We were the Pirates then.
A dog barks on the darkening street,
bounce of ball & rush of feet;
childrens' voices echo their last fling,
bedtime comes & the pirate stations sing.
Ten o'clock comes, Allanah reads the news,
on my bed I'm thinking “I remember you”
- these ears aren't playing tricks.
Ah! venerated surname & darling prefix!
Irish name and almost-Asian eyes brown,
O sweet teenage years spent at Newtown!
Such soft gold/blond hair & film-star freckled face
beckoned me on... yet kept me firmly in my place.
As Allanah read Asterix in the Irish Times
she exuded perfumed charm; I forgave her crime
after she stole my treasured, 208-tuned transistor:
She french-kissed me, I couldn't resist her.
O premature lovers, promiscouous teens:
I mapped-out her contours under jumpers green.
O amorous apples, swoon of soft skin;
ignoring the commandment, indulging in sin.
Moonlight & stars were seriously blurred,
I bit my lip: others were preferred.
she selected a senior for the Supper Dance.
Much as I protested, I didnšt stand a chance.
Gone that Pre-Raphelite, reading out the news.
Gone for good those days, gone the brigandage too.
Dead & buried at twenty-five, damned callous cancer
killed this one-time dreamer, this wounded ballet dancer.
I remember tears glistening in the projector's light:
you knock-knock-knocked heaven's door that night.
The Greatest Story Ever Told incarnated in your heart:
- did you give your heart away, or did you hide it from the start?
