Sunday 31 January 2021

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)



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