Escape of Harold ‘Rubber Bones’ Webb
Chaplain asked me if I’d renounced my criminal ways,
Depends on my girl, I confessed
rattling the concrete flinders in my pocket.
I’d sprung by midnight, slipped down
my chiselled rabbit hole
following hot pipes like a nag on the rails,
coaxed to the grille by the dank of the moor,
scaling the outer wall on pilfered gumboots
and wearing the Princetown fog.
Slipping cuffs on the dentist’s chair
was just my warm-up act –
told ‘em I’d be out by Christmas,
got till dawn to crack this bog,
steal a lift on the back of a lorry
right under their birchy nostrils,
to London, shed my skin down Soho,
say buon giorno to my old amici,
read tomorrow’s headlines in my dressing gown.
Dan Stathers is a writer from South Devon. As well as poetry, he also enjoys writing comedy sketches, parody songs and short plays for radio. @DanStathers