Simeon

"This poem is from a sequence of pieces about growing up in Prestwich just outside, what was at the time, the largest asylum in Europe where casual madness was the everyday"

I always wondered where you were from

Like an Irish cast of Rembrandt's Simeon

A perpetual underground inarticulate renegade

A sun tanned deserter from the International Brigade

Standing on the corners of the street

Rain sodden through the holes in your feet

Your throat is raging, temperance dry

From shouting Marx & Engels at passers by

Aqualung, your friend had never intended to stay

Mad Annie danced to the sounds and waltzed away

That left only the hospital's ill fitting clothes

And a mouth full of misremembered Marxist quotes

I always wondered where you belonged

No one has told me and I could be wrong

But I suppose you belong to Prestwich today

It has you dressed and plotted and slotted away