This is What We Find
This is what we find when we go outside:
Roads melting in the heat;
Half-naked teenage boys kicking footballs in the street;
The Indian kids playing cricket in the park,
Grass darkening their otherwise
Immaculate whites.
“Hey, do you want a game?” they shout.
See, this is what happens when you go out;
People want a piece of you;
People want you for their team.
I don’t want to run around in this heat.
I don’t want grass staining my new clean clothes.
I don’t want the captains telling me what to do.
I want to stay indoors, conserving my strength,
Keeping my own company,
And my flesh and soul in harmony.
I want to sit quietly in the cool,
Cultivating the whiteness of my skin,
Listening to old Bowie LPs,
And reading Proust and Agatha Christie.
Oh, and eating till I’m clinically obese,
And need to be winched out to receive
Life saving surgery,
For which circumstance,
Having been corrupted by the BBC,
I will look for someone to blame,
And settle on the people outside,
Who want me on their team,
And will not let me be;
The captains who will not let me be me.
Robin Kidson was born and bred in a remote part of rural Northumberland, but now lives near Bristol. He can occasionally be heard reciting his poems in the various poetry venues of that city – including the Lansdown pub in Clifton.