The title poem from my third collection. Not actually about a real blue lamp disco – we all remember those, right? – but a more or less true account of a night in my home town when I was young and foolish, to coin a phrase.
Is this a ‘political’ poem? I sort of think it is, but would be hard-pressed to say how. Personally, I just like the rhyme-scheme…
Blue Lamp Disco
We lay down for ‘The Queen’
and still escaped a kicking
until that Christmas when
they ambushed us in Mill Street,
loosening my teeth
and both your bollocks.
You nursed them in our booth
in Madge’s, as we sipped
an underage pint apiece
and a clunky drum-machine
accompanied the pleas
of a tinselled cowboy
RUC reservist
moonlighting on twelve-string,
lachrymose, half-pissed,
banging on about love.
Author of four collections of poetry, the most recent, The resurrection of the Body at Killysuggen, published in June 2011 by Belfast’s Lagan Press. He blogs about his latest book on www.killysuggen.wordpress.com.
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