To Lee Sawyer

 Though you are gone

Long time dead

And the earth’s soil, stone and clay

Surrounds your bones,

With their entourage of

Worms, maggots and decay,

In times of need and confusion

And dam right disorder

I quite often recall you,

For although you are gone

And the delicate heavens

Have pick pocketed your soul

In my times of turmoil

I’ll bury my head

And reminisce about you

Just close my blacked eyes

And let the tears

Stab away on the inside…

 

Across the green

In the middle

Of our concrete estate

Where fragments of the sun

Often split the trees

With piercing shards of its beams,

The laughter of our childhood

Stands naked and alone

Like a rottweiler picking

On a puppy.

 

And many years later

We’ve all moved on

Some don’t speak

Some are a million miles

From the kid’s they once were

But one’s name was Lee

And Lee didn’t make 16…

 

Ah, I can see it all now

I can almost taste my childhood

While I watch the sun set

Over the city’s allure

And witness the crimson

Drip over the azure

That is drowning in a

Torrent of nocturne’s onslaught.

 

Oh yes, I remember,

The smell of Sunday dinners

The bingo played at lunch

There’s a kid from another estate

Told me to watch me back…

 

So then Lee, tell me

Tell me via the medium of

Play station or a cheap crystal ball

What went through your head

When you swallowed those trips?

What ran through your mind

As you climbed that blocks stairs?

And what was in your head

As you stepped off the roof edge?

And what were the thoughts

Of the poor b******s

Who had to scoop such

A young lad up, from a grey

Cold, bloodstained pavement?

 

A rainfall comes and

Abrogates the earth’s

Dry parched soil, and

Trickles through the dirt

To your peaceful corpse.

 

See, Lee

I did make sixteen, and

I’ve done quite a lot

Seen quite a bit

But the innocence

Of our childhood

Haunts my every step

Because

The deep memory

Of your smile and gaze

They couldn’t bury

In your grave.