The Penny Black

The Penny Black’s a dirty currency of whiskey sin

And I’m a clergy soaked in something a little short of holy water

Sidestep the shitty student soup

My pint a piss poor paddle spilled for a clumsy island corner

Bottlenecked by a band of brothers I’ve never met singing songs I’ve never heard

All amaretto falsetto for war stories of mistaken identities

Stubbed toes and collar grabs such fast blood racing

The pipes the pipes are calling and oh Danny boy we’ve heard this one before

Then the not forgotten third slip of the wrist thud of the glass splash of the odour fruit noir on the trousers

Like a tempest in a teapot a rogue word is spilled the following court rises a fist wrapped in drink kisses the lips of the closest unsuspecting bloke

I’ve thrown down my cross in favour for the gauntlet these boots were made for brawling

Fists feet barstools barmen sermons soliloquies sandwiches

Submerged in a gallery of nonsense treading water what’s left of my breath’s a right hook

Lights out

I don’t hear last orders but they roll something like credits

Awoken by angry machinery headed bouncers my friends and foes all equal under the gun

Are bagged and tagged tumble dried out of the punch drunk double doors

Reach for a key a wallet a condom a phone a gang of slapstick youths saunter through thoroughfare out of tune

And somewhere in between the literal pissing contests I’ve found a strange and tender holiness in the curs I’ve come to know

Band of brothers only at war with themselves

Clammy undergrads arranged in gorgeous naivety

My collection of scuff marks and inadequacies

This whole town’s got a confession to make

So leave an I owe you at the altar and odyssey back in to blind alley cat flaps

A bird’s eye view would have us look as a great flower pollinating the freckled face of the magnolia redemption

Break bread with two saints on a hill

Soldier on a shopping trolley revolution

Ugly laugh for an impossible damsel in no need of saving

Superfluous luminous hooligans made superman

All holy

All living

All holy

All loving