Something else...

Wrote this poem in the wee small hours as a house party blared downstairs...

THE SMITHS PLAY THE NATIONAL BALLROOM, KILBURN

The gladioli of doubt
Pinion round the crown
Of the King of Fools

He sways, beatific,
and sings you a lullaby,
an anthem for doomed youth

The question, What is it
I've got that you have not?,
is not his to answer.

He is what you want him to be.
Effete, charming. Gaunt, wiry.
Lanky, striking. Sinner, saint.
A Man for All Suspicions.

What about his mind?
Is that what sets him apart?

He transforms the turgid,
electrifies the ordinary,
screws up the rulebook of rock n roll

Sunny days for him are dreaded,
He'd hang the DJ to quell the panic,
He opens up freer to the girl miles away
Than the girl across the street he lusts after

He should be rocking out,
but instead he's fucking up,
singing so beautifully about the pain of manhood.

He isn't right, this isn't proper,
it shouldn't work but it does,
Oh how it does!
You want to be him
and girls want to be with him
And you want to be with those girls!

So you sway along with everyone else,
a sight in your specs and hearing aid.
You came on your own, but don't want to leave alone.
So you spend the night, trying to catch the eye
of a buck-toothed girl from Luxembourg.