A serious poem, for a change.

I know, I'm surprised too.

This one is called PUNKS, and is about, you guessed it, punks.

It’s a very modern-feeling poem, in that it’s so far removed from my usual style that I know it’ll do well in the poetry circuit but I don’t have a book to put it in.

PUNKS

Riding the bus on the top floor

For the first time

I felt like the roof of the world was in reach

I could see the tops of bus stops, their roofs adorned with bottles

Traffic cones thrown there by drunk students

I could see above the heads of every person for miles

I could look down on their cars

Like toys, waiting to be held and pushed around

Then a punk, tall already but made taller

With platform boots and spiked hair

Climbed up those steps as the bus moved

I thought that was against the rules

And as he got to the top he crouched

To protect his hair

And I heard people laughing at him

But he didn’t care

And I saw people in tracksuits pointing

And he didn’t care

And I heard the names they called him

And he didn’t care

He just passed me, silently

His nurse’s lanyard still on

His leather jacket adorned with badges

From all the things he’d fight to defend

And he sat down, in front of a father and his daughter

Who, innocently, wanted to touch the punk’s hair

And he cared this time

Turning back, smiling, and explaining to her how he dyed it green

How he kept it spikey

Later in life, I realised thanks to him

That we need to be spiky sometimes

To defend all that is soft in the world

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Author's note:

I published this within ten minutes of writing the poem, so you'll notice the odd stylistic bug here or there. I've also beamed this to BBC uploads, and I think if we all focus on the thought of the BBC broadcasting this, it might be my first big break as a poet (not counting that time I went to a big-name vanity press event and drank all their wine and bought some nice jackets from a vintage shop).

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