Left wing, savoir faire
Ageing flicks of my thin brown hair
Like an elegy, soaking me
Drenched in the language of social mobility
But I don’t seem to mind
The gruesome link between
People and time
It’s an enemy, telling me
The wheels of profit
Are circling in the opposite
Life don’t animate
Just creeps up on you slowly
Surely, holy water
Flows as normal water does
In Little Italy, I re adhere
Sojourn in my guilt
Wrestle words as the apostrophes wilt
Let the elegiac question why
Accidents happen or the well will dry
So some come, kill me quick
Tie me down
To an anodyne drip
To the will of god
And the people with sticks
For filled with the shrill
They show much better that
Life don’t animate
Just creeps up on you slowly
Surely, holy water
Flows as normal water does
In Little Italy, I re adhere
When the steeple cries
There’s a martyr
For every pause
When a dozen die
It’s a starter for ten
To the men
Who proselytise that
a life isn’t owned but atoned
They solidify, and in time become
Blackened and martyred
Life don’t animate
Just creeps up on you slowly
Surely, holy water
Flows as normal water does
In Little Italy, I re adhere