I am not a crutch, although my knees are rife with woodworm,
And the meal-worms I misheard for lunch are rotting in my guts,
With a childhood of fingernails that ripped my throat to shreds,
A walk that chimes like church bells from all these loose joints in my legs.

These three lions that were sitting on my chest,
Are clawing hard into my skin as I am gasping for my breath,
And as they each play noughts and crosses on the scratches they have left,
I have to screw up both my eyes as it goes into sudden-death,
They whisper really all these noughts are circles holed, bereft,
And all these crosses crucifixes, spreading guilt and sense of dread,
And as we stumbled homeward up the hill to where you used to live,
The cold makes ice upon our cheeks from all the tears that we have shed.

These things rattle round my head,
If he hasn't blown the whistle then it isn't quite the end.

Every defeat a divorce,
Although I look surprised,
It's par for the course I guess,
I don't really know now, what I thought I knew then,
You can lead a horse to water, but it won't drown itself.

This one family photograph always floats to the top,
Like a beaming, bloated corpse, though having been made up,
My memories are sepia, but the photograph is not,
An historian is fucking with them, as deadly as garotte.

Where they're standing in the kitchen with his arms around her waist,
With no idea of what's to come and with a smile across your face,
And all the fittings are the same but every other thing has changed,
Must forget everything you know as though your mouth and tongue estranged,
Small comforts found in ABBA, Gold and electronic chess,
When West Clewes was my Waterloo, my most dramatic test,
Now I've been walking down the short-cuts and the alleys in the dark,
Because I'm not scared of the shadows, they're no blacker than my heart.

These things rattle round my head,
If he hasn't blown the whistle then it isn't quite the end.

Every defeat a divorce,
Although I look surprised,
It's par for the course I guess,
But how could I ever refuse?
I feel like I lose when I lose,
And I don't even know now, what I thought I knew then,
You can lead a horse to water, but it won't drown itself.