the film,
before, ‘Steve McQueen
becomes
feverishly ill, he’s
hallucinating:
he’s staggering
through a desert
when
suddenly, before
him, are 12
wig wearing
judges sat
behind a semi
circle of desks
and they collectively
point
their fingers at
McQueen
and
simultaneously announce
that he is
‘Guilty of a
wasted life’:
McQueen nods
his head, that
asshole we’ve
just seen would
nod his head’
she nodded her
head and
smiled and then
asked ‘Shall
I drop you at
the liquor store?’
I nodded my
head.
John D Robinson
