by Martin Hayes, with image above by Martin Gollan
we come home on a Friday night
after another dirty week in their offices
open a bottle of wine
and begin…
we write like lions like lionesses like a loon
we write unprotected ‘unsolicitied’ we write with our jaws half-broken
with our tongues half-ripped out of our throats
we write with our fingertips
that have had their nails pulled out of them
by supervisors who have never read a Blake poem in their life
yet sing along to Jerusalem while watching the rugby down the pub
we write tough as bears
after they have tried to break our backs
we write
sometimes soft as a baby
we write
because it is the only thing left
to do
to try and make sense of it all
we write to see what it can provoke
we write like Spartacus got his fists out
we write like Eric Cantona pulled up his collar like Dylan
got his guitar and harmonica out and made a new one
we write for Galileo for jumble sale mothers for the witches of Salem
who are burnt or beheaded for knowing
nature
we write for the Luddites
who broke into the first factories
and smashed those first machines to pieces with a hammer
we write for Fred for Muhammed Ali for Nikola Tesla
for dead mothers and dead grandparents
for the dog
we write with hunger with our hungry eager mouths
like it is the last chance of a meal left
we write because it is the last food or ointment
left to heal the wounds to
make us feel able to
go out again tomorrow
and do it all over again
we write
because if we didn’t
nothing about this world
would make very much sense
and what would we be
then
