Poem

Men in Uniform

Men in uniform - they are all the same, "Welcome to the force son!" - Welcome to the game. Vicious sadism with badges casually advances, accusing eyes and scything glances - that signify then multiply the ever encroaching fights. Every word that they say, every nuance of their voice, is loaded as they goad me like I’m a liar, a thief and a cheat; that I should look downward for an answer - somewhere round my feet - ‘white trash’ kicked around in the gutter like a half crushed can, treated like a boy when I’m a thirty-something man. Listen to my verse as I spit it like a curse. He is just a frustrated, often third rated; Silly - Little - sham. Nothing ever changes does it? Middle aged blokes with tunics and false hopes avoiding the reality - I have what you no longer own - vitality, energy - youth on my side - that is what you cannot abide; and that is why you stare, and that is why you leer, and that is why you hunt me - I represent your fear. Saturday night’s I don’t look for fights - I’m as broke as a joke but it is me your wife is peering over your shoulder at as you slaver in her ear. Your Universe is small - a trivial non-entity, a lifeless void - a Black Hole. So many times I’ve heard it before - How could man guard the oven door - at Auschwitz? They’re all around you - Campus Security, prison warders who’s brutality rules in Strangeways, men that carry keys and rattle them so you look - Police Constable 763 - the man that drives the Bus; sat up there in his little cabin, power hungry, he owns the road, - it’s you he’s havin’. So that man in the uniform follows you home, he pulls you up, frisks you down - Good Cop/Bad Cop playin’ it by the book I know I’m getting picked on ‘cause I have that look - I don't confidently stride in a corporate suite with a well fed waste line - nor am I the young women, the young pace setter, the liberated young ‘go-getter’. I - am - a - young - white - working - class – man; another number, a pointless prankster, I have no name - police fair game - a trouble maker, part of the problem not the solution yet - I steel cars, burgle houses, rape old ladies it’s a moral panic that arouses the media - an amplification for the nation - a frenzied fever - in me they revel - the newest, baddest, meanest ‘Folk Devil.’ I sell drugs to little kids, I own the girl on the corner - I’m her pimp/I’m a ponse - it’s young men like me that killed ‘Stephen Lawrence’ - I deserve everything I get. I know you want believe me - but do you sense the "Irony" ? Sometimes I think I’d be better off old - now that is a crime - a young man in his prime, grated, baited, a youthful lust turned to rust waiting for the passing of time maybe then everything will be better men in uniform no longer a fetter or is it me, a life style choice? I can’t sleep at night, so I walk the street, a lonely voice. If I had a ‘Girlfriend’ I would have acceptability, which is nothing more than a phoney shambolic necessity that is the hub for the club of social respectability - but I don’t want conformity. No... so I’ll just get picked on by little Napoleon with his shiny buttons and buckles scraping his knuckles along the floor as I stand by in helpless motion while those men in orange jackets at the Metro Station remove homeless people from the warmth to were it is rainin’, or the half starved Busker at Christmas time trying to make money with poem and rhyme... so quit that song and don’t take long - you don’t smell very nice and you look quite rough - you’re spoiling the view and it ain't no joke - how are the Psalm singing hypocrites that are the sombre masses of the Christian folk, that read the "good book" and demand you show awe like a meek flock of sheep to their pack of wolves - supposed to enjoy the view - with you - in the way? This isn’t what they asked for when they knelt and prayed. Working Class servility you are shafting your own and I hate ya, you leave me simmering with hatred... A uniform is a traitor.