HARD IN THE DYING

Lost games
Longer lost rules
Night-time crimes
Lungs full
Of pungent smoke
Bellies full of booze
And heads full of
Something
And nothing

A kind of homage
To a kind of music
Riding across vinyl
And even crackling shellac
And the dead man's foot
Still taps inside the coffin
Refusing to relinquish
The hard-wired hammer
The outlaw life
Is hard in the dying

                                    By Phil Roberts