Favoured is, the night alone
With its tombstone's lifting
Of what hid, hard-faced
Stoically behind.
Vengeful looking ghost, ablaze
Tear on indignant tear
With all its hurts, wrongs
Life's, parried, combined.
Cigarettes and alcohol
had washed her youth away.
The fresh faced girl, with the wayward curl,
that I knew from 'yesterday'
had now been replaced,
by something hard faced,
playing the oldest game in town.
Her painted on smile and streetwise guile
trying to hide the tears of a clown.
Our inner voices give us choices
of the pathways we should take.
It's a downward spiral, that soon goes viral,
if those voices are all fake.
And she had reached, and then had breached,
the nadir of her life.
She had once been a friend, staunch to the end,
a daughter, a mother, a wife.
And as we walked, so we talked,
about the might have been's.
The what went wrongs, remembered songs,
and prom night Kings and Queens.
We said goodbye and she said she would try,
but I knew her cause was lost.
And I'd scan the obits, for lost souls and misfits,
and she'd be there, as a thaw follows frost.
Grateful
The club was called the checkers, painted black
and elephant tusk, two middle aged Spaniards stood at the bar
talking to a hard faced barmaid.
The talk was amicable enough, but had an underlying tension,
something about lust and the price of love`s pretence.
Two birds dressed, in yellow feathers came down from the loft
told the Spaniards how much they loved them.
The barmaid asked if I was lonely too.
No thanks, I came here for the beer.
My answer impressed she shut the club for the night.
In the morning I said: I`m sixty today.
she cried a little and gave me a milky coffee.
Survivor
In nature some are the survivors,
The weak don’t make it along,
Death weans out, the not to revivors,
No pan lickers make it, no nongs,
In order to be a survivor,
There’s only the weak n the strong,
The strong go on Mc’Gyver ,
And the weak go down,
Where the bastards belong,
So if ya brain starts twitching and yapping,
Slap it under the bloody left ear,
be strong no weak willie sapping,
your spirit is strong with no fear,
if you can’t control your yapping brain,
it will slip a cog you know,
mental torture, its all in vain,
forgive forget, let it go!
who is master you or it,
the weak willed will say its just him,
take control of yeself just a little bit,
strong-fella, hard faced and so grim…?
Don Johnson
Growing up on a small council estate
pretty close knit and plenty of mates
we had our own little squad
the park end crew, were like a pod
We went through a stage of oppertunist thieves
but what was to follow nobody believes
just of what was about to come in store
organised violence football hard core
The length and bredth of England,our firm travelled
coming up against the best and coming unravelled
an incident occurred that would change my life
the judge said to me, you did use a knife.
12 lads went to jail for 39 years
some hard faced and some with tears
16 years old,5 years on my head
going to jail to lay on my bed.....
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