Westerling

The poster read:

“Gone Missing”

The come-back-kid

has failed to show.

The Old Man saw him,

pissing by the Rainbow Factory

wall, against the wind,

like a prayer no longer given

to the prism-surfing life.

He said,

“The come-back-kid, might

Not come back”..

He wrung his 

swindled heathen, left

with haversack and Macintosh,

hummed ballad in a Sea-King crown,

the colloquy of shepherd lore.

head far too full to sing,

Caught riding 

in a burnt out car of

rude December archetypes,

an engine feathered Westerling,

to think.

He went 

to where they bury boats,

Where mud larks perk

for potsherd farthings,

red-shanked in the gallon slob

oblivious...

Far off the Ness

He’ll watch them go..

... on meteoric dawn patrols,

a contrast to his built-in

obsolescence.

In provinces

of platitude

He’ll form no evanescent tie,

invoke his tattooed waxwing 

back against their lactic 

saccharine, to beg

the notion die...

But leavened light may carry,

A bold ceramic dialect

that skitters off 

the short-sun marsh

dissipates in linnet banter

winnowed from the winter barley

crossing out the county lines..

The come-back-kid

will not return,

a blue-eyed, fell, Promethean.

Disfigured by the absolute

He’ll beat his way

unrecognised.