Kevin Higgins
To Hell and Back Again
Now that, at last,
you seem to have found yourself
you often long to be lost again,
to drift down a throbbing street
in the thick of the afternoon
at the centre of your own solar system,
to shillyshally for hours
over a mug of tea and a slice of toast
in some greasy-spoon,
where no-one would even dream
of asking for a cappuccino or a latté,
or, better still, not to bother
leaving your filthy flat all day at all,
but, when the last ray of sun has, finally, gone away,
to shamble down to the kebab house
for a pickled onion and a portion of chips
because you don’t have the cash
to use the brothel around the back.
But if you slip from these shackles,
your future which opens up
like a new continent which, of course,
must be conquered,
this clean living which sometimes
fits you like a collar and tie on a boiling hot day
at one of those awkward family occasions,
if you go back to all that liberty, to all that Hell,
you might not make it back again this time.
you seem to have found yourself
you often long to be lost again,
to drift down a throbbing street
in the thick of the afternoon
at the centre of your own solar system,
to shillyshally for hours
over a mug of tea and a slice of toast
in some greasy-spoon,
where no-one would even dream
of asking for a cappuccino or a latté,
or, better still, not to bother
leaving your filthy flat all day at all,
but, when the last ray of sun has, finally, gone away,
to shamble down to the kebab house
for a pickled onion and a portion of chips
because you don’t have the cash
to use the brothel around the back.
But if you slip from these shackles,
your future which opens up
like a new continent which, of course,
must be conquered,
this clean living which sometimes
fits you like a collar and tie on a boiling hot day
at one of those awkward family occasions,
if you go back to all that liberty, to all that Hell,
you might not make it back again this time.
Page(s) 33
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