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The Paper Boy .. .

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.                   I had been a compulsive since I was seven

   or was it seventeen?

   we all spend so much time alone

   with Chopin and the flowers

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The first time I had an erection I became a man

   and when I saw my mother’s breasts

   I fell in love with her

   not the women in Spick n’Span

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Those ladies were nowhere near

   with their plastic smiles

   grey-toned faces

   their airbrushed teets

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I hid them in a bag at the back of the chimney

   a budding sleuth

   a sleuth and a gangster by thirteen

   hanging more black and white pictures

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On my dull, wood-chip, emulsion wall

   pictures of Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel,

   all these were perfectly acceptable

   not the women of my masturbations

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My early teenage loves

   my pictures of Lilly stuck up high in the chimney

   with the dead starlings, the decaying soot

   two Topo Gigio keyrings we stole from Woolworth’s

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Me and a ginger gangster called Ian 

   who introduced me to wanking back in ’63

   we had a kind of wankers club

   curious boys would gather to learn

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We held our pepees in our hands

   it seems now kinda sordid

   it didn’t then, rubbing out some pleasure

   from undeveloped glands

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Boys did it all the time

   later we found girls

   who would do it for us

   with your hands stuffed inside their bras

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Then we tried out rubber johnny’s they often tore

   leaked the messy evidence upon the carpet floor

   always too excited but then you had to wait

   to see if you were mummy’s or daddy’s

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Getting married at seventeen which so many did

    in war-torn Britain with the depression lifting

‘  ‘we never had it so good’

   but that was much later in the teenage cycle

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At eleven years I started dropping papers under-age

   my canvas sack hung round my neck

   cowhorn handlebars, my statement of intent

   all the while my eyes held open with sticks

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My mind racing with the troubles on at home

   the shouting and the arguments, the fights

   the true sense of loss, little father-love

   then suddenly my bike was gone

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Taken from me by the big red bus

   the type that comes in threes

   while I was sleep-walking

   it might have been a hearse

The one thing that was fortunate

   I was not riding it, but walking it

   it ended up mangled real good

   contention continued at home under the hood

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Yet by fifteen we were knocking back

   full-blown beers at the local drinking-hole

   where the landlord who had weak eyes

   served us two-bob pints of light and bitter

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So we wandered home to mommy

   with the stars in our skies

   trundled off to work on Monday

   followed by night-class chasers

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Its no wonder later I began to roam

   collecting female conquests like badges

   three at a time, a gigolo in my teens

   in chequered shirt, skinhead hair, high-masted jeans

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Yet still I was a paper boy,

   for ten shillings a week

   I wrestled with my world

   that was cold, empty, bleak

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