The Prison Boys

It became a dead cert
from the starting line,
rebels look good
on street corners.
Society hunts with
arrowed shirts
as the decadent flex
frustrated talons.
Free anger never hurt a soul
they thought.

Prison boys -
seven bars of bullshit,
shoot the bird down
its full of it!
The incredible shrinking bloke
what's the score?
Good.
Lower the pipe
over the yellow landing.

It swallows whole
this vacant hole.
Damned! Scorned!
Cursed! Shamed!
Nothing left to say
in its entirety.
Blow from tongues
and graves
and empty plates,
cell windows line up
to cry.

Breakfast lights
another cigarette
without ceremony or ritual,
all of that came to a halt
when the pompous geezer
found punishment
in a book.
Raise hell!
Run amoke cute miscreants!

Cuffed up, dressed down,
its a bitch
this jagged freedom stint
where heroes are the rarest thing.
Young men weep bombs
making jewellery from knives,
the faint hearted suck
like blonde coppers.
Skint,
save another stretch
in me pocket...

@Steven Francis poems 1995