\nSome lads see a gap where others see traffic,
\nshirtless stroll across immune to horns and gestures.
\nIn clubs they take their chances with promises
\nand boasts. They meet their matches.<\/p>\n
But I see ghost cars on an empty road.
\nThe days of taking off my top for football in the park,
\nlungs unfucked by cigarettes I went on to smoke
\nfor decades, are long gone.<\/p>\n
It will catch up with you, I want to say.
\nOutlived by love I’ve seen the dying and the dead.
\nI’ve been round nursing homes, I know the ratios.
\nNo-one’s making posters of the missing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\nYou wear your wedding dress to bed, the happiest day
\nuntil he didn’t show. We thought he was dead but<\/p>\n
he was driving to the coast, still in love with the idea
\nof being in love but fallen out of love with being in love<\/p>\n
and I am wearing an American football shirt and denim
\nshorts and my dark green Doctor Martens to signify my<\/p>\n
mid-life crisis, the years go by in a police car doing
\na hundred while I’m the hitchhiker stuck on a slip road<\/p>\n
so we play the game called let’s pretend he really died
\nand we’re at his headstone in the rain with dripping flowers,<\/p>\n
I tell you how he loved you so much and is with you
\nevery second and you say aye and you put on your veil<\/p>\n
and the policeman was shot in a robbery and is still
\nin intensive care and the vicar committed adultery<\/p>\n
and your maid of honour has Lyme disease so things
\nhaven’t worked out too badly for us considering.<\/p>\n
When dawn comes we drive to McDonalds and marvel
\nat the plastic mangled language. This is what love is.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\nI’d like to be the knife-thrower and falling deep in love
\nwith the clich\u00e9 of my glitter-spangled assistant or I’m
\nthe assistant and the knife-thrower my dreamboat
\nand trying to decide whether make-up sex comes before
\nor after the act after probably the flying steel it could go
\nwrong but doesn’t or I might be on the lighting crew
\nthe secret knowledge that a falling light could kill
\na strongman stone cold dead and a clown even stone
\ndead colder or I’d probably be a clown you can’t tell
\ntheir gender or an acrobat in a skin-tight suit they are
\ntheir own gender acrobat drama when the facepaint’s
\nover acrobat\/acrobat affairs or maybe front of house
\nexchanging money for tickets out of costume not part
\nof the spectacle but promising you it’s going to be
\namazing or maybe the crew putting cardboard signs
\non roadside railings fixing text to metal and the circus
\nweeks away just driving and the purity of the future
\nand no promises broken yet or tears in caravans<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Second Sight Some lads see a gap where others see traffic, shirtless stroll across immune to horns and gestures. In clubs they take their chances with promises and boasts. They meet their matches. But I see ghost cars on an empty road. The days of taking off my top for football in the park, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":297,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[379,380],"tags":[388],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n