A hollow box of day-glo Peelers,
Constrains the brethern snug within.
They are Mustered by the public toilet,
A municipal bouquet
Of piss and shit and disinfectant
Pervades the twilight air,
Seeming to mock any wholesome intent.
The Sergeant, hoping for rain and overtime,
Sends the Lodge off up the brae.
There's no music allowed this night -
Nothing to set the pace

Beyond a single, pensive beat.
A blackthorn stick clatters down,
And the thin procession shivers
As an old man finds his feet again.
This plantation town has switched sides
The war memorial, their destination
Held hostage by demography.
Someone from the sullen, watchful crowd
Begins a protest song, then stops abruptly.
The sails of spite barely filling

From these ill winds.

You'd come across farmers sons,
You went to school with.
On the back roads at dusk
Looking to park up somewhere quiet,
With your first Convent lassie.
A blur of camouflage,
The circle of dim red light,
And you'd draw up to some fella,
Locked and loaded,
You once dead-legged in the playground.
You were both playing new roles
He had his licence to kill
You just had your licence
The idea was to be civil -
Men of the world,
But your girl flinched violently,
Giving the game away
And it made you suddenly ashamed,
Knowing in the dirty wash of sidelights,
It might have been a different story
If she'd been there on her own.
Without the thin orange cover of your
'respectability.'
There's an awkward moment
When you try to read his opinion,
Hating yourself for doing it.
And, for forms sake,
He pretends to check your details.
You're let through, of course,
Still a friend of the state,
Despite your exotic tastes.
You give a weak salute
As you spot your old art teacher
Prone on the verge -
Covering you with a
General purpose machine gun
Like the subject of his own Magritte.
The surreal picture,
Now framed in your back window
Is soon consumed by twilight.
The legacy remains -
An unwelcome passenger,
A big, sour lump of indigestible history
Sprawled across the back seat
You thought you'd be playing on later.
She is silent, for a time, then:
'Sorry. This isn't going to work.'

There’s a maze without end
Here on Daedalus way
Now the kerbstone colours
Have faded away.
The lines in your head,
The blood that was bled,
The lurid cauls
On gable walls,
The shooting of one, 
The bombing of two
The tally of five hundred more than you
Those germinate seeds
Of tribal deeds
Still bloom in the head
But on the ground? Dead.

There’s a new dispensation
On Daedalus way
An insatiable need 
For tomorrow today
Sure there’s Polish cops
And fair trade shops
The people who fought
No longer sought
And no one to pine
And nothing divine
And tragedy hid like a bricked up mine
Convenient truths
To slake your druth
But the burrowing fear 
That it's All. Still. Here.
So clear in the mind
But outside? Blind.

So, they’ll aim for the sun
Over Daedalus way
Where a bankrupted past
Wasn’t made to pay
And you would too - 
Fuck your pious view
To excuse yourself
From the turn of the screw
To get out from under
To gratefully sunder
Those ties to the grave
Those debts to the brave
And the need to maintain
A deployable pain
‘What was it for? ‘ ask the kids
Here on Daedalus Way
Where nobody died
On the street today.