Skinhead

dedicated to someone who beat me up many years ago...

The storm has been banging at doors all night ;

with agro boots it kicks at windows and

breaks glass. Horseshoes slide over tarmac,

a council-flat-rat has broken his asbo,

a jack-the-lad,a train pisser,an illustrated growler.

He bends your eyes down with casual violence

and fills your face with glue and the chimp`s

big-teethed grin of fear

He is ready to duff you up.

He is waiting round the corner.

Author's Note

Probably not the best poem ever written ( to be honest,.. certainly not..) but I wanted
to write this to get this experience, in a literary sense,behind me..

Reviews

[SyberRose]

That must have been a terrible experience...well hopefully it is behind you now..some people just don't have a soul...nicely penned though Leslie...Rose

[John Alexander McFadyen]

Not at all Leslie this is profound!
You write poetry I wish I had the ability to pen. This is so well written!

[emmajoy]

Guess you don't have to look like a skinhead to actually be one or behave like one .. there are too many cropped-soul creatures in society generally! But yes, the 'real' lot can be evil, well aware that just the look of them intimidates .. small people really, bullies bereft of anything more than self.

What concisely and sparingly written words, set in your own measured style. Great stuff, Leslie.

Have to add tho that once had a carrier bag split open in the street and two skinheads came along, bent to help me pick up stuff; was pretty wary, fully thinking they'd pick and run .. they didnt. So maybe the look of people poisons our judgements. Their fault, not ours, however.

[Emily B]

i went to visit my college roommate in siegen when i was nineteen, her grandmother would send us off on adventures saying watch out for skinheads. and i watched. i never saw any. until we were sitting at the train station in east berlin. a foreign man heard the American girl talking and wanted to say that he spoke English. the skinhead looked like a boyscout going to sunday school . . . i have never seen anger quite like that. i never want to see it again. i noticed him on the train as we went back to our hosts apartment. as we were getting in our car at the correct station, i noticed he walked past, like he followed us. the world is sometimes a scary place

[Leslie Philibert]

Thanks for sharing your experience. East Germany has a lot of skinheads,the young people there have trouble learning to live with democracy ( sounds strange,but true).I was duffed up by a skinhead many years ago after school who hated my long hair ( I was a hippie ),so I can understand that you were real scared.O.K, my social side tells me that these are often young unemployed working class lads without much of a future, but when something happens you don`t feel so generous.Thanks for the review,best wishes from a sunny Bavaria!

[Emily B]

sometimes i think we must be a little blessed to see such hatred so that we are not too naïve about its existence