The Real Lepers
(Junkies returning home via Dublin's Grafton Street)The Real Lepers
To see them enter a space, a public place,
prams and womenfolk in tow
is to see middle class Dublin mentally scatter for escape
Bells, purses and bangles ringing in the hearts
of the fat burghers who clutch their bags in disgust
at the gutter of accents, the tattooed body parts
Unclean! Unclean!
A parade of stagnant fish past their sell by
scored and withdrawn to the limits
gliding and buffeting in wall eyed ranks
Tension spanning the babes and sunglasses,
of a sudden parched the mouths of cracked lipstick,
watching the X Ray Banshee of death file past
The new age penitents
killing all café society blandishments
till the very roadside bubbles with pitch
Burn burn the unclean
roasted mottled flesh stretched taut
against their drugged out beatific faces
And see where the eyes of children are averted
as the ragged homunculi pass by
Alarum! Alarum! Alarum!
For they bravely ventured a hopeless leap
beyond the Tarantino conceit
that so amuses the rich in their soft drugs of sleep
And they will not look and they will not look
at these grim doppelgangers scorched by the sublime
at the screaming face of our desperate times
Unclean! Unclean!
Fear stumbling fear lashing at the world
they bent forward against an imaginary wind
grimacing with frost of teeth in the summer heat
Searching, searching for that first time again
roaring incessantly at each other, the sky, at hell's dark gate,
their inexorable fate
Now the real lepers zapping their beamers behind security gates
the table set for dinner that night they will acquaint
their guests of the scum, geebags and knackers they saw that day
Would some service not just zap them away?
And when the mood gets just right in the falling light,
they will text that certain contact amongst those same low lives
and wait for their special friends Hash and Charlie to arrive
@ Paul Larkin
Mí Bealtaine, 2013