A Drug Dealer Reflects...

The chorus, a cacophony, as gulls exploded from the mudflats, on the estuary, sleet, brain-numbing, pelted a grey curtain; with hands thrust deep, pocket jammed, I felt like Richard Burton, selling his soul to Hollywood, not quite the same, though, when all I sell is death in Deadwood. Here come my gulls, scavengers, teenage patrons ever eager as bad news messengers, heads, sloth riddled beneath baseball caps reversed, their words, a streetwise patois fluffed and stammered badly rehearsed but I always sense the gist. There’s no excuse for me, sedating kids, passing bags of snow, blank eyes fixed on the sea; for all my delusions cliché’s of market forces customers, supply and demand their snorting horses once were wooden and rocked not so long ago. Within me deep I know what I am, no, I have no grand illusions, I know I’m not the man, not the myth from songs by The Stones or the Underground, just a bigger gull feeding on the little gulls. I’m no pharmaceutical saviour in this seaside slum; the man? I’m not a man I’m just scum.