Round the corner from Gazza Strip
where the ring tones wring out placid silence
and the chrome-domed fittings are coated in violence,
there is a place where pipes preside.
Not the type you manufacture,
like a blue Blue Peter construction,
from tubes and breakfast wreckage, NO.
They puff like steamers, require pipe cleaners,
and are handled by noble folk, some possess beards,
I don’t deny that, but the ambience is of Railway children,
runaway profits, and rank outsiders.
It’s a traditional place, boasts a smell not unlike a failing zoo:
Lizards are loved, but unkempt,
the elephants shit all over the place, without regret,
and hippos wallow in broken-locked-loos.
You can hear yourself dream, and the jukebox is old:
Old with Stones and crawling with Beatles.
Tonight there is a quiz – in the pub – a pub quiz.
I do not enter, as I’m thick as a hangman’s rope,
And I’d prefer to die (intellectually) at the hand of a poet, or a lovelorn moose.
Listen
