Poem: 'IN PENNY LANE THERE IS A BARBER SHAVING CUSTOMERS'

 

IN PENNY LANE 

THERE IS A BARBER 

SHAVING CUSTOMERS… 

(visiting Liverpool, July 2014)

 

I wasn’t here 

this never happened 

rumours of a distant war 

once resented, now embedded 

once blood-raw, now no more, 

an endless autopsy, a history tour 

a heritage trail, a legacy project, 

when it all comes down to this 

laminated into a tourist map 

a twist in a leisure industry 

frozen reconstructions of 

memory-distort on pause 

in a national misTrust, 

no stylus bites play-in, 

days blur on the flip-side, 

it was light, it was dark 

this sad escapology 

eradicates every scratch, 

yet I’m here on Mathew St 

where once it happened, 

just six decades too late 

squint ears to catch echoes 

of screams on the screen 

see these walking dead, 

this never happened 

I wasn’t here, 

I’m still trapped 

somewhere in this photo… 

Collected into: 

‘TWEAK VISION: THE WORD-PLAY SOLUTION 

TO MODERN-ANGST CONFUSION’ 

Alien Buddha Press (USA – March 2018)